Thanks to human-induced greenhouse warming, the Earth’s average temperature today is about 1.2°C (2.2°F) higher than it was in the pre-fossil-fuel era. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported in 2018 that if warming is allowed to surpass 1.5°C, the world will risk widespread ecological destruction and human suffering. To keep temperatures below that limit, they concluded, global greenhouse emissions would have to be cut almost in half before 2030, and net-zero emissions would have to be achieved by 2050.
The Green New Deal has eclipsed previously popular half- and quarter-measures that would have only nibbled around the edges of the climate crisis.
The United Nations projected in its 2019 Emissions Gap Report that the world is on course for a catastrophic 3.2°C of warming by the end of this century. To hold warming to 1.5°C, the report said, will require that global greenhouse emissions, which have been rising by 1.5 percent annually over the past decade, turn around immediately and start falling at the precipitous rate of 7.6 percent per year.
Since 2018, climate groups in the United States have been pushing for a Green New Deal, a plan that calls for cutting net U.S. greenhouse emissions to zero through a just transition to an economy that runs on non-fossil energy. The still-evolving plan has given the climate movement a big shot in the arm, providing a sweeping national policy initiative that millions now regard as something worth rallying around.
Cover of "The Green New Deal and Beyond"
In that, the Green New Deal is part of a long tradition. The women’s suffrage movement, the civil rights struggle, the movement to end the Vietnam War, the nuclear freeze movement of the 1980s, and the fight for reproductive choice have all focused on big demands: groundbreaking legislation, concrete policy changes, or robust reinforcement of Constitutional rights.
The Green New Deal has revived interest in public planning and the kind of massive investment that can secure basic needs, including energy, for all. It has eclipsed previously popular half- and quarter-measures that would have only nibbled around the edges of the climate crisis. It has inspired vigorous resistance to the Trump Administration’s obsessively pro-fossil-fuel, anti-ecological policies. It has explicitly linked the need for climate mitigation to the need for social and racial justice, inclusion, and workers’ power. It intends to shift the economic center of gravity away from the owning and investing classes toward those who do the nation’s work.
Those visionary features have not only positioned the Green New Deal at the heart of the climate movement, but have also earned support for it from a host of other movements, institutions, networks, scientists, and scholars.
Yet I believe the Green New Deal vision, ambitious as it is, must go even further and deeper. As the plan is formulated and carried out in coming months and years, it must be accompanied by effective mechanisms to (1) directly eliminate fossil fuels from the economy on an accelerated schedule and (2) reverse the widespread ecological damage that has been done in the pursuit of economic growth—damage that reaches well beyond greenhouse warming.
Fossil fuels cannot be suppressed solely through the expansion of non-fossil energy or through market interventions such as carbon pricing; eradicating emissions will require a statutory limit on all fuel extraction, one that lowers quickly year by year, along with a system to guarantee material sufficiency for all people and excess for none.
Even if we manage to free ourselves from fossil fuels, the reversal of broader ecological damage will not be achieved solely by the reduction or elimination of greenhouse emissions; it will require a transformed economy that operates on less, not more, energy and does not depend on over-exploitation of the Earth’s ecosystems. Neither fossil-fuel elimination nor ecological restoration is compatible with continued economic growth.
Deep social change cannot be achieved by a single piece of legislation, no matter how profound. An obvious example is the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It became essential because the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments a century earlier had failed to end racial oppression. But the Civil Rights Act itself needed some backup. To be effective, it had to be followed up by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Fair Housing Act of 1968, and other major legislation—and that struggle is still not over.
The idea that investment in solar and wind technology and green infrastructure can work its way through the market to automatically eliminate fossil-fuel use and emissions is not supported by the evidence.
Passage of a Green New Deal, like that of the Civil Rights Act, is widely viewed as a vital step toward righting a wrong that threatens the nation. Nevertheless, one act of Congress cannot successfully tackle a multifaceted threat such as the emerging climate emergency. Like the Civil Rights Act, a Green New Deal Act can be the beginning of a transformation, but it can’t be the end; it must be accompanied by other essential legislation.
The Green New Dealers have not yet specified a mechanism by which the United States can guarantee the elimination of greenhouse emissions by a hard-and-fast deadline. The absence of a direct, airtight mechanism to achieve the necessarily rapid decline and elimination of fossil fuels is not unique to the Green New Deal. None of the climate proposals debated so far, either in Washington, D.C., or at international climate talks, have included such a component.
But the intensifying symptoms of our climate predicament now require an immediate switch from the current steady rise in fossil fuel use to a much steeper decline—something like doing a U-turn at eighty miles an hour in a tanker truck. There’s no time left for legislating corporate-friendly policies and waiting to see if they work. If, in 2030 or 2040, such policies turn out to have been insufficient, it will be too late for a do-over.
The most widely discussed emissions-reduction strategies depend on three general elements: building up “green” energy capacity and infrastructure (with, in the case of the Green New Deal, lots of public investment); seeking to maintain or accelerate economic growth without increasing energy demand; and intervening in the market by setting a price on carbon in the event that greenhouse emissions are not declining fast enough.
If we are to eliminate fossil fuels from our society, the development of non-fossil energy capacity, as called for by the Green New Deal, will be urgently needed. The national climate discussion, however, appears to be based on an implicit assumption that as new energy capacity comes online in the coming decade or two, it will push an equal quantity of fossil-energy capacity offline. History and research argue against that assumption, showing that with economic growth, new energy sources simply add to the existing energy supply rather than replace it.
The idea that investment in solar and wind technology and green infrastructure can work its way through the market to automatically eliminate fossil-fuel use and emissions is not supported by the evidence. So various interventions have been suggested to give new energy sources a leg up in the market.
For example, governments could tax each of the fossil fuels based on the carbon emissions it produces; require energy companies to buy permits to burn or sell fossil fuels; or provide homeowners and business owners incentives to produce or buy solar or wind energy. Governmental and grassroots approaches to making fossil fuels more scarce or expensive include eliminating subsidies to the coal and petroleum industries; pressuring institutional investors to disinvest from those industries; banning leases and drilling on public land; and pressuring the industry through direct action, as with the anti-pipeline and “Keep It in the Ground” movements.
Most of these actions have been pursued in one or more places around the world. Worthy as they may be, all are at best indirect approaches to driving down carbon emissions. Research tells us that none of those approaches, separately or together, can make that necessary 80 mph U-turn.
The Green New Deal is a stimulus package in both name and aim. If not implemented with great care, it will encourage the same pursuit of economic growth that got us into this climate predicament in the first place. Resource use must be carefully restrained during the transition; otherwise, the new non-fossil energy coming online will feed growth rather than displace oil, natural gas, and coal.
Full displacement of fossil energy by non-fossil energy can happen only if a cap is imposed on fossil fuels, and that cap is lowered each year in order to eliminate their emissions on schedule. Even an urgent buildup of new energy capacity cannot proceed quickly enough to compensate for all of the fossil-fueled capacity being withdrawn, so our society will need to operate on a smaller total energy supply. The national economy will need to reorient toward ensuring sufficiency for all rather than feeding the accumulation of wealth by the few.
Successfully enacting such a system will not be easy, and time is running out. As the struggle for the Green New Deal and other legislation proceeds, there will be much wrangling over the question of what is politically acceptable. That’s inevitable, but we must keep at the center of the public debate the most urgent question of all: What actions must be undertaken to eliminate greenhouse emissions in time?
Legislation for direct, rapid, and equitable elimination of fossil fuels, along with ecological renewal that goes beyond climate mitigation, will be keys to achieving the Green New Deal’s vision. Its plans for urgently needed economic and social policies to create jobs, workers’ and union rights and benefits, inclusive economic justice, guarantees of living wages and health care coverage, Indigenous rights, and a vision for an end to racial oppression are all much-needed breakthroughs and are crucial for creating a genuinely more just society.
The Green New Deal is forthright in recognizing that market forces would be sorely deficient in addressing the climate emergency, and its necessarily ambitious goals for the elimination of greenhouse emissions are achievable if Congress also takes tough action to stop the extraction and use of fossil fuels, by law and on schedule. Keeping fossil fuels buried in the Earth’s crust will complement the Green New Deal’s energy and justice proposals, rather than compete with them.
The Earth we knew in the twentieth century is gone, and it’s not coming back. The necessity to prevent far more catastrophic heating requires us to impose solid limits that minimize the risk of catastrophe. As we accomplish that, we will have to find a way to live within those limits. New energy technology can be useful in helping us adapt to the limits we impose on ourselves, but it is inadequate to the task of restraining society within the energetic, economic, and ecological boundaries that we are compelled to respect.
There is no time for experimentation. Given the emergency we face, climate policy’s highest-priority target must be to drive emissions down to zero in time, without fail. It doesn’t matter whether a realistic target is considered to be 1.5°, 2°, or even 2.5°C; all of them will require immediate, steep annual reductions.
If the policies we decide to pursue turn out to be inadequate, it will be too late to try something else. By the time failure is apparent, there will be no action, no matter how strong, that can keep warming within acceptable limits. A direct, foolproof plan is needed, and no such plan yet exists. The Green New Deal is a step in the right direction, but it’s only a step.
To prevent runaway warming, the Green New Deal must be paired with legal mechanisms that directly drive fossil fuel use down to zero, and on schedule. Taking that route will at least improve the Earth’s chances of avoiding the IPCC’s beyond-two-degree future and even more calamitous scenarios.
Stan Cox's book The Green New Deal and Beyond: Ending the Climate Emergency While We Still Can is available here.