The Green New Deal and Beyond. Stan Cox
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has mutated into a savage political and economic crisis that threatens to erode the very foundations of human culture. Time is running out for incremental, piecemeal solutions to these looming global threats. In Any Way You Slice It, Stan Cox offers a way out through a kind of ethical and rational triage. He maps out a plan to ration the Earth’s shrinking resources in a way that is socially just and ecologically sane. This brave book is not for the timid or those frozen by political taboos, but it is a must-read for those who want to forge real change before the ecological doomsday clock strikes midnight.”
—Jeffrey St. Clair, author of Born Under a Bad Sky
PRAISE FOR LOSING OUR COOL (2010)
“Well-written, thoroughly researched, with a truly global focus, the book offers much for consumers, environmentalists, and policy makers to consider before powering up to cool down.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Important. . . . What I like about Cox’s book is that he isn’t an eco-nag or moralist.”
—Tom Condon, Hartford Courant
“Stan Cox offers both some sobering facts and some interesting strategies for thinking through a big part of our energy dilemma.”
—Bill McKibben
“This is an important book. The history of air-conditioning is really the history of the world’s energy and climate crises, and by narrowing the focus Stan Cox makes the big picture comprehensible. He also suggests remedies—which are different from the ones favored by politicians, environmentalists, and appliance manufacturers, not least because they might actually work.”
—David Owen, author of Green Metropolis
“As Stan Cox details in his excellent new book, Losing Our Cool, air conditioning has been a major force in shaping western society.”
—Bradford Plumer, The National
“This book is the go-to source for a better understanding of the complexity of pumping cold air into a warming climate.”
—Maude Barlow
Copyright © 2020 by Stan Cox
Foreword by Noam Chomsky copyright © 2020 by Valeria Chomsky
All Rights Reserved.
Open Media Series Editor: Greg Ruggiero
Cover design: Victor Mingovits
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cox, Stan, author. | Chomsky, Noam, author of foreword.
Title: The green new deal and beyond : ending the climate emergency while we still can / Stan Cox ; forward by Noam Chomsky.
Description: San Francisco, CA : City Lights Books, 2020. | Series: Open media series | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020003318 | ISBN 9780872868069 (trade paperback)
Subjects: LCSH: Environmentalism—United States. | Environmental policy—United States. | Energy policy—United States. | Greenhouse gases—Government policy—United States. | Renewable energy sources—Government policy—United States.
Classification: LCC GE197 .C48 2020 | DDC 363.738/74560973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020003318
City Lights Books are published at the City Lights Bookstore
261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133
CONTENTS
Chapter One Growth and Limits: 1933–2016
Chapter Two “What the Hell Happened?”: 2016–2020
Chapter Three The Road to Cornucopia Isn’t Paved
Chapter Five Justice for the Whole Earth
For Brenda Cox
FOREWORD
BY NOAM CHOMSKY
This essay is based on interviews with Chomsky conducted by C.J. Polychroniou, Amy Goodman, and Harrison Samphir.
History is all too rich in records of horrendous wars, indescribable torture, massacres, and every imaginable abuse of fundamental rights. But the threat of destruction of organized human life in any recognizable or tolerable form—that is entirely new. The environmental crisis under way is indeed unique in human history, and is a true existential crisis. Those alive today will decide the fate of humanity—and the fate of the other species that we are now destroying at a rate not seen for 65 million years, when a huge asteroid hit Earth, ending the age of the dinosaurs and opening the way for some small mammals to evolve to pose a similar threat to life as that earlier asteroid, though differing from it in that we can make a choice.
Meanwhile, the world watches as we proceed toward a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. We are approaching perilously close to the global temperatures of 120,000 years ago, when sea levels were six to nine meters higher than today. Glaciers are sliding into the sea five times faster than in the 1990s, with over 100 meters of ice thickness lost in some areas due to ocean warming, and current losses doubling every decade. Complete loss of the ice sheets would raise sea levels by about five meters, drowning coastal cities, and with utterly devastating effects elsewhere—the low-lying plains of Bangladesh, for example. This is only one of the many concerns of those who are paying attention to what is happening before our eyes.
Climate scientists are certainly paying close attention, and issuing dire warnings. “Things are getting worse,” says Petteri Taalas, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization, which in December 2019 issued its annual global climate report. “It’s more urgent than ever to proceed with mitigation. The only solution is to get rid of fossil fuels in power production, industry and transportation,” he said.1 Israeli climatologist Baruch Rinkevich captures the general mood succinctly:
After us, the deluge, as the saying goes. People don’t fully understand what we’re talking about here. . . . They think about melting icebergs and polar bears who won’t have a home. They don’t understand that everything is expected