REVIEW OF JANE FONDA'S WHAT CAN I DO? MY PATH FROM CLIMATE DESPAIR TO ACTION (2020). The review is in two Parts; scroll down for both.
OMNI'S VIRTUAL BOOK FORUM DECEMBER 6, 1:30
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JANE
FONDA, WHAT CAN I DO? (about the
climate)
For a Forum of one and a half hours, we have two books to discuss and an open discussion. So here I have summarized and commented upon chapters one through 3. My virtual talk will cover the chapters on the climate issues she discusses (Part II below).
This
is one of the best books on political ACTION I have read. Because it is an account of a four-month
action, every page is about WHAT WE CAN DO as we follow Ms. Fonda learning.
In
this first part of the review I’ll describe it generally and then zoom in on chapters 1 through 3.
The importance of Greenpeace to Ms. Fonda’s
sustained protest and the book cannot be overstated. Here’s a quick summary mainly from
Acknowledgments: The first person she consulted with her idea of going to DC
for a four-month demonstration for the climate was Greenpeace’s president,
Annie Leonard. All of the planning
meetings took place in Greenpeace USA headquarters in DC for the four months. She ‘made certain we had the speakers we did”
for the Fire Drill Fridays and Teach-Ins, by assigning a Greenpeace
officer—Maddy Carretero—to help organize every Fire Drill Friday and Teach-In. Ira Arlook “made sure the world knew” about
the rallies. For the book, all profits go to Greenpeace. At invitation from Fonda, Leonard wrote the
appendixes, Appendix A: “An Introduction to Understanding the Climate
Emergency,” on “the science of the crisis and the urgent solutions,” and
Appendix B: “Civil Disobedience.” Who
was ever praised better? “She is a true
activist leader who lives her values and always exhibits wisdom, compassion,
and generosity.”
Ms. Fonda’s generosity in giving credit
is also shown in her Acknowledgments, where dozens of her heroes for the
climate are listed and many particularized.
One of her methods in seeking an effective action is her “repeaters,”
who disseminate far and wide her messages and those of the speakers at the Fire
Drill Fridays and Teach-ins. Among these
are experts and her celebrity friends, who use their platforms to raise
awareness: Gloria Steinem, Eve Ensler, Ted Danson, Ben Cohen, Susan Sarandon,
Martin Sheen, Lily Tomlin, Emma’s Revolution, Sweet Honey in the Rock.
She’s a pro. And her book shares her lifetime experience
as an organizer for peace and the environment.
She offers seventeen chapters and the two
appendices already mentioned. The first
two chapters and the last describe her foray to D.C. for the climate. The first
two describe her decision to move to DC to organize (“The Wake-Up Call”), and
her initial actions (Chapter 2: “The Launch”).
(Chapter 17, “Fire Drill Fridays: Going Forward”)
Fourteen chapters (3 through 16) discuss
fourteen topics. Chapter 3: The Green
New Deal; 4: Oceans and Climate Change; 5: Women and Climate Change; 6 War, the
Military, and Climate Change; 7: Environmental Justice; 8: Water and Climate
Change; 9: Plastics; 10: Food, Agriculture, and Climate Change; 11: Climate,
Migration, and Human Rights; 12: Jobs and a Just Transition; 13: Health and
Climate Change; 14: Forests and Climate Change; 15: Holding the Fossil fuel
Industry Accountable; 16: Stop the Money Pipeline.
Each
chapter is preceded by a full-page in color of a key person or event at that Fire
Drill Friday.
The opening
pages of Chapter
1, “The Wake-Up Call” prepare for the
conclusion just now described. The
introductory photo is of the first Fire Drill Friday in the conference room at
Greenpeace USA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. with Jane and Annie Leonard,
president of Greenpeace, at head of the table.
Naomi
Klein and Greta Thunberg get credit for first awakening her to the climate
crisis. Jane learned about Greta from
Naomi’s book. Because Asperger Greta
could not filter out truth, could not compartmentalize the scientific truths
she had learned at school, when faced with the inaction of leaders, she became
traumatized and mute. People should be
behaving as if their house was on fire, she felt, but instead they acted like
business was as usual. Eventually she rediscovered
her voice, and at age 16 started a movement called “Fridays for Future” to
inspire school strikes around the world.
By the time Jane had read a quarter of Klein’s book, On Fire: The (Burning)
Case for a Green New Deal, she was “shaking with intensity.” Naomi through Greta had enabled her to “take
the science into my own body.” The
second thing in Klein’s book that changed her “the clarity with which she
conveyed what the scientists were saying
in the [United Nations’] 2018
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).” Here’s the reality: “Virtually unanimously, the scientists make
clear that given the worsening disasters we’re already seeing, and the
additional warming that is already baked in because we didn’t act forty years
ago, we don’t stand a chance at changing course in time without profound,
systemic economic and social change, and they say, as of 2020, we have a brief ten years before the tipping point
is reached. Ten years to reduce
fossil fuel emissions roughly in half and then reduce to net zero by 2050 to avoid
uncontrollable unraveling of the natural life-support system”(3). The IPCC scientists know this, Naomi knows
this, Greta knows this, and Jane knows this.
The scientists believe in addition that “we
have the technology to make the transition in time to clean, renewable energy,”
and they believe “collective actions
taken by social movements on an unprecedented scale” can make the needed
transition. And Jane believes social movements make changes. She and her husband at the time, Tom Hayden,
launched the Indo-China Peace Campaign to tell about the Pentagon Papers and
challenge President Nixon to stop the war.
A clear strategy and authoritative evidence were the foundation of that effective
mobilizing and organizing. To Jane, “the
Pentagon Papers were to the Vietnam War what I think the IPCC 2018 report was
to the climate crisis: irrefutable truth of lying and deceit on the part of
people in power” (4).
The third thing in On Fire that struck Jane was the way Naomi explained the Green New Deal. At first, Jane thought Rep. Ocasio-Cortez
and Senator Markey’s GND Resolution should not have included jobs and environmental and economic
justice, because those major subjects would distract us from the climate
catastrophe. But “Naomi’s book made me
understand justice is at the heart
of solving what led to the climate crisis.”
“The Green New Deal beckons us into a future where everyone can see a
place for themselves” (4). Right then,
Jane decided to move to D.C. and camp out at the White House.
She told two close friends and for several
days discussed pros and cons. Then she
took a leap of faith (her “only form of exercise these days”) and phoned her friend Annie Leonard, the director
of Greenpeace USA. Annie set up a
conference call to include Naomi, Bill McKibben, and environmental lawyer Jay
Halfon. They discussed not only possible
actions (no camping in D.C.) but actions that might be effective based upon historical
examples (TransAfrica v. S. African apartheid).
They agreed on weekly
demonstrations followed by civil disobedience. Jane decided to go D. C. at once, for she had
only four months free before filming her last season of Grace and Frankie.
She flew off September 27. The initial organizing took ten days, leaving
two weeks for the planning. Annie found
a logistics team, who found a digital team.
The sound man with the documentary film company suggested the name Fire
Drill Fridays. About a dozen people
attended the first big meeting in D.C. in the Greenpeace office, representing
Greenpeace, the Sunrise Movement, Friends of the Earth, Climate Action Network,
Hip Hop Caucus, Oil Change International and more (9). Who were they hoping to mobilize? What would
they demand and what calls to action?
They finally settled on three
essential demands:
Support
the Green New Deal
No
New Fossil Fuel Extraction
Phase
Out Existing Fossil Fuels with a Just Transition to Renewable Energy.
Their
Calls to Action were to be:
VOTE:
for the climate in every election and for candidates in favor of the GND.
VOICE:
talk to everyone about climate, phone or write candidates, sign and distribute
petitions, go to town halls.
USE
YOUR FEET—WITH OTHERS! Show up!
And
Jane suggested education, weekly teach-ins
focusing on different aspects of the climate crisis featuring experts and
activists. Karen Nussbaum, labor
organizer, suggested they be on the night preceding each Rally.
In the days following Jane met with leading
D. C. student climate protesters and strikers.
They agreed to participate in the first FDF. “Things were coming together….into a team
effort, and other organizations were feeling included and heard. In fact, it felt meant to be.” (12).
[And the title What Can I Do? had become urgently clear from the beginning. Every
chapter, every sentence offered answers.
–Dick]
Chapter 2, “The Launch” Oct. 11, Rally #1.
The opening
photo shows the capitol in the background, closer a banner for “Fire Drill
Fridays,” and front, Jane, dressed in her signature red coat and black and
white checkered cap holding high Naomi Klein’s book, On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal.
On October 11, 2019, the first pre-rally Briefing was held in
the United Methodist building near the Capitol.
She was letting her gray hair grow in (“growing gray felt right for my
new (and maybe final) turning point” :this book is also autobiography remember). She hadn’t slept, afraid nobody would show
up, afraid Fire Drill Fridys would not “gain traction and make a
difference.”
The core team was there, two of the
speakers, a dozen pledged to civil disobedience (cd) and to risk arrest with
her: Karen Nussbaum, Annie Leonard, Steve Kretzmann, and her
step-granddaughter, Vasser Turner Seydel. A photo of Jane and Naomi Klein appears p.
16. Jane’s logistical head gave the
briefing she would repeat on all
subsequent Fridays.
The March. Then they went
outside to march to the first Fire Drill Fridays. TV cameras
and photographers greeted them,.
They passed the intimidating Supreme Court building. Their little group seemed “ragtag,” their
chants unimpressive. She saw ahead to
the stage only a small audience.
The Rally. Jane
devoted her first Fire Drill Fridays (FDF) speech to the imperial, genocidal economic
ideology (my words) of US history. Like
warming, US imperialism got under her skin during the Vietnam War. She quotes two of her sentences, and they are
worth quoting: “The same toxic ideology
that took this land from people who already lived here, that kidnapped people
from Africa, turning them into slaves to work that stolen land, and justified
it by saying those kidnapped and displaced people were not human beings, cut
down the forests and exhausted the natural world just as it did the
people. This foundational, extractive
ideology of commodification is the same one that has brought us the
human-driven climate change that we’re facing today.” There’s never been a better two-sentence critique
of US capitalism.
Then the first FDF begins with a young
indigenous woman. Jansikwe Medina Tayac,
of the Piscataway Indian Nation,
“welcomed us to her people’s land.”
There’s a photo of her p. 18 (all photos in the book in color). She reminds us that “indigenous people have
been fighting for this earth since the early 1600s.” Jane writes that the young activists who were
striking every Friday supporting FDF were crucial to success; that after all the European colonizers had
done to the original people and to the land, it was remarkable to hear her
welcome; and that she had learned of “the critical role indigenous peoples play
in fighting climate change” (19).
Since this was the beginning of 14 FDF,
Jane spoke again to explain why she was there. She wanted “to ensure that the climate crisis
remains front and center.” She spoke of Naomi
Klein ‘s book, On Fire, the
inspiration for Fire Drill Fridays, of and Greta Thunberg and other student
strikers (see p. 2). Jane listed their
four demands (p. 20): 1. Pass a New Green Deal, 2. Stop fossil fuel expansion
immediately, 3. End fossil fuels within 30 years, 4. A fair deal for workers
and communities most impacted by the transition.
She explained too the second mission of
FDF: education—Teach-ins by scientists, experts, representatives from frontline
communities, celebrities on aspects of the climate crisis. She stressed the urgency of the crisis. From her core team to her expanding audience,
the “repeaters” amplify the messages.
Next she introduced another young person,
Jerome Foster, who emphasized our “one planet, and one globally interconnected
nation,” exhorted the audience to vote and write their reps, and led a chant.
Biologist Sandra Steingraber followed to
denounce fracking and to lament “all
that we had lost and what we’d be losing the in the near future.” She spoke to the young people facing that
future, relating her own youth with cancer to the present. And she spoke to Jane, who had not before
made the connection of “the bodies of marine animals that died 400 million
years ago…being weaponized to destroy the bodies of sea creatures living in our
oceans now,” or the connection of oil
companies, the chemical industry, waste, waste disposal, and plastics
(23).
That ended the Rally/Teach-in and began the March behind the FDF banner while
chanting: “Tell me what democracy looks lie.”
The press walked backward in front of them, and past the police along
the sides. Gradually those who intended
to risk arrest had moved ahead of
the others: her granddaughter, Vasser; Carroll Muffett of the Center for
Internatonal Environmental Law; Steve Kretzmann, director of Oil Cange
International; Media Benjamin co-founder of CODEPINK; Annie Leonard, director
of Greenpeace USA, several of the student strikers. They walked up the Capitol steps, were
warned once, and twice, and at the 3rd officers began cuffing the
protesters (24). It evoked the memory of
her first arrest in 1970 against the Viet Nam War full of trepidation. Now she was energized by full awareness and
engagement resulting from “putting my body on the line and aligning myself
full, body and spirit, with my values.”
And there was another difference, but it too was affirmative: She was unable to step up unassisted into the
police van with her arms tied behind her.
Similarly all the arrested seemed
empowered. And the chanting continued
until the last were in the van.
Processing at the police station was familiar, except, because her new red coat
was new and the pockets sewn, she had put her money and driver’s license in her
bra, and the officers laughed as they freed her hands to retrieve them. She shared a cell with Vasser, Sandra, Medea,
and Wendy, and conversation about climate’s universal influence, when “I got
more ideas for upcoming teach-ins.” And it
turned out that both Medea and Sandra had known her ex-husband Tom Hayden from
way back, Sandra from the student protests of the Vietnam War at the University
of Michigan, including the takeover of a building by Tom (editor of the
university’s newspaper) and 3,000 other students. That event inspired the new concept labeled
“teach-in” (instead of a walkout or a sit-in) which swept the country and has
stuck. Tom became a leader of opposition
to the war. These thoughts lead to mixed
personal memories of Tom.
As one of the last to be released, she had
time to reflect about the month leading to this moment. She was learning the rules of protest and
arrest in the US capital. She was proud
of what they had accomplished so far and especially of their “respect for the
land, for youth, and for science.” But
it was “not nearly enough.” She had “so
much…to learn.”
About four hours after her arrest she was
released to the warm welcome of her team--Debi, Annie, Maddy, and Karen, and
others offering claps and chips. In retrospect, for all the arrests “jail
support” was always there. That day
“cemented for me how important it was to work across movements.” “’If you want to go fast, go alone; if you
want to go far, go together.’” “The more I was learning about the climate crisis, the
more I knew that building a community was how we would grow the army that was
needed to change the way this country does business—literally, and for the long
haul.” (29).
Chapter 3, “The Green New Deal,” Rally
#2, Teach-In and Arrest #1
The opening
photo shows smiling actor Sam Waterston cuffed and being led away by a
policeman. Each week’s structure is
basically the same; in Chapter 3: 1) Jane’s
narrative of the Fire Drill Fridays, commentary
on the problem of warming and the economic system and the response of the Green
New Deal, 2) the Rally, 3) the Teach-in, 4) March, Civil Disobedience, Arrest.
Glancing ahead to the Teach-In, we meet
actor Sam Waterston and Joanna Zhu of the Sunrise Movement. Then Jane describes the organizing of the
first Teach-In: the posters, documentary crew, the digital team, the iPhone,
her notes—and the first Teach-In is launched (p. 32). Jane spoke first for the Green New Deal. One of sources of skill is her ability to
tell her two stories at once: Her four-month effort to present to the world
warming and resistance to it, and her physical and mental struggle to learn
both the science and process of reporting.
Her first sentence is a key to
understanding the “Green New Deal”:
“’The Green New Deal is not a policy or even a bundle of policies.” But she lets that sink in by cutting
immediately to her uneasiness with the tiny camera on the tripod in front of
her that she hope would reach thousands of people, and then she reveals she
introduced Sam Waterston as Sol Bergstein (“I was so jacked up”), the name of
the character Sam was portraying in a tv drama. And then she finished her GND statement:
“The Green New Deal is a framework…an integrated, systemic response to the
multiple crises of climate, of democracy, and of equality.”
She was pleased with what Sam, Joanna, and
she said, but she pauses to summarize (pp. 33-4) their take on the GND. (I urge everyone to read it, make a copy and
carry it around. ) That doesn’t prevent
her from elaborating for two pages on “the crisis as a chance to create a world of new possibilities
for fairness, prosperity, and good health.”
She differentiates potently the “environmentalists,” who would “reduce
the demand,” blaming the people, from the present climate resistance,
who would “reduce the supply,” blaming
the profit-seeking corporations (we will never slow the warming until we end
fossil-fuels use and fossil-fuels
production)(p. 35). (This is as
clear a single paragraph on that distinction I have read.) One more comment deserves attention: All of
the good ideas being advanced—more local innovations, more bicycles, more heat
pumps--, are not enough: “the power and resources of the federal government”
are necessary if we are to “scale up” the necessary changes “fast enough. Hence, it’s too late for moderation”
(36). And then she reports Sam’s live-streamed
Teach-In speech on moderation, empathy, resilience and the GND.
You’ve seen the “sidebars” in
magazines—related small essays inserted into a main composition? At this point (pp. 39-40), the pages colored
green, Jane offers us a quick history on “We’ve Done It Before: The New
Deal,” a time of “tremendous social
unrest : drought, hunger, protest,
riots. She has a personal connection you
will recall: her father Henry starred in the move The Grapes of Wrath about that crisis. and she has a particular
focus. The public demanded the
President make necessary changes, and Roosevelt replied: “’I agree with
you. Now go out and make me do it.’” And they did, and he did. And Jane is trying to push our leaders to
create a New New Deal.
Rally.
The second rally enjoyed a big increase in attendance. Jane opened with her hopeful sketch of the
New Deal.: “’…change is coming, by disaster or by design….The Green New Deal
provides the design to bring us all into a sustainable future.’” Followed by young people telling about
feeling traumatized by the prospect of a warming future. She introduces and honors their
ogranizations. Abigail Leedy
representing the Sunrise Movement was delaying her college plans to work
fulltime for a Green New Deal. Jasilyn
Charger, who ran from Standing rock, ND, to D.C. to deliver a petition to
theArmy Corpos of Engineers to stop the Dakota Access pipeline. Charlie Jiang, a Greenpeace climate
campaigner, who dropped plans to study physics in order to support a Green New
Deal. And Jane concluded the rally with
a pitch to all to vote, listing a several ways to question politicians votes
regarding rising temperature.
March, Civil Disobedience, Jail. And then the march to block a major
intersection, carrying a “Green New Deal” banner. There she was surrounded by journalists, some
hostile (“Hanoi Jane”!). Her daughter
Vanessa Vadim accompanied her, longtime friend Paula Weinstein of Tribeca Film
Festival, actor Katherine LaNasa, and Sam Waterston of course, and some twenty
others. All intended to engage in civil
disobedience. Bringing together the
older celebrities (Jane was 82) with the inspiring youth and climate activists,
“Fire Drill Fridays was helping to amplify the voices that needed to be
heard.” After three hours of detention with disobedients
from all walks of life (a manicurist and her daughter, from Delaware, a professor from a midwesterm university. a
Pakistani woman) they were thumbprinted and paid their fines.
Sam, a moderate in politics who had never
been engaged in civil disobedience, or spent time in jail, seemed particularly
affected. Three weeks later he was
arrested for protesting fossil fuel investments at the Harvard-Yale game. His sidebar, “A Moderate’s View of Civil
Disobedience,” appears, again in green, on p.44.
What Can I Do? Of the seventeen chapters, fourteen end with a call to action. It’s quite an accumulation of protest ideas and experiences. At this second Fire Drill Fridays, Jane is enthusiastic over the growing public interest in plans “as ambitious as the science requires.” But the Green New Deal resolution, introduced by Senator Ed Markey and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “is just the start,” and she discusses a few of “the many ways to get involved” the book offers (46-47, but really the whole chapter, and all the chapters). In fact, the entire book amounts to a compendium of ideas for changing from a fossil fuels capitalism to a sustainable world.
References
Justin Worland. “'Civil Disobedience Has to Become the New
Norm.' Jane Fonda on the Fight Against Climate Change.” Jane Fonda interviewed by Time, 9-3-20. https://news.yahoo.com/civil-disobedience-become-norm-jane-110041221.html
Looking Forward:
This is the first part of a two-part review of Fonda’s book. The second part follows, and part of it will be presented by Dick during the virtual Forum on December 6. I will summarize main aspects of the 13 chapters (4 through 16, from oceans to the money pipeline) that discuss the topics Ms. Fonda considers most important to understanding warming and how to reduce it. The most important thing you can do is buy and read the book. We are up against almost half of the electorate utterly ignorant of the causes and effects of warming; while the other half is only half-awake, when we must be militant and mobilized.
DICK’S REVIEW OF WHAT CAN I DO? PART ii
Sun, Dec 6, 2020 1:30
PM - 3:30 PM (CST)
Please join our
meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone.
https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/847722597
You can also dial in
using your phone.
United States: +1
(669) 224-3412
Access Code:847-722-597
(A few days ago Barnes
and Noble had copies of the books.)
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2020/11/jane-fonda-what-can-i-do-about-climate.html
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2020/11/jane-fonda-what-can-i-do-about-climate.html
This second part discusses the chapters
in between which present the most important topics rising from catastrophic
warming. But this is autobiography,
narrative, by which the subjects of oceans or environmental justice are
presented as part of her education, as she said in an interview, in an
all-consuming, life-or-death crisis. This existential climate crisis has to
be dealt with if anything else is going to be achieved. There were issues that
mattered to me before, but they weren’t life-or-death—nothing else is going to
matter if this isn’t solved—like the climate crisis is. The stakes couldn’t be higher. From the opening to the last sentence, she is
asking herself, What Can I Do for the climate, and inviting us to share her
inquiry and actions.
Chapter 4: Oceans and Climate Change; 5: Women and Climate Change; 6
War, the Military, and Climate Change; 7: Environmental Justice; 8: Water and
Climate Change; 9: Plastics; 10: Food, Agriculture, and Climate Change; 11:
Climate, Migration, and Human Rights; 12: Jobs and a Just Transition; 13:
Health and Climate Change; 14: Forests and Climate Change; 15: Holding the
Fossil fuel Industry Accountable; 16: Stop the Money Pipeline.
Every chapter from 1 to 17 explore her
title’s question; these chapters focus the question on a dozen problems arising
from the rising temperature. Each
chapter from beginning to end, usually in this order—Teach-In, Rally, March and
Arrest—explores the title’s question.
(The
first 3 chapters were discussed in Part I of the review.)
Chapter
1 “The Wake-Up Call “(decision to campaign in DC)
The organizing
committee meeting in Greenpeace’s conference room settled on three essential demands:
Support
the Green New Deal
No
New Fossil Fuel Extraction
Phase
Out Existing Fossil Fuels with a Just Transition to Renewable Energy.
Their
Calls to Action were to be:
VOTE:
for the climate in every election and for candidates in favor of the GND.
VOICE:
talk to everyone about climate, phone or write candidates, sign and distribute
petitions, go to town halls.
USE
YOUR FEET—WITH OTHERS! Show up!
And
Jane suggested education, weekly teach-ins
focusing on different aspects of the climate crisis featuring experts and
activists [this was done]. Karen
Nussbaum, labor organizer, suggested they be on the night preceding each Rally.
In the days following Jane met with
leading D. C. student climate protesters and strikers. They agreed to participate in the first FDF. “Things were coming together….into a team
effort, and other organizations were feeling included and heard. In fact, it felt meant to be.” (12).
Chapter 2, “The Launch,” Fire Drill Fridays Rally #1
After this first Rally Jane wrote no What
Can I Do? summary, but “That day cemented for me how important it was to work
across movements.” “’If you want to go
fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.’” “The more
I was learning about the climate crisis, the more I knew that building a
community was how we would grow the army that was needed to change the way this
country does business—literally, and for the long haul.” (29).
Chapter 3, Green New Deal, FDF Rally #2, Teach-In #1
What Can I Do? Of
the seventeen chapters, fourteen end with a call to action. It’s quite an accumulation of protest ideas
and experiences. At this second Fire Drill Fridays, Jane is
enthusiastic over the growing public interest in plans “as ambitious as the
science requires.” But the Green New
Deal resolution, introduced by Senator Ed Markey and Representative Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, “is just the start,” and she discusses a few of “the many ways to get involved” the book
offers (46-47). But really the whole chapter, and all the
chapters, in fact, the entire book provides a collection of ideas for changing from
a fossil fuels capitalism to a sustainable world. Those of you who have read the 7 books
reviewed a few days ago, however, know much more can said regarding what we can
and must do. The Green New Deal
Resolutions establish an inspiring if not comprehensive sketch of rallying utopian
goals, as Naomi Klein says.
Chapter 4, “Oceans and Climate
Change,” FDF Rally
#3, Teach-In #2, Arrest #1.
What Can I Do?
(61-63).
Eat less fish! Eat smaller in the food chain. Hook into seafoodwatch.org. Query your markets and restaurants; if enough
people persistently ask, it’ll reach corporate headquarters. Take pictures
of plastic waste and publicize the company. “While changing our individual consumption habitys
can help, the greatest change comes from collective and political action.” Talk to city and schoo officials. Push for organic landscapes. Join Greenpeace, Surfrider,Oceana, or other
ocean conservation groups. Healthy
oceans and climate are inseparable.
Chap. 5, “Women and Climate
Change,” FDF
#4,
What
Can I Do? (79-81).
Climate change
harms poor women and women of color.
So be political,
put women in leadership positions, especially for climate change, educate and
empower women. Join women’s
organizations: SisterSong, Forward Together, National Domestic Workers
Alliance, One Billion Rising, the several excellent reproductive health groups,
population growth opponents (contraception) like Population Connection, women’s
rights groups like La Via Campesina and Food First, indigenous women like
Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center, young women-led organizations like
Greta Thunberg’s School Strike for Climate, elect more women to public office
(etc. pp. 80-81).
Chap. 6, “War, the Military,
and Climate Change,” FDF
#5,
What
Can I Do? Section Q&A by Jane Fonda (with some sprinkling of DB, 92-95)
Talking
points for reducing military spending.
Three best
arguments: 1) stay out of unnecessary, illegal, civilian-slaughtering wars
(i.e. US wars); 2) join the conversion movement of diverting War Dept. funds to
human needs, esp. for the climate catastrophe, 3) these policies best protect
and honor our soldiers and our nation.
To
be safe, we must have the largest military budget in the world to have the strongest
military.
Cutting 2 or 3 billion
would not make us less safe but just the opposite, would be a significant
contribution to resisting the climate emergency. (As usual Jane cites her authority: Phyllis
Bennis.) And she lists other benefits.
· Cutting the military
budget will cut the jobs provided by military and the military-industrial
complex.
Every job preparing
for war can be replaced by better jobs n education, public infrastructure,
health services, etc. And most military
job incomes require food stamps, and contrast to the average CEO’s $20 million a
year.
What
about national security?
(See my note on
language at the end.) Real security is not
derived from 10 carrier battle groups or 800 bases but from high quality
support of the people in a living wage for all, first-rate schools and infrastructure,
adequate safety nets, healthy air and water, rich soil (reduced population DB),
etc.
How
does militarism relate to climate?
Let me quote JF: “The climate crisis has everything to do with the military. Every single war fought in the past eighty
years, if not longer, has been about oil.”
Future wars will be over FF profits but in addition over scarce
resources such as water and food. And add
refugees from war. And the Pentagon the
biggest institutional user of ff. “The climate movement and the peace movement
are one movement” (94).
Check out the Natonal Priorities Project (www.nationalpriorities.org and
www.nationalpriorities.org/interactive-data/trade-offs
). Ask your friends to join you
in talking to your representatives about military budget reduction and conversion,
and about increasing the State Department budget to foreground diplomacy, not
armed force. Find ways to push for
divestment of the military-industrial complex.
Examine your financial connections to the war machine. Never stop demanding conversion of war funds
and ff expenditures to the programs urgently needed for the transition.
(My
recommendations are linguistic: Join me
in never using the words defense or national security in regard to our
foreign policy. The most harmful linguistic
coup ever perpetrated against the world was changing the name of the War
Department to the “Defense” Department. Combining that illusion with that of US “exceptionalism,”
the US kills around the world with impunity because the goals are “good.” And put this sticker on your bumper next to
your OMNI sticker: “Goin’ Broke Payin’
for War.”)
Chap.
7, Environmental Justice
Chap.
8, Water
Chap.
9, Plastics” 137-144
Plastics was not
one of the harms protested at the Fire Drill Fridays, but it is “integrally
connected to fossil fuels,” and it was discussed in several Teach-Ins. Jane felt such an “immense and climate-related
problem” should not be omitted from her book.
She discusses the history of how a
universal convenience became monstrous.
Then she quotes at length Filipinos Von Hernandez and Denise Patel of
Break Free from Plastic, who made the comments--offering familiar Earth Day
solutions—at other FDF. BFP studies how
the climate crisis contributes plastic proliferation, as single stream plastic
becomes big oil companies’ second profit stream. It is part of a global network fighting
plastic pollution from its sources, including fracking sites, to the end point
of incineration and landfills. Hernandez
and Patel name the big plastic polluters—Coca-cola, Nestlé, Pepsi, Unilever--,
and all should receive public rebuke.
They have many ideas for stopping plastic waste; e.g., make companies
use refillable or reusable containers; mobilize towns to adopt goals of Zero
Waste, elect candidates who have a record of success against pollution.
Like Jane herself, they praise citizen
commitment to reducing footprints, but governments and corporations should be
compelled to increase their solutions, such as total bans on plastic bags, plastic
straws, plastic food ware. Over 400 US
cities have banned plastic bags. “We
need systematic change here,” Denise said.
Each of us must reduce our carbon footprint, but we must also join the
larger political battle “because the ff industry is not going down without a
fight.”
A concluding What Can I Do ? is repeated;
more examples of reducing individual footprints, but also the reduction and
removal of ff from industries and institutions that we can accomplish locally:
brand audits of the most harmful companies, pressuring your grocery store
(chain) to stop using plastic.
Eventually it must be a political battle, for ”. . .the most effective way to reduce
plastic. . .is through government restrictions, taxes, fees, or bans.” Surfrider and Greenpeace have tool kits for
working with corporations. But
ultimately, we must “reduce the availability of fossil fuels,” quickly because the
ff corporations were “planning a massive
build-out of hundreds of new plastic production facilities”(!).
Chapter
10, Food, Agriculture
Chapter 11, Migration, Human Rights
Chapter
12, Jobs and a Just Transition
Chapter
13, Health
Chapter
14, Forests
In chapters 2-14,
the 12 Fire Drill Fridays “focused largely on the effects of fossil fuels on
our climate, on our environments, and on the communities at the epicenter [of
the fossil fuel industry’s] toxic plundering.”
Now they confront “head-on the need to hold the fossil fuel companies
accountable and the ways to do it.”
I observed several times in Part I her sustained
attention to the title of the book; this chapter illustrates that concentration
well. And by now she has honed the
structure of her chapters --Introduction, Teach-In, Rally, March and Arrest—to
maintain the focus.
In her Introduction (257-60), she reminds us how many people world-wide have
disregarded the urgent need to reduce fossil fuels at the source. The dismal fact has been pointed out by many
of the books we have discussed in Climate Book Forums. “Never in twenty-five years of international
climate negotiations was there a meaningful discussion about stopping fossil
fuel extraction,” despite the 50 years of research showing its harms, most
notably by the UNIPCC (Jane cites a
report from Stanford Research Institute as far back as 1968 warning that rising
C02 would raise temperatures and cause serious environmental damage worldwide.) She gives several reasons for this general
avoidance of fossil fuel realities, but
the chief one is the massive deception and cover-up paid for and organized by the
corrupt and corrupting fossil fuel industry, whose CEO’s were fully cognizant
of the truth by the 1980s (259-60).
Jane notes an important harm she understands
better by the Fire Drill Fridays. The
fossil fuel industry is “anathema to democracy.” She gives this example: Most citizens want a bindng climate treaty,
but in one year, 2013, the ff industry spent326 million to persuade
congressional Reublicans and some Democrats to vote aganst such a treaty. All levels
of government hve been bribed not to limit drilling and fracking and to
allow maximum extraction and profit.
Also, our neoliberal government subsidizes and provides tax breaks for
the ff industry—oil company stockholders and execs, funding bankers, and
investment firms-- in billions of dollars.
All to enable a few to become very wealthy. Jane calls this ff capitalism, crimes (260).
The Teach-In
(261-71) “to hold the culprits accountable” occurred again the night before the
rally, with four young women speaking—a human rights advocate, a director of
350.org, a human rights lawyer, and a Diné (Navajo) activist. Jane reports the Navajo, Janine Yazzie,
speaking eloquently for justice. And the
350.org representative, TamaraO’Laughlin, advocated the prosecution of ff
criminals and the monetary fines redistributed
to the Green New Deal.
Sam Waterston returned for his second FDF Rally, and introduced the first
speaker, Ms. Yazzie. The next speaker
was also Native American, a Lumbee of North Carolina, Donna Chavis, who
described the Native American opposition to oil pipelines. And Tamara spoke about “10 Steps for the Next
Administration’s First 10 Days” (ClimatePresident.org) . You see what I meant when I said the entire
book, every chapter, and every section was about the title?
What Can I Do? (284-285). Move your money to companies supporting climate
solutions. See Fossil Free funds
(fossilfreefunds.org). Examine the
organizations and institutions you are associated with (your university, church,
local government, insurance companies), and call them to divest from ff (divestinvest.org,
Green Faith). Ask your politiciams to take a #NoFossilFuelMoneyPledge. Also: Stop Funding Fossils.org
Chapter
16, Stop the Money Pipeline
The Final FDF in the Education of
82-year-old Jane Fonda begins as usual with her Introduction (Thursday, Jan. 9, 2020), this one making plans for her departure for California and
the continuation of FDF (288). Annie
arranged a Skype meeting with California activists, and they discussed the next
six months of FDF in California, to be followed by a national Get Out the
Climate Vote tour until post-election (17,000 people had already signed
up). They would organize around the “10
Steps for the Next Administration’s First 10 Days,” seeking “to build the army
that would make the [GND] a reality.”
And
her lawyer had managed, despite Jane’s 4 arrests, to enable her to avoid jail.
For that Thursday Teach-In she had 3
guests: Bill McKibben, Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, and Annie Leonard. Bill is the renowned author and founder of
350.org. He spoke mainly about
divestment from ff, the new website, StopTheMoneyPipeline.com for people
globally to sign up, especially to pressure banks, especially JPMorgan Chase
(289-292, speech 292-6). Eriel worked by
nonviolent civil disobedience for divestment around the world, and at the
present in northern Alberta she was trying to stop the “largest tar sands mine
ever proposed” (and funded by Chase).
The proposal was withdrawn! (292-4).
Annie thanked all the “Fire Drillers,” reported on the millions of people
they had reached and the hundreds who had been arrested (500 with 300 more promised
for Friday), and plans for the continuation of FDF across the nation (297-8).
The Rally
followed later in the day. Eight speakers boosted this final rally for divestment
from ff. The first, Naomi Klein, author
of the book On Fire had been a chief
presence behind FDF beginning in chapter one.
Of her Jane writes: “the woman who had lit the fire and gotten me
going.” She spoke of the GND and her
hopes “to build the most united and powerful movement that we have ever seen.”The
other speakers were Bill McKibben, Ta’Sina Sapa Win Smith, Tara Houska, Kat
Taylor, Martin Sheen, Rebecca Adamson, and Eriel Tchekwie Deranger. As usual the presence of young women and of
young Native American women is dominant
Bill and his occupier spoke from the lobby
of the occupied local JP Morgan Chase bank, the police outside. They chose Chase because it is the “single
biggest funder of fossil fuels on planet earth.” Bill spoke of the growing unity among climate
defenders, such as with Greta Thunberg’s Youth Climate Movement (300, 303). Smith, Black Shawl Woman, from the Cheyenne
River Sioux Reservation, called on the audience to rise up with indigenous
people against ff addiction and resource extraction. Tara Houska, attorney for the Bear Clan from
Couchiching First Nation, in one sentence names 7 actions we can DO. Kat Taylor spoke against banking in our
heartless economic system. Banks could
be crowdfunding to help all life in need, but instead, “just since the Paris
Agreement in 2016.., Chase bank alone has financed nearly $200 billion of
fossil fuel development,” that was from our deposits! The other speakers were equally on fire for a
different world.
As always, those who wished joined to March to the Capitol for civil
disobedience and Arrest. But Jane and others broke off briefly to
support Bill McKibben at the Chase bank.
Back at the Capitol the police were arresting and processing on the
spot. Jane stayed until the last of the
arrested were released, such as Naomi, Joaquin Phoenix, and Martin Sheen, and
others too numerous to name.
And then back to the hotel to finish
packing for her return to California and “the next phase of Fire Drill
Fridays.”
What
Can I Do? (315-17). As I have commented, a reader learns what
we can do on every page—by Jane, by Annie Leonard, by all of her many Teach-In
and Rally speakers, by all of the books and articles referred to by Jane and
the speakers. But to drive home the
thesis of her book’s title, she adds a final section on DOING to each of her 14
FDF. In chap. 16, she first explains
“how you can make sure your money is fossil-free” and then joining with others
to persuade the institutions you are associated with to divest, as was done
successfully in S. Africa in the 1980s.
The second has been the subject of chapter 16, but I will take some
moments to sketch what we can do with our own money.
Check out your bank by searching the
latest Banking on Climate Change report by the Rainforest Action Network for
their lists of banks most wrecking the climate.
To change banks go to DivestInvestguide.org, or Green America’s “Get a Better Bank.”
Similarly examine your credit cards,
insurance companies, retirement accounts, and investments (316-17).
Chapter
17, “Fire Drill Fridays: Going Forward” by Annie Leonard (319-23)
This is Annie’s own what we can do agenda.
1. Speak
and write about climate change, climate catastrophe, climate emergency, climate
crisis. See skepticalscience.com;
livingroomconversations.org
2. Vote. Find out about your
representatives. Have they signed the No
Fossil Fuel Money Pledge at NoFossilFuelMoney.org? Type in their address at votesmart.org to
find federal and state voting records, issue positions, and campaign finances. Call their office for their position on the
GND. More.
3. Act. Scan the What Can I Do? sections for
actions that match your skills and interest.
Connect with an organization of people who share your concerns; this is
one of the greatest pleasures of working for change. Sign up at FireDrillFridays.com to join one
of Jane’s. Or Hold your own Fire Drill
Friday!
Chapter
1 “The Wake-Up Call “(decision to campaign in DC, move to DC, planning for the
weeks of actions)
The organizing
committee meeting in Greenpeace’s conference room settled on three essential demands: Support the Green New Deal, No New Fossil
Fuel Extraction, Phase Out Existing Fossil Fuels with a Just Transition to
Renewable Energy.
Their Calls to Action were to be:
VOTE: for the climate ;VOICE: talk to everyone; USE YOUR FEET—WITH OTHERS! Show up!
And Jane suggested education, weekly
teach-ins focusing on different
aspects of the climate crisis featuring experts and activists [this was done].
Chapter 2, “The Launch,” Fire Drill Fridays Rally #1
After this first Rally Jane wrote no
separate What Can I Do? call for action, but “That day cemented for me how
important it was to work across movements. . . . building a community was how
we would grow the army that was needed to change the way this country does
business. . . .” (29).
Chapter 3, “Green New Deal,” FDF Rally #2, Teach-In #1
What Can I Do? (46-47). Of
the seventeen chapters, fourteen end with a call to action titled What Can I
Do? But every chapter from beginning to
end foregrounds protest ideas and experiences. At this second Fire Drill Fridays, Jane is
enthusiastic over the growing public interest in plans “as ambitious as the science
requires.” But the Green New Deal
resolutions, introduced by Senator Ed Markey and Representative Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, are “just the start,” and she discusses a few of “the many ways to get involved” (46-47, really
the whole chapter, and all the chapters).
What Can I Do?
(61-63).
Eat less fish! Eat smaller in the food chain. Hook into seafoodwatch.org. Query your markets and restaurants; if enough
people persistently ask, it’ll reach corporate headquarters. Take pictures
of plastic waste and publicize the company. “While changing our individual consumption habitys
can help, the greatest change comes from collective and political action.” Talk to city and schoo officials. Push for organic landscapes. Join Greenpeace, Surfrider,Oceana, or other
ocean conservation groups. Healthy
oceans and climate are inseparable.
Chap. 5, “Women and Climate
Change,” FDF
#4,
What
Can I Do? (79-81).
Climate change
harms poor women and women of color.
So be political,
put women in leadership positions, especially for climate change, educate and
empower women. Join women’s
organizations: SisterSong, Forward Together, National Domestic Workers
Alliance, One Billion Rising, the several excellent reproductive health groups,
population growth opponents (contraception) like Population Connection, women’s
rights groups like La Via Campesina and Food First, indigenous women like
Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center, young women-led organizations like
Greta Thunberg’s School Strike for Climate, elect more women to public office
(etc. ! pp. 80-81).
Chap.
6, War, the Military What
Can I Do? Section Q&A by Jane Fonda (with some sprinkling of DB, 92-95)
Talking points
for reducing military spending.
Three best
arguments: 1) stay out of unnecessary, illegal, civilian-slaughtering wars
(i.e. US wars); 2) join the conversion movement of diverting War Dept. funds to
human needs, esp. for the climate catastrophe, 3) these policies best protect
and honor our soldiers and our nation.
To be safe, we
must have the largest military budget in the world to have the strongest
military.
Cutting 2 or 3 billion
would not make us less safe but just the opposite, would be a significant
contribution to resisting the climate emergency. (As usual Jane cites her authority: Phyllis
Bennis.) And she lists other benefits.
Cutting the
military budget will cut the jobs provided by military and the
military-industrial complex.
Every job preparing
for war can be replaced by better jobs n education, public infrastructure,
health services, etc. And most military
job incomes require food stamps, and contrast to the average CEO’s $20 million a
year.
What about
national security?
(See my note on
language at the end.) Real security is not
derived from 10 carrier battle groups or 800 bases but from high quality
support of the people in a living wage for all, first-rate schools and infrastructure,
adequate safety nets, healthy air and water, rich soil (reduced population DB),
etc.
How does
militarism relate to climate?
Let me quote JF: “The climate crisis has everything to do with the military. Every single war fought in the past eighty
years, if not longer, has been about oil.”
Future wars will be over FF profits but in addition over scarce
resources such as water and food. And add
refugees from war. And the Pentagon is the
biggest institutional user of ff. “The climate movement and the peace movement
are one movement” (94).
More specific actions:
Check out the National Priorities Project
(www.nationalpriorities.org
and www.nationalpriorities.org/interactive-data/trade-offs
). Ask your friends to join you in
talking to your representatives about military budget reduction and conversion,
and about increasing the State Department budget to foreground diplomacy, not
armed force. Find ways to push for
divestment of the military-industrial complex.
Examine your own financial connections to the war machine. Never stop demanding conversion of war funds
and ff expenditures to the programs urgently needed for the transition.
Chapter 9, “Plastics”
(137-144). A concluding What Can I Do ? offers more examples of
reducing individual footprints, and the reduction and removal of ff from
industries and institutions that we can accomplish locally: brand audits of the
most harmful companies, pressuring your grocery store (chain) to stop using
plastic. Eventually it must be a
political battle, for ”. . .the most
effective way to reduce plastic. . .is through government restrictions, taxes,
fees, or bans.” Surfrider and Greenpeace
have tool kits for working with corporations.
But ultimately, we must “reduce the availability of fossil fuels,” quickly
because the ff corporations were
“planning a massive build-out of hundreds of new plastic production
facilities”(!).
Chapter 15, What Can I Do? (284-285). Move your money to companies supporting climate
solutions. See Fossil Free funds
(fossilfreefunds.org). Examine the
organizations and institutions you are associated with (your university,
church, local government, insurance companies), and call them to divest from ff
(divestinvest.org, Green Faith). Ask your politiciams to take a
#NoFossilFuelMoneyPledge. Also: Stop
Funding Fossils.org
Check out your bank by searching the
latest Banking on Climate Change report by the Rainforest Action Network for
their lists of banks most wrecking the climate.
To change banks go to DivestInvestguide.org, or Green America’s “Get a Better Bank.”
Similarly examine your credit cards,
insurance companies, retirement accounts, and investments (316-17).
Chapter 17, Fire Drill Fridays: Going
Forward by Annie Leonard. This short chapter is all about action, Annie’s
suggestions to the general reader:
Speak, Vote, Act. (see Chapter 1).
Indexes are in alphabetical order, but the following by page
order suggests how Ms. Fonda deploys her knowledge to exhibit the links between
war and climate. This is an important
chapter in the integration of the study of the two greatest dangers.
Climate Crisis/Catastrophe 83, 84
War and climate activism and movements 83, 84, 86, 87, 88,
89, 90, 91
Degradation of environment 83,
Fire Drill Fridays 83, 84
Green New Deal 83
War, Military & Climate Crisis Interconnections 84, 94
Phyllis Bennis 84, 89, 91, 92
Tom Hayden 84, 85
Vietnam War 84, 85
Climate, Drought, Unemployment, and Conflict 84
Military Exemption from Environmental Regulations/Treaties
84
Military pollution of toxic chemicals, burning, Superfund
Sites 84, 93
Depleted Uranium and Cancer 84
Oil and War Connection 84
War and Racism/Islamophobia 84
War and economic impacts, domestic and international 84, 85
Teach-ins 85, 86, 87
Bloated Military Budget and cutting It 85, 86, 87, 89, 92
Taxes and Military Budget 86
Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield 85, 86, 89, 90, 92, 93, 94
Real National Security spending on human needs 86, 87, 92,
93, 94
Pandemic 87
Healthcare, Education, Infrastructure, Homelessness 87, 93,
94
Military Bases 87
Martin Luther King Jr. 87
Krystal Two Bulls 87, 88
Veterans, Veterans for Peace, About Face 87, 88, 89, 91, 92,
93
Kuwait/Iraq War 87
Pipelines and Fracking 87
Indigenous resistance 87
Native American genocide 87
Imperialism 88
Conversion from militarism to human needs and peaceful jobs 85,
86, 87, 92, 93, 94, 95
Meaning in life and healing via activism 88
Standing Rock, Water Protectors 88
Militarized Police and Police Brutality 88
Organizing logistics and tactics 88
Bringing movements together, solidarity 88, 89, 91, 94
Direct Action and Civil Disobedience 89, 92
Women and impacted communities, Voices 89
“Supporting the Troops” 89, 92
Poor Peoples Campaign 89, 91
Military Industrial Complex 89, 90, 95
Democracy and elections 90, 95
War, bombing, and killing 90
Fossil fuel corporations and lobbyists 90
Code Pink 91
Institute for Policy Studies 91
Trump impeachment 91
Paris Agreement 91
DACA and Immigration Activism 91
Invisible War, a 2012 film on military sexual assault 93
Wars for resources, oil, water and food 94
Climate refugees 94
Pentagon is top oil consumer 94
National Priorities Project 94
Iraq and Afghanistan War Costs 94
Military and climate divestment 95
Largest suppliers of military: Lockheed Martin, Boeing,
Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics 95
GND REVIEW from the Resolutions to 4 Books to 7 Books, and at the very end a note on Nuclear power and the GND
First 2 GND
Newsletters with Links
Brief Comparisons of 7
Books
Nuclear Power
THE GREEN NEW DEAL NEWSLETTER #1, Books
and Essays, October 24, 2019
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2019/10/omni-green-new-deal-study-guide.html
THE GREEN NEW DEAL NEWSLETTER #2,
BEGINNING OF COVID-19, CLIMATE CATASTROPHE WORSENING.
April 10, 2020
4 Books and 2 Essays,
Pettifor, The Case for
the GND
Aronoff, et al. A
Planet to Win. Why We Need a GND
Klein, On Fire: The
(Burning) Case for a GND
Rifkin, Why the Fossil
Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save
Life on Earth
2 Essays
Billy Fleming, “Design and the GND”
“On Fire This Time” by John Bellamy Foster
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2020/04/omnis-green-new-deal-newsletter-2-april.html
WHAT IS THE GND?
THREE GOALS
SEVEN BOOKS
KLEIN
ARONOFF ET AL.
PETTIFOR
RIFKIN
COX
CHOMSKY AND POLLIN
FONDA
SEVEN GREEN NEW DEAL BOOKS ON THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY AND THE NEED TO CHANGE OUR
ENERGY AND ECONOMIC SYSTEMS
Text
- H.Res.109 - 116th Congress (2019-2020): Recognizing ...
www.congress.gov ›
bill › house-resolution › 109 › text Feb 7, 2019 — 109 - Recognizing
the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.116th Congress (2019-2020)
H.Con.Res.52
- 116th Congress (2019-2020): Expressing the ...
www.congress.gov ›
bill › house-concurrent-resolution
Introduced in House (07/09/2019).
This concurrent resolution expresses the sense of Congress
that global warming has resulted in a climate emergency ...
THREE Ideas Linking the Transition
1. We
must face the crisis, and move to zero
net greenhouse gas emissions quickly, as the 2018 IPCC report explained;
short title, Climate Reality.
2. We must
also break with the social, racial, environmental, and especially economic inequities
of US capitalism; short title, Climate
Justice.
3. We must engage in unremitting action to pass legislation; short title, Climate Politics.
Naomi Klein in On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a GND. This
is the key book: the earliest of the seven by her earlier, similar book, This Changes Everything, and her books
have inspired countless others, including the latest, Fonda’s What Can I Do? I
recommend Naomi’s book above all
A Planet to Win: Why
We Need a Green New Deal by Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen, and Thea Riofrancos. Foreword by Naomi Klein. A Green New Deal
must and can tackle the climate emergency and rampant inequality at the same
time. Cutting carbon emissions while winning immediate gains for the many is
the only way to build a movement strong enough to defeat big oil, big business,
and the super-rich—starting right now.
In The Case for the Green New Deal, Ann
Pettifor explains how we can afford to change from a fossil
fueled economics system for individual profit to a totally decarbonized
sustainable, fair, cooperative system.
She proposes a radical understanding of the international monetary
system and provides a roadmap for retrieving the economy from the 1%.
Jeremy Rifkin, in Why the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will
Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save Life on Earth" urges us to seize the moment of the new infrastructures that
must be built after the immense assets of the carbon industries become
“stranded.” We can choose catastrophe
and chaos, engendered by the present economic system, or a more just,
equitable, and resilient world. Of all
the authors I have read, he is the most authoritative, for he is a principal
architect of the European Union’s long-term economic vision, Smart Europe, and
a key advisor to China's Third Industrial Revolution vision...
Stan Cox’s The Green New Deal and Beyond explains why a radical change on all fronts is needed and
how to make that change, including a critique of the Green New Deal. Moving to carbon zero quickly is his central
goal, but we must not return to the old injustices
Robert Pollin and
Noam Chomsky with C. J. Polychroniou, Climate
Crisis and the Global Green New Deal. The
GND must include rapid reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency
and expansion of renewable energy, protection of workers from economic
inequities, raising global living standards.
Their book shows how, despite “capitalists’ werewolf hunger for
profits,” these goals are achievable. This
is a strong critique of capitalism and a clear critical explanation of an array
of major questions. I recommend this
book, along with Klein’s, to the general reader. Chap. 2 “Capitalism and the Climate Crisis”
includes discussion of why political action has thus far failed. Chap. 3 fleshes out the Resolutions,
including what will enable a successful transition, how the GND can be
financed, and how it can reverse the inequalities produced by neoliberal
capitalism..
Jane Fonda in What
Can I Do? makes the case that we
will rise to the challenge of climate change only if we are willing to
transform the systems that produced this crisis: follow the science, replace
fossil fuels with sustainable energy within a decade, do it equitably for the
most vulnerable, send your voice with others to Congress. On pp. 2-3 Ms. Fonda gives Naomi Klein
unparalleled praise: “…a quarter of a way through [On Fire] I was shaking with intensity,” over the way she described
Greta Thunberg, the clarity with which she conveyed what the scientists were
reporting, how strikingly she explained the GND Resolutions, how persuasively
she beckoned her readers and the planet to change course. Fonda decided to go live in D.C. for 4 months
to see what she could do while learning along the way: What Can I Do!
Additional GNDers:
Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate
Bill McKibben, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
Note on Nuclear Power.
All
of these books express or imply the conviction that renewable energy will
continue to become cheaper and nuclear energy increasingly expensive, and one
is safe and the other possesses the risk of meltdown and the risks of spent
fuel storage, and therefore renewables will be the future. All
also recognize the obvious that we must have reliable energy during the
transition from fossil fuels to solar and wind (depending upon location), so we
must keep those working until their replacements are ready, though we should
not start any new nuclear power plants.
The
one book to devote a few pages to the issue is Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal, 86-91. For Pollin nuclear power facilitates the
transition, but the many safety dangers, on top of the increasingly high costs,
should discourage building more nuclear power stations. We should keep our focus on a clean, safe,
renewable future, though Chomsky would “not foreclose” the nuclear option. See also Rifkin p. 70 where he concludes that a new nuclear power plants is a poor business decision.
Dick 12-4-20
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