50 Socialist World Issue 5, 2021
Book Review
Winning the Green New Deal Bruce Castonguay
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Young people have got to rise up. That’s it. That’s the message.” These are the opening lines of the Sunrise Movement book Winning the Green New Deal: Why We Must, How We Can. It’s hard to argue with this sentiment and call to action. Under our current system, climate change is an inexorable death march that’s not a matter of if or even when, but how bad? The Sunrise Movement has become a major factor in the fight for climate justice, growing to over 400 hubs across the United States over the past few years. Sunrise, along with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, made headlines with their sit-in at Nancy Pelosi’s office demanding a Green New Deal in 2018. Their membership is made up primarily of youth, who have the most at stake as climate change projects an uncertain and terrifying future. The global climate strike of September 2019 proves that there is a mass base capable of driving meaningful change, with over three million people participating in over 4,000 events in 150 countries. Sunrise has gathered a list of activists and organizers to write a series of chapters on the Green New Deal, the plan and policy they advocate to reduce or possibly reverse the severe environmental damage that has been done to the planet. But while the authors accurately define who is at fault, the book’s strategy for winning the GND does not address how to overcome the current political gridlock. It also does not meet the timeline required to effectively battle the climate crisis.
Who Did This?
The book’s early chapters lay out the nature of the crisis and why the Green New Deal is the solution. To effectively battle climate change, we must know who the driving force behind it is, and Kate Aranoff and Naomi Klein’s chapters argue that it’s neoliberalism, the most recent form of capital-
ism. Neoliberalism is focused on “privatization of the public sphere, deregulation of the corporate sector, and lower corporate taxation, paid for with cuts to public spending” (p. 30). The ruling class pushes the narrative that all individuals must do their part to combat climate change by recycling, using paper straws and buying electric cars. The reality is, as Aronoff states, “We don’t all have our hands equally on the levers that fuel climate chaos. A tiny set of very powerful corporations and oligarchs spent prodigious amounts of money to keep burning and extracting towards destruction” (p. 16). The data backs it up. Only 100 companies are responsible for over 70% of the greenhouse gas emissions since 1988. Meanwhile, as the planet gets hotter, the working class has faced extreme attacks over the past 30 years as wages flatline, pensions are cut, public services are privatized, and healthcare, education and housing costs soar. This has led to inequality levels not seen in a century as the top 1% captures the majority of the new income generated year over year. It’s clearly not because working class people aren’t willing to make personal sacrifices that we aren’t addressing climate change. As Klein says, “we have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamen-
