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3.IMPACTS OF DESERTIFICATION Desertification has severe financial and societal consequences including direct economic losses, increased health and safety hazards, and decreased agricultural productivity. 3.1. Environmental Impacts The direct physical consequences of desertification may include an increased frequency of sand and dust storms and increased flooding due to inadequate drainage or poor irrigation practices. This can contribute to the removal of topsoil and vital soil nutrients needed for food production, and bring about a loss of vegetation cover which would otherwise have assisted with the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for plant photosynthesis. With the expansion of desertified land, large dust storms were observed more frequently in China. In the 1960s eight large dust-storms were observed, while 20 in 1990s. In March 2002 the most violent dust-storm observed since the 1990s affected over 1.1 million km2 of land and 130 million people (Huang and Siegert, 2006), which was considered to be relevant to the rapid desertification caused by human activities and climate change in China (Ye et al., 2000; Wang et al., 2004b). Desertification causes a drop in biological productivity of land which to a decline in economic productivity. It adversely affects the lives of wild species, domestic animals, agricultural crops and people. Desertification can also initiate regional shifts in climate which may enhance climate changes due to greenhouse gas emissions. 6 Habes A. Ghrefat 3.2. Economic Impacts Land degradation is not merely an environmental issue, but has social and economic implications as well (Li, 1998). The World Bank estimates that at the global level, the annual income foregone in the areas affected by desertification amounts to US$ 42 billion each year, while the annual cost of fighting land degradation would cost only US$ 2.4 billion a year. In China, desertification causes a direct economic loss estimated between US$ 2–3 billion annually, while the associated indirect loss is 2–3 times more (Zha and Gao, 1997). In some developing countries, the loss caused by land degradation occupies 1–17% of the gross national product. In some tropical regions, the rate has reached 10%. 3.3. Poverty and Mass Migration Desertification brings hunger and poverty. People living in areas threatened by desertification are forced to move elsewhere to find other means of livelihood. Mass migration is a major consequence of desertification. From 1997 to 2020, some 60 million people are expected to move from the desertified areas in Sub-Saharan Africa towards Northern Africa and Europe.

In November 2016, Guardian published an article with the title “We have been almost buried: the Sudanese villages being swallowed by sand.” The article goes on describing the struggles of villages in Sudan’s River Nile State that have succumbed to desertification after years of extensive deforestation and worsening droughts. Villages that were once surrounded by forests so dense that you could get lost in them, are now disappearing under the sand. Deforestation is one of the leading human causes of desertification. Forests are being cut down at much larger scale than ever before, to be used as fuel, to provide products we use in our daily life, or to simply create more space for agriculture to sustain growing human population. When the trees and other vegetation in an area are gone, there are no roots that would hold soils in place, there is no canopy that would shield the ground from the direct rainfall or from the sun’s heat. The bare soil then easier dries out and turns to dust, which can be blown and washed away in a single storm. Dead trees in a desert Once the soil is degraded and the precious nutrients are lost, only infertile and lifeless swaths of land are left behind. And what’s more, without trees, even the local climate becomes drier due to the lack of water evapotranspiration from tree canopy, which reduces cloud formation in the region and results in less rain.

As the world seeks to slow the pace of climate change, preserve wildlife, and support more than eight billion people, trees inevitably hold a major part of the answer. Yet the mass destruction of trees—deforestation—continues, sacrificing the long-term benefits of standing trees for short-term gain of fuel, and materials for manufacturing and construction. We need trees for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that they absorb the carbon dioxide we exhale and the heat-trapping greenhouse gases that human activities emit. As those gases enter the atmosphere, global warming increases, a trend scientists now prefer to call climate change. There is also the imminent danger of disease caused by deforestation. An estimated 60 percent of emerging infectious diseases come from animals, and a major cause of viruses’ jump from wildlife to humans is habitat loss, often through deforestation. But we can still save our forests. Aggressive efforts to rewild and reforest are already showing success. Tropical tree cover alone can provide 23 percent of the climate mitigation needed to meet goals set in the Paris Agreement in 2015, according to one estimate. Causes of deforestation Forests still cover about 30 percent of the world’s land area, but they are disappearing at an alarming rate. Since 1990, the world has lost more than 420 million hectares or about a billion acres of forest, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations—mainly in Africa and South America. About 17 percent of the Amazonian rainforest has been destroyed over the past 50 years, and losses recently have been on the rise. The organization Amazon Conservation reports that destruction rose by 21 percent in 2020, a loss the size of Israel. Farming, grazing of livestock, mining, and drilling combined account for more than half of all deforestation. Forestry practices, wildfires and, in small part, urbanization account for the rest. In Malaysia and Indonesia, forests are cut down to make way for producing palm oil, which can be found in everything from shampoo to saltine crackers. In the Amazon, cattle ranching and farms—particularly soy plantations—are key culprits. Logging operations, which provide the world’s wood and paper products, also fell countless trees each year. Loggers, some of them acting illegally, also build roads to access more and more remote forests—which leads to further deforestation. Forests are also cut as a result of growing urban sprawl as land is developed for homes. Not all deforestation is intentional. Some is caused by a combination of human and natural factors like wildfires and overgrazing, which may prevent the growth of young trees. Why it matters There are some 250 million people who live in forest and savannah areas and depend on them for subsistence and income—many of them among the world’s rural poor. Eighty percent of Earth’s land animals and plants live in forests, and deforestation threatens species including the orangutan, Sumatran tiger, and many species of birds. Removing trees deprives the forest of portions of its canopy, which blocks the sun’s rays during the day and retains heat at night. That disruption leads to more extreme temperature swings that can be harmful to plants and animals. With wild habitats destroyed and human life ever expanding, the line between animal and human areas blurs, opening the door to zoonotic diseases. In 2014, for example, the Ebola virus killed over 11,000 people in West Africa after fruit bats transmitted the disease to a toddler who was playing near trees where bats were roosting. (How deforestation is leading to more infectious diseases in humans.) Some scientists believe there could be as many as 1.7 million currently “undiscovered” viruses in mammals and birds, of which up to 827,000 could have the ability to infect people, according to a 2018 study. Deforestation’s effects reach far beyond the people and animals where trees are cut. The South American rainforest, for example, influences regional and perhaps even global water cycles, and it's key to the water supply in Brazilian cities and neighboring countries. The Amazon actually helps furnish water to some of the soy farmers and beef ranchers who are clearing the forest. The loss of clean water and biodiversity from all forests could have many other effects we can’t foresee, touching even your morning cup of coffee.

Although it has been a novel experience for most people living through it, the COVID-19 pandemic was not an unanticipated event. In fact, a respiratory virus-enabled pandemic like COVID-19 was deemed likely or even expected by virologists. The interconnectedness of modern-day civilisation has made it much easier for a pandemic to spread globally in days or weeks rather than months, and the frequency of outbreaks is accelerated by ecosystem collapse, demographic developments and global warming. In any given month, The World Health Organization now traces roughly 7.000 signals of potential outbreaks, conducts 300 follow-ups, and leads 30 investigations. In the month of June 2018, for the first time ever, the WHO tracked outbreaks of six of the eight of the ’priority communicable diseases’, like Zika and MERS happening at the same time. WHO’s list of potential outbreaks also includes ‘Disease X’, representing the fact that a future epidemic or pandemic could also be caused by a pathogen unknown to us at the current time. Below, we take a closer look at some of the global trends that will accelerate the emergence and spread of disease in the future. The rise of megacities The transition from rural to urban life is a defining characteristic of our age. By 2050, two-thirds of the world’s 9,8 billion people will live in urban areas, up from around half of the world population living in cities today. This movement of people from the countryside to cities is driven by the promise of increased economic opportunity, access to healthcare, connections, education, and increased mobility. During the next decade, the number of megacities (defined as 10 million inhabitants or more) will increase to 39 by adding Chicago, Bogota, Luanda, Chennai, Baghdad, and Dar es Salaam to the list. With more than 80% being in low- or middle-income countries, megacities with large parts of the populations living in slums heightens the risk of disease spreading effortlessly. Novel outbreaks will have fertile ground for spreading exponentially, as seen in metropoles and travel hubs of today like New York City. The megacities of the future will be densely populated hubs for transnational commerce, mobility, and hyper-connected which all amplify pandemic risk. With the growing risk of pandemics occurring in the future, the need to bolster the pandemic resilience of cities will only get more pressing. Researchers at the Senseable City Lab at MIT offer a glimpse into some of the features of the pandemic-proof city of the future. As part of their project named ‘Underworlds’, they placed sensors in sewers to detect concentrations of illegal drugs and harmful bacteria in specific areas. The researchers propose to develop a new kind of human health census by sampling the ‘urban gut’ and thus providing early signals of things like contagious disease with geographical precision. A city built with lessons from pandemics might be filled with systems such as these to help map the spread of disease. While technology can get us some of the way, it can’t solve some of the more structural issues that lie at the heart of why and how outbreaks of disease become epidemics or pandemics. Outbreaks of disease tend to hit underprivileged or marginalised population groups the hardest, and to effectively curb the spread of disease in the future, we not only need to expand our urban and technological resilience, but arguably (and chiefly) our social and community resilience as well. Global warming and increased human-wildlife interfacing Pandemics and global warming remind us that nature is powerful, and that despite all our modern gadgets, we are still subject to its temperaments. Our current situation is a terrifying harbinger of the pandemics that can be brought about in the future if global warming continues to further destabilise the natural world. Already today, global warming is exposing new threats. The warming planet is melting permafrost that has been frozen for decades or longer, releasing ancient viruses and bacteria that have lain dormant. Out of the meltwater, smallpox or the Spanish flu could be given a second chance, or something completely different we do not want to discover could be ‘released’ into the world. Rising global temperatures are also expanding the geographical reach of diseases like zika, dengue fever, and malaria, as these infectious diseases and their vectors, like mosquitos, thrive better in a warmer and a more humid climate. Additionally, global warming is also changing the water cycle, leading to heavier rainfalls and higher risks of floods, and consequently spreading water-borne diseases like cholera. This is especially problematic in the world’s poorest regions which are unable to invest heavily in climate mitigation infrastructure.

In 1997, clouds of smoke hung over the rainforests of Indonesia as an area roughly the size of Pennsylvania was burned to make way for agriculture, the fires exacerbated by drought. Smothered in haze, the trees couldn’t produce fruit, leaving resident fruit bats with no other option than to fly elsewhere in search of food, carrying with them a deadly disease. Not long after the bats settled on trees in Malaysian orchards, pigs around them started to fall sick—presumably after eating fallen fruit the bats had nibbled on—as did local pig farmers. By 1999, 265 people had developed a severe brain inflammation, and 105 had died. It was the first known emergence of Nipah virus in people, which has since caused a string of recurrent outbreaks across Southeast Asia. It’s one of many infectious diseases usually confined to wildlife that have spilled over to people in areas undergoing rapid forest clearing. Over the past two decades, a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that deforestation, by triggering a complex cascade of events, creates the conditions for a range of deadly pathogens—such as Nipah and Lassa viruses, and the parasites that cause malaria and Lyme disease—to spread to people. (Humans are clearing forests on a massive scale, mostly for farming. Learn more about deforestation.) As widespread burning continues today in tropical forests in the Amazon, and some parts of Africa and Southeast Asia, experts have expressed concern about the health of people living at the frontiers of deforestation. They’re also afraid that the next serious pandemic could emerge from our world’s forests. “It’s pretty well established that deforestation can be a strong driver of infectious disease transmission,” says Andy MacDonald, a disease ecologist at the Earth Research Institute of the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It’s a numbers game: The more we degrade and clear forest habitats, the more likely it is that we’re going to find ourselves in these situations where epidemics of infectious diseases occur.” 2:32 CLIMATE 101: DEFORESTATION Forests cover about 30 percent of the planet, but these habitats are being cleared on a massive scale. What is deforestation? Find out the causes, effects, and solutions. A direct link Malaria—which kills over a million annually due to infection by Plasmodium parasites transmitted by mosquitoes—has long been suspected of going hand in hand with deforestation. In Brazil, while control efforts have dramatically reduced malaria transmission in the past—bringing 6 million cases a year in the 1940s down to just 50,000 by the 1960s—cases have since been steadily rising again in parallel with rapid forest clearing and expansion of agriculture. At the turn of the century, there were over 600,000 cases a year in the Amazon basin. Work in the late 1990s by Amy Vittor, an epidemiologist at the University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogens Institute, and others, suggested a reason why. Clearing patches of forest appears to create ideal habitat along forest edges for the mosquito Anopheles darlingi—the most important transmitter of malaria in the Amazon—to breed. Through careful surveys in the Peruvian Amazon, she found higher numbers of larvae in warm, partially shaded pools, the kind that form beside roads cut into forests and puddles behind debris where water is no longer taken up by trees. “Those were the [places] that Anopheles darlingi really enjoyed being,” Vittor recalls. a man spraying to kill aedes mosquito A man sprays to kill the Aedes mosquito that carries the yellow fever virus in Matadi, Democratic Republic of the Congo. PHOTOGRAPH BY WILLIAM DANIELS, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION In a complex analysis of satellite and health data published recently in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, MacDonald and Stanford University’s Erin Mordecai reported a significant impact of deforestation across the Amazon basin on malaria transmission, in line with some previous research. Between 2003 and 2015, on average, they estimated that a 10 percent yearly increase in forest loss led to a 3 percent rise in malaria cases. For example, in one year of the study, an additional 618-square-mile (1,600-square-kilometer) patch of cleared forest—the equivalent of nearly 300,000 football fields—was linked to an additional 10,000 cases of malaria. This effect was most pronounced in the interior of the forest, where some patches of forest are still intact, providing the moist edge habitat that the mosquitoes like. With the ongoing burning of the Amazon, these results don’t bode well; The latest data, issued this week, reveals an area 12 times the size of New York City has been destroyed so far this year. “I am concerned about what’s going to happen with transmission following the end of the fires,” MacDonald says. It’s hard to generalize about mosquito ecology, which varies depending on species and region, Vittor stresses. In Africa, studies have found little association between malaria and deforestation—perhaps because the mosquito species there like to breed in sunlit bodies of water and favor open farmland over shady forest areas. But in Sabah, a part of Malaysian Borneo, malaria outbreaks also occur in tandem with bursts of forest clearing for palm oil and other plantations. Fever from the jungle Mosquitoes aren’t the only animals that can transmit deadly scourges to people. In fact, 60 percent of new infectious diseases that emerge in people—including HIV, Ebola, and Nipah, all of which originated in forest-dwelling animals—are transmitted by a range of other animals, the vast majority of them wildlife. In a 2015 study, researchers at Ecohealth Alliance, a New York-based non-profit that tracks infectious diseases globally, and others found that “nearly one in three outbreaks of new and emerging disease[s] are linked to land-use change like deforestation,” the organization’s president Peter Daszak tweeted earlier this year. Many viruses exist harmlessly with their host animals in forests, because the animals have co-evolved with them. But humans can become unwitting hosts for pathogens when they venture into or change forest habitat. “We are completely changing the structure of the forest,” notes Carlos Zambrana-Torrelio, a disease ecologist at Ecohealth Alliance. Deadly attraction Diseases can also occur when new habitats draw disease-carrying species out of the forest. For instance, in Liberia forest clearings for palm oil plantations attract hordes of typically forest-dwelling mice, lured there by the abundance of palm fruit around plantations and settlements. Humans can contract Lassa virus when they come into contact with food or objects contaminated with feces or urine of virus-carrying rodents or bodily fluids of infected people. In humans, the virus causes hemorrhagic fever—the same kind of illness triggered by Ebola virus—and in Liberia killed 36 percent of infected people. Virus-carrying rodents have also been spotted in deforested areas in Panama, Bolivia, and in Brazil. Alfonso Rodriguez-Morales, a medical researcher and tropical disease expert at Colombia’s Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira, fears that their ranges will increase following the resurgence of fires in the Amazon this year. Such processes aren’t limited to tropical diseases. Some of MacDonald’s research has revealed a curious association between deforestation and Lyme disease in the Northeastern United States. Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease—is transmitted by ticks that rely on forest-dwelling deer to breed and obtain enough blood to survive. However, the bacterium is also found in the white-footed mouse, which happens to thrive in forests fragmented by human settlements, MacDonald says. Spillovers of infectious diseases to people is more likely to occur in the tropics because overall wildlife and pathogen diversity is higher, he adds. There, a number of diseases transmitted by a wide range of animals—from blood-sucking bugs to snails—have been linked to deforestation. On top of known diseases, scientists fear that a number of yet-unknown deadly diseases are lurking in forests that could be exposed as people encroach further. Zambrana-Torrelio notes that the likelihood of spillovers to people may increase as the climate warms, pushing animals, along with the viruses they carry, into regions where they’ve never existed before, he says. Whether such diseases stay confined to forest fringes or if they gain their own foothold in people, unleashing a potential pandemic, depends on their transmission, Vittor says. Some viruses, like Ebola or Nipah, can be transmitted directly between people, theoretically allowing them to travel around the world as long as there are humans.

Humans have fought over food and the means of producing it for 20,000 years, as rock art in Australia shows. Food, water and land scarcity are primary drivers in two thirds of modern conflicts today. Indeed, many people seem to have forgotten that the primary German war aim in World War II was to take farmland from the Soviets and put German farmers on it. It is very likely that controlling the Ukraine’s bountiful and reliable food bowl is among Putin’s main aims also. In the short run this is imposing hunger and even starvation on hundreds of millions of people far beyond Europe. 

Spreading hunger in turn snowballs into government failures, civil wars and refugee tsunamis around the world – as it did in 2008 when a shortfall in Ukrainian grain exports led to revolutions in three Arab countries. Already, a third of a billion people – equal to the entire population of Europe – leave their homes each year, either as refugees or economic migrants, to seek better lives in countries which seem more stable and food secure. War will add to the flood.

Bee populations are declining. More than half of the bat species in the United States are in severe decline or listed as endangered. And international scientists recently announced the monarch butterfly is perilously close to extinction. What these three creatures have in common is that they are all pollinators. Without them, fruits, vegetables and other plants wouldn't be pollinated, and that's a major problem for our food supply. "One out of every three bites of food that we eat" is directly connected to a pollinator, Ron Magill, the communications director and a wildlife expert at Zoo Miami, told CNN. Around 30% of the food that ends up on our tables gets there because of things like butterflies, bees and bats. Losing those critical populations could also mean losing some of our favorite foods. Apples, melons, cranberries, pumpkins, squash, broccoli and almonds are among the foods most susceptible to the pollinator decline, according to the Food and Drug Administration. Bees, in particular, are responsible for pollinating around 90 commercially produced crops, the agency reports. Even tequila is at risk. "It's all so intricately connected, whether you're eating the food that is directly pollinated or you're eating something that depends on that pollinator," Magill said. "It's a domino effect." In other words, if you are eating fried chicken or pork chops, those chickens and pigs eat fruit, vegetables and other plants that depend on pollinators. And the climate crisis has taken a toll on pollinators. While more intense and prolonged drought is the most obvious impact, a growing concern is the effect of extreme heat -- particularly on butterflies. Monarch Butterflies EndangeredBeloved monarch butterflies now listed as endangered "Because butterflies are some of the most sensitive insects to changes in temperature, they are considered the 'canary in the coal mine' when it comes to climate change," Magill said. Warmer temperature causes plants to bloom sooner, which is out of sync with when the butterflies lay their eggs and metamorphose. This will mean the flowers they depend on for food will have already bloomed out, leaving little for the butterflies to feed on, which will in turn greatly impact their ability to reproduce and survive. It snowballs into a cyclical problem where the butterflies can't get the food they need to reproduce, nor can the plants get pollinated -- causing both to suffer greatly.

Each fall in late October, millions of monarchs head to southwestern Mexico City to hibernate in the high-elevation oyamel fir forests, where their return is culturally significant, viewed as the spirits of the deceased returning home for Dias de los Muertos. By February and March, the final generations of hibernating monarch butterflies come out of hibernation to find a mate. They then migrate north and east in order to lay their eggs on species of milkweed, which become generation one of the new year. When focusing on conservation of the monarch population, it is important that all stages of the monarch’s life-cycle are supported, this support is maintained throughout its migration. Monarch butterflies go through four stages during one life cycle (the egg, the larvae (caterpillar), pupa (chrysalis), and the adult) and through four generations in one year. The larvae hatch into baby caterpillars in 4 days, feeding on the nutrient rich layers of egg, and after two weeks of feeding on the milkweed, the larvae begin spinning their chrysalis and their 10-day process of metamorphosis, wherein they will emerge as an adult. Adults feed on nectar rich plants for 2-6 weeks and then die after laying eggs for generation two. The process continues through generations 2-3, until the fourth generation is hatched in September / October, which instead of dying after 2-6 weeks, migrates, hibernates, and begins the process again. The root issue of monarch decline can be sited to loss of suitable habitat, whether this is the physical space, or the loss of their sustenance: milkweed, and nectar plants. Forests in North America have experienced mass amounts of logging and deforestation which has jeopardized much of the biodiversity on the continent. The milkweed has been affected by the mass amounts of herbicides that are used to kill the competing plants of important crops in agricultural America as well as domestic use of RoundUp, a chemical compound used as weed killer. Monarchs perch on the trunks and branches of oyamel fir trees. Photo credit: Frans Lanting Mint Images from Sciance Magazine. There is work to be done at many levels to help correct this issue, and restore monarch populations. The most immediate and effective course of action would be a restructuring at the governmental level to prioritize the issues of climate change (and all its connotations), biodiversity loss, and the threatening of species. Regulating deforestation and managing pesticide use would reduce the habitat loss of the monarchs. Climate change is threatening the oyamel firs, the very species monarch butterflies rely on for overwintering, as is competition for land by agricultural use. Some Mexican scientists, including plan architect Cuauhtémoc Sáenz-Romero from the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, are undertaking the work of assisted migration, planting oyamel seedlings in elevations suitable for their growth beginning at 11,268 feet where the habitat is projected to be suitable by 2030, outside the current range and protection area of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve.

Desertification and land degradation is "the greatest environmental challenge of our time" and "a threat to global wellbeing", according to the UN's top drylands official, who says people must be paid via global carbon markets for preserving the soil. Luc Gnacadja, executive secretary of UN's Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), will today [Monday] launch the UN decade for the fight against desertification in London. "The top 20cm of soil is all that stands between us and extinction," he told the Guardian. Land conflicts in Somalia, dust storms in Asia and the food price crises of recent years all stem from the degradation of land, he said, due to overuse by humans and the impacts of global warming. Since the early 1980s, a quarter of the planet's land has been despoiled and 1% a year continues to be lost. The better known issues of climate change and loss of biodiversity are both rooted in the global loss of fertile soil, said Gnacadja, as the soil harbours a huge stock of carbon and the health of creatures living in the soil underpins global food production and forest growth. The reason desertification has not been a priority is because 90% of the 2.1 billion people who live in drylands live in developing countries, he said. "Even in their own countries, they are the poorest among the poor and live in remote areas," said Gnacadja. "The world is driven by city dwellers: political leaders are setting agendas to satisfy people who live in the cities, we therefore tend to perceive soil as just dust, or mud, or a dumping place. But if we don't preserve that first 20cm of soil, where will we get our food and water from?" Half the world's livestock are raised on drylands and a third of crops, especially wheat. The impacts of climate change – rising temperatures and more erratic rainfall – are here already from Latin America to the Sahel, said Gnacadja. Adding to the pressure on land is rising global population, which is expected to pass the 7 billion mark next year and reach 9 billion by 2050. As well as the consequences for food and water, violent conflicts and migration will also increase, he said, affecting those living outside drylands. "Increased aridity is making the drylands the most conflict prone region of the world," he said. "If you really want to look at the root causes of the conflicts in Somalia and Darfur, and drylands of Asia, you will understand that people in their quest to have access to productive land and water for life, they end up in conflict." He also cited nothern Nigeria, where increased aridity means lack of fodder is driving herders south into the areas farmed for corn. "Conflict is almost inevitable." Desertification and rising aridity were the ultimate cause of the food price crisis of 2007-8, Gnacadja said, as it began with a drought in Australia. This year's price spike started with a drought in Russia. Another example of desertification's impact was the loss of land bordering the Gobi desert leading to record dust storms that damage the health of people in Seoul in South Korea, thousands of kilometres away.

Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) are a long-migratory species of butterfly that span much of North America and use the milkweed (Asclepius spp.) as their mating habitat. Although not officially listed as threatened or endangered, monarch butterflies have experienced massive decline in their population. Since the 1980s there has been more than a 80% decrease in the eastern migration and about 99.4% decrease in their western migration. That is roughly a decrease from 4.5 million to approximately 28,000 today. Later this year the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was to have voted on whether the monarch butterfly should be protected under the Endangered Species Act; given recent moves to change the way this Act is applied, it is unclear that the monarch’s threatened habitats would be adequately protected to ensure the survival of the species.

In addition to their role as carbon sinks, forests are a crucial component of the water cycle and have the all important function of preventing desertification. Cutting down trees can disrupt the cycle by decreasing precipitation and affecting river flow and water volume. In the case of the Amazon rainforest, research shows that at least 80% of its trees would be needed in order to keep the hydrological cycle going. With nearly 17% of the forest lost already, the Amazon is currently at its tipping point. Statistics show that deforestation in the tropics reduces precipitation over the Amazon by around 10%, or 138 millimeter, every year. In the South Asian Monsoon region, the reduction in rainfall is even higher, with around 18% less rain recorded in India in a single year. Aside from their contribution to the water flow, trees help the land retain water and sustain forest life by supplying the soil with rich nutrients. Deforestation deprives the land of its cover, leaving the soil exposed to wind and rain. This makes soil vulnerable to being washed away, and prone to erosion. According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), as much as half of the world’s topsoil has been lost as a consequence of the nearly 4 million square miles of forest that have been lost since the beginning of the 20th century.

The Inflation Reduction Act may change this reality. Although it is domestically focused—and includes several harmful provisions on drilling that demonstrate the ongoing power of the oil and gas industry—this law represents the single-largest investment in climate action in U.S. history and will profoundly alter the international landscape. Indeed, this historic legislation will help the United States reach its emission reduction commitments, increase U.S. competitiveness and spur a “race to the top” in the clean energy economy, reshape the security landscape, and, crucially, restore trust and legitimacy for the United States within the global climate community. The Inflation Reduction Act could mark the end of inconsistent U.S. climate leadership Historically, the United States is the single-largest contributor to climate change, accounting for more than 22 percent of historic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions—the equivalent of the historic emissions of 181 countries combined. Despite its disproportionate impact on the global climate, U.S. climate leadership has been inconsistent. The United States infamously failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol in 2001 and withdrew from the Paris Agreement in 2020, while its previous landmark climate legislation—the American Clean Energy Security Act, or Waxman-Markey bill—failed dramatically in Congress in 2009. While the U.S. seesaws between climate leader and pariah, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that the world is on track to surpass the Paris Agreement’s goal of not exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming within the next decade, with every fraction of a degree resulting in a disproportionate increase in the severity and frequency of devastating climate impacts. President Biden entered office on the votes of Americans demanding climate action. Along with an updated nationally determined contribution (NDC) that set the goal of reducing U.S. emissions 50 to 52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, the administration made pledges in 2021 to increase international climate finance, address adaptation, reduce methane emissions and deforestation, and help high-emitting countries transition away from coal and other fossil fuel energy sources. These pledges culminated at last November’s 26th U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties in Glasgow, Scotland, where world leaders agreed to keep the 1.5 degree goal alive and recommitted to the still-unmet goal of $100 billion in international climate finance. The Russian war on Ukraine is a striking reminder of how precarious global climate commitments are, as well as how the destructive fossil fuel-based global economy continues to shape the world order. Unfortunately, the Russian invasion of Ukraine threatens to derail global emissions reduction pledges. Despite the International Energy Agency’s warning that global net zero cannot be reached by 2050 with any new fossil fuel developments, there have been numerous calls to address the energy crisis unleashed by Russia’s war through increased drilling and construction of additional gas import terminals. European Union nations are also actively pursuing new oil and gas investments in Africa—in stark contradiction to their previous stance on energy development and promises to aid a clean energy transition on the African continent. The Russian war on Ukraine is a striking reminder of how precarious global climate commitments are, as well as how the destructive fossil fuel-based global economy continues to shape the world order in terms of international security, national economies, and the well-being of individuals, all while strongly influencing the democratic process within the United States and abroad. Fortunately, a rapid shift by the United States to a clean energy economy, fueled by the investments stemming from the Inflation Reduction Act, could likewise shift the global landscape. The Inflation Reduction Act’s global impacts The $369 billion in Inflation Reduction Act energy security and climate change resilience investments have significant implications for the world, as they demonstrate U.S. leadership abroad and change the trajectory of international climate action. Reaching emission reduction commitments With the Inflation Reduction Act, the United States will be significantly closer to meeting its Paris Agreement commitment. At the 2021 Leaders’ Summit on Climate, President Biden announced an enhanced NDC that states the United States will “achieve a 50-52 percent reduction from 2005 levels in economy-wide net greenhouse gas pollution in 2030.” Under current policy, expected GHG emissions reductions were only 24 to 35 percent; however, independent analyses estimate that the Inflation Reduction Act will bring GHG emissions down by about 31 to 44 percent or 37 to 41 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Both modelers agree that with the addition of state and federal regulatory action, these investments will put within reach the full goal of 50 percent emissions reductions this decade. With the addition of state and federal regulatory action, [Inflation Reduction Act] investments will put within reach the full goal of 50 percent emissions reductions this decade. The Inflation Reduction Act, along with administrative regulations, will be viewed internationally as the U.S. NDC implementation plan as well as an indication that the United States is finally taking the real, necessary action to get its house in order as it works to reduce emissions globally. This step allows the Biden administration to head into November’s U.N. climate conference (COP27) in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, with a strong bargaining position and may help increase other nations’ ambition and ability to meet their NDCs. Spurring an economic and manufacturing “race to the top” With well north of $70 billion in clean domestic manufacturing investments, the Inflation Reduction Act strengthens America’s standing on global trade with both partners and competitors. Traditionally, American industries and federal support drove the technological innovations that fundamentally changed the energy, transportation, and manufacturing sectors. The Inflation Reduction Act gives the needed boost to domestic clean energy industries—through requirements for domestic sourcing and through manufacturing tax incentives designed to reshore supply chains—to enable these industries to catch up to nations that have outpaced the United States in the development of clean energy technological innovation, manufacturing, and deployment that will characterize the energy market for the remainder of the 21st century. These investments, paired with domestic content credits and the Biden administration’s robust “Made in America” agenda, will give the United States the necessary tools to incorporate climate and economic objectives into multilateral trade discussions. $70B+ Amount the Inflation Reduction Act will provide in clean domestic manufacturing investments Yet the Inflation Reduction Act will not only keep the United States competitive in global markets by protecting American industries; it will also further drive the global competitiveness necessary for a race to the top on clean energy innovation. Due to the outsize role of the U.S. economy within the global market, this boost in U.S. manufacturing and development of clean energy technologies will help lower the cost of clean energy, facilitating and incentivizing more rapid energy transitions abroad. These transitions are necessary in high-emitting countries and countries seeking energy independence, as well as in countries with limited emissions that have the opportunity to leap-frog over fossil fuel-based economies on their development pathway. Reshaping the energy and national security landscape The Inflation Reduction Act will improve U.S. national and energy security. The U.S. Department of Defense recognizes climate change as a global threat multiplier; extreme weather and other climate impacts in turn can destabilize governments and governance structures, resulting in cascading geopolitical and geostrategic impacts. By reducing overall GHG emissions, the Inflation Reduction Act makes a significant contribution to reducing conflicts over climate-dependent resources, loss and damage driven by natural disasters, and instability caused by volatile fuel prices. The Inflation Reduction Act’s investments in clean energy will also reduce U.S. dependence on a fossil fuel-dominated global economy largely dictated by nations that do not share American values. For example, the Inflation Reduction Act will help cut U.S. oil demand by more than twice the amount the United States ever imported from Russia. Coupled with federal executive actions, the Inflation Reduction Act will dramatically reduce the exposure of the U.S. economy to volatile foreign fossil fuel prices, avoiding periods, such as this summer, during which Americans have to weather prohibitively high gas prices while oil and gas companies rake in record profits. Additionally, the legislation will negate the need for “fist-bump diplomacy” with authoritarian leaders. Lastly, the Inflation Reduction Act strengthens partnerships with the EU—a critical ally—as it seeks to reduce reliance on Russian energy. As the U.S.-EU Task Force on European Energy Security ramps up deployment of energy efficiency technologies such as heat pumps and smart thermostats, the Inflation Reduction Act supports this work by providing $500 million in funding to support the production of heat pumps and spur critical mineral processing projects. Additionally, provisions such as the methane reduction fee—which requires oil and gas producers who vent, flare, or leak methane to pay a fee that could reach $1,500 a ton for some operators by 2026—and a provision requiring companies to pay a 16 percent royalty on vented, flared, or leaked methane on public lands work in tandem with EU priorities on methane emissions. While issues such as reporting methodologies and accounting for supply chains must be resolved, the Inflation Reduction Act strengthens U.S.-EU collaboration on reducing methane emissions. Regaining diplomatic trust on the road to COP27 The Inflation Reduction Act demonstrates that President Biden’s international pledges are not hollow. It will allow the United States to regain trust, strengthen its leadership role on the international stage, and pressure other developed countries to increase their ambition and follow through on domestic implementation. Until recently, the United States has been operating from an international trust deficit for a number of reasons. The United States rejoined the Paris Agreement to global skepticism over how long it would remain an active participant in climate negotiations given its partisan political swings. Congress’ delay in passing climate legislation due to political divisions confirmed these concerns. Furthermore, Russia’s war on Ukraine and the ensuing energy crisis caused many developed countries to backslide on their GHG reduction commitments and the United States to negotiate a short-term increase in natural gas exports to help the EU through the crisis. In addition, the United States and other developed countries have failed to meet the $100 billion per year climate finance commitment for assisting developing countries with their clean energy transitions and adaptation plans.

With Congress and the White House considering spending scarce dollars to jump-start employment, they’ll need to get the biggest jobs bang for the buck to give Americans confidence that they’re spending our money wisely. Probably the biggest jobs generator of all, and one of the least recognized, is investing in forest and land restoration and sustainable management, with conservation, watershed projects, and park investment coming close behind. Heidi Garrett-Peltier and Robert Pollin at The Political Economy and Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts report the following numbers for jobs created per dollar of investment. To summarize, reforestation and restoration outperforms even the second-most jobs-intense activity analyzed by 74 percent, and conservation exceeds other major jobs alternatives, including especially new highway construction, Wall Street, and conventional energy sources like oil and nuclear. This means that if the government is serious about creating jobs, it’s got to pass clean energy and climate legislation and a new jobs bill that includes powerful incentives for reforestation, revegetation, sustainable forest management, and conservation. This legislation can perform the equivalent of the Civilian Conservation Corps, the extremely popular New Deal program that put millions of people to work in forestry and conservation. Why are forest investments such good job generators? Restoring forests (as well as rivers, wetlands, peat bogs, and prairies), requires people, which means jobs: soil scientists, tree planters, equipment operators, water engineers, and people to nurture the trees over time. Conservation — investing in, for instance, the expansion of National Parks and other local, state, and federal recreation areas through, for instance, the Land and Water Conservation Fund — isn’t too far behind. Some of the direct jobs in this sector include park rangers, park transportation workers, and other park personnel. Relative to other spending options, investments in forests and parks tend to go towards wages rather than capital investments — providing the greatest benefit to communities, especially in economically difficult times (since Nature largely provides the materials that go into making a tree or a prairie grow for free, you don’t need the same kind of capital as you do for, say, building a highway). The actual jobs impact of forest investment is actually significantly greater than what’s represented in the above table. A variety of other studies have analyzed job creation through conservation and found dramatic indirect effects. Expand a national park, national forest, river or local recreation area, and spending on and employment in outdoor recreation — everything from birdwatching and hiking to fishing and hunting – is dramatically increased. A 2006 report for the Outdoor Industry Association found that the availability of active outdoor recreation generated $289 billion in retail sales and services across the United States, with a total of 6.5 million jobs supported by the recreation economy overall. Other reports focusing on roadless areas, national forests, and privately-owned forests have found similar results: the National Alliance of Forest Owners [pdf] reports that every hundred acres of privately owned forests supports eight jobs and the FAO reported last year that investing in sustainable forestry management could create ten million new, good-paying jobs worldwide. Of course, jobs aren’t the only reason restoration and conservation are a good idea: forests and other wildlands suck pollution out of the air, provide wildlife habitat, and recreational opportunities — allowing America to put people back to work, and giving them somewhere beautiful to go when they’re done.

Forstater 06 (Mathew Forstater, Challenge , JULY-AUGUST 2006, Vol. 49, No. 4 (JULY-AUGUST 2006), pp. 58-72, Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd., “Green Jobs: Public Service Employment and Environmental Sustainability,” )//ghs-nehahaha

A PSE program can promote environmental sustainability in two important ways. First, since PSE activities do not seek profits, the ac- tivities are designed and evaluated according to social, macro, or en- vironmental efficiency criteria rather than cost-minimizing efficiency criteria of the private sector. My suggestion is akin to E.F. Schumacher's (1973) "appropriate technology": more labor-intensive methods of production may make sense even when more capital-intensive meth- ods are available. PSE activities can be designed to use fewer natural resources, cause less pollution, and reduce ecological damage. Even if the activities were environmentally neutral, the outcome would be more sustainable than a private sector stimulated to full employment. Moreover, PSE activities can be designed to perform environmental Challenge/July-August 2006 63 This content downloaded from 35.0.53.253 on Tue, 18 Jul 2023 18:46:13 +00:00 All use subject to http Forstater services. For example, a Green Jobs Corps could sustain the ecology in a variety of ways: community and industrial recycling, improved insulation for residential and commercial structures, carpooling, rooftop gardening and urban landscaping, solar energy applied to the public infrastructure (e.g., streetlights, schools, construction warn- ing signs, billboards), monitoring and enforcement, environmental education, and research support. Most activities do not require highly specialized skills, and the "learning by doing" effects could be considerable, as skills acquired by participants could be applied in the private sector, and this suc- cession would further promote sustainability. In addition, increased awareness of environmental and ecological issues on the part of both participants and the public could change consumption patterns, which is vital for long-term sustainability. Recycling and reuse present a tremendous opportunity for both job creation and environmental sustainability. We now know that "recycling is the singular environmental success story" of the 1990s: "many cities were able to increase the efficiency of their recycling efforts to the point that, on average, they compared very favorably with the costs of solid waste collection and disposal" (Folz 1999). Re- cycled materials are located in urban areas ready for use, while virgin materials are often located in remote areas (Ackerman 1997, 81). Re- cycling is more labor-intensive than waste disposal, and much of the labor need not be specially trained. Recycling has multiple benefits in that it not only means that society will utilize new materials at a slower rate, it also diverts materials from landfills and incinerators. Recycling can also result in a reduction of new resource depletion as well as pollution, if recycling itself does not pollute as much as new extraction and refining. Besides slowing the depletion rate, reduced use of some materials leaves resources to perform other environmental services, such as trees absorbing carbon dioxide. Recycling also can reduce costs in many areas. Major recycling efforts should be divided into at least two major categories: community-based and industrial. Community-based re- cycling entails collecting, sorting, and cleaning materials and other 64 Challenge/July-August 2006 This content downloaded from 35.0.53.253 on Tue, 18 Jul 2023 18:46:13 +00:00 All use subject to http Green Jobs jobs that anyone can perform and that contribute to the community and the environment. Repair for reuse entails another whole set of operations and may be considered separately. Repair efforts may be for the original owners or for reuse by someone else. Chicago's Creative Reuse Warehouse is a good model for demonstrating how such items as "used office furniture and supplies, salvaged lumber, and broken bikes are turned into valuable assets for communities, schools, and the general public" (Weinberg et al. 2000). A Green Jobs Corps can run both recycling and repair efforts. Industrial recycling zones and parks may also be sites for Green Jobs Corps employees to perform certain jobs. In addition to recycling and reuse, reconditioning is one of the important ways to create jobs and protect the environment: The creation of new skilled jobs can be achieved in parallel with a con- siderable reduction of the energy consumption through a prolongation of the useful life of materials and products . . . linear "production- use- dump" patterns have to be replaced, for instance, by recycling and reconditioning loops or spirals in order to reduce utilization cost and environmental charges. (Stahel and Reday-Mulvey 1981, xv) Reconditioning aims to extend the life of products rather than focusing on new goods, using recycled rather than virgin materials, and "closing material loops" through technological and fashion-up- grading of goods (Stahel 1997, 1311). One of the chief characteristics of contemporary unsustainable economies is planned obsolescence and throwaway products. "Wasting rates"- the share thrown away rather than recycled or reused^are high, and of course 100 percent for disposable products (Brown 2001). Michael Renner has estimated that weatherizing low-income housing units in the United States could create 1.4 to 1.8 million job-years, while resulting in significant con- servation of energy and increasing quality of life (Renner 1991, 27). A Green Jobs Corps could be employed at transforming homes and some businesses into having more efficient and more renewable heat- ing, lighting, cooling, and refrigeration. This does not have to mean every building becomes completely transformed and solar powered, although photovoltaics clearly need to be exploited more. Initial ef- Challenge/July-August 2006 65 This content downloaded from 35.0.53.253 on Tue, 18 Jul 2023 18:46:13 +00:00 All use subject to http Forstater forts may inspire homeowners and businesses to go further on their own. But even simple and basic adjustments would save money and reduce energy use. Better insulation alone could make a huge impact. Other types of weatherizing are also possible. Green Jobs Corps teams could be trained to visit, evaluate, educate, and make suggested or even required changes in a several-hour visit (patching areas, fixing items, blocking drafts, installing low-power shower heads). Another major area that could be addressed by a Green Jobs Corps is automobile use and traffic congestion. Long-term sustainability may require larger structural changes and a move to other forms of transportation, but in the short term, a well-organized vanpool sys- tem could reduce traffic congestion and pollution for those areas not served by good transit. The Green Jobs Corps could drive and repair the vehicles, and experiments could be conducted using alternative vehicle types and fuels. A ten-person vanpool cuts private, social, and environmental unit costs to 15-20 percent of single-operated-vehicle costs (Vuchic 1999, 307). If the van is more fuel-efficient or uses al- ternative materials or energy, these costs will fall even more. The Green Jobs Corps can also transform many items in the public infrastructure over to solar. Effective and reliable photovoltaic-pow- ered streetlights, school crossing lights, highway construction warning signs, and billboards now are available (Cole and Skerrett 1995). In addition to saving energy, decreasing pollution, and reducing costs, public use of solar in these ways will help educate the public about the efficiency and reliability of photovoltaic power. Another important area in which to involve the Green Jobs Corps is rooftop gardening and urban landscaping. The benefits of both these endeavors are little known. In addition to producing food (for humans), and food and habitat for wildlife, rooftop gardens and urban landscaping help purify air, soil, and water; provide air conditioning, shade, and windbreaks; and provide a productive sink for organic waste (Milani 2000, 105). Human waste could also be redirected and put to better use than polluting water. Modern composting toilet technologies are available and more user friendly than ever. Another area of concentration for PSE workers could be in what óó Challenge/July-August 2006 This content downloaded from 35.0.53.253 on Tue, 18 Jul 2023 18:46:13 +00:00 All use subject to http Green. Jobs might be called environmental defense or environmental security. It may be desirable to create a whole section of PSE especially for a green security force, specifically devoted to two major areas: monitoring and cleanup. The new laws and rules will only effect change if there is monitoring to ensure compliance. Often, environmental legislation is criticized as being difficult to monitor, that it can only be done with great effort. PSE can support monitoring efforts, as well as testing, much of which can be done with relatively basic training. For instance, samples can be collected for labs with almost no training. PSE workers can also support cleanup efforts. Obviously some types of cleanup require special skills and equipment, but a tremendous amount can be done with basic training, and much of it is more or less unskilled. With the support of a well-managed PSE plan, moni- toring and cleanup can be supported at a level that is consistent with the shift to sustainability. Environmental sustainability requires information dissemination and education. From preschool to the university, in the community and the workplace, sustainable practices cannot be adopted with- out changing some of our most ingrained habits. Moving from the waste-disposal mentality to the recycle/reuse/reduce/repair mentality requires socialization and education. PSE workers can do presenta- tions in classrooms and workplaces. They can set up tables in the community to demonstrate the effectiveness and simplicity of many sustainable practices. PSE workers in a Green Jobs Corps can help to cut research and development costs significantly by providing the labor to perform a variety of tasks, as well as contributing to sustainability in many other ways. The task here is not to give a comprehensive listing of such services, but to point to the possibilities for enhancing the en- vironment that is presented by a PSE program.

Despite global commitments to halt the loss of tropical forests, the world lost 10% more primary rainforest in 2022 than it did the year before. Why it matters: The world's tropical rainforests are a vast terrestrial carbon sink, but they are in jeopardy from logging, agricultural expansion and the effects of climate change, which is altering precipitation patterns. Tropical rainforests are also a cradle of biodiversity. Zoom in: New data released Tuesday morning from the University of Maryland (viewable in detail via the World Resources Institute's Global Forest Watch platform), shows the world lost 4.1 million hectares, or about 10 million acres, of primary rainforest in 2022. The findings cast doubt on the effectiveness of the voluntary pledge from leaders of 145 nations at COP26 in Glasgow to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. Primary forests refer to mature forests in the tropics. A WRI analysis shows that this amount of forest loss emitted 2.7 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, roughly equal to India's annual fossil fuel emissions. The emissions from deforestation in 2022 are similar in scale to the year before. The intrigue: Primary forest loss was higher last year than in 2021 in Brazil and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which dominate the globe in primary forest coverage. While Brazil had the highest loss of rainforest globally, greater increases in loss rates were seen elsewhere, such as Ghana and Bolivia. Indonesia has limited forest loss rates significantly, compared with a few years ago, the data shows. What they're saying: "The 2022 numbers are particularly disheartening," said Francis Seymour, a senior fellow at WRI. "Following the bold commitments in Glasgow... We had hoped by now to see a signal that we were turning the corner on forest loss," she said during a press call. "We're headed in the wrong direction."The bottom line: Voluntary commitments aren't sufficient to keep rainforests intact.

(Chantal, EmeritusPoliticalTheory@Westminster, https://southernspaces.org/2023/green-democratic-revolution/ , 1-31)

There is another issue I need to raise. While I find proposals for a Green New Deal essential to envisage the policies necessary to fight neoliberalism and its deleterious consequences for the climate, I do not think that those proposals have the capacity, on their own, to generate the common affects that the collective will for carrying out an ecological bifurcation requires. As we have seen, for ideas to acquire force, it is necessary that they meet affects. To awaken affects, ideas need to connect with what Cornelius Castoriadis refers to as the "imaginary significations" that institute the social world proper to a society.12 In many societies, it is the affective force of the democratic imaginary that has provided the significations that motivate people to act. As recent popular mobilizations testify, democratic values, despite their relegation by neoliberalism, still play an important role in the democratic social and political imaginary. This imaginary is constituted by a repertoire of social significations that are transformed through the effects of a plurality of discursive practices. One of its nodal points is the signifier "democracy," but it is a floating signifier whose meaning is only partially fixed and varies according to different types of articulation. In the nineteenth century, under the impact of socialism, the democratic imaginary was profoundly transformed by the incorporation of social demands. And with the new climatic regime, we are now witnessing new forms of articulation of the democratic ideal. For instance, several proposals have been made to re-signify the meaning of "rights," and diverse initiatives to attribute rights to non-human entities like rivers or forests have taken places in different countries. In 2017, three countries assigned rights and legal statutes to rivers: the Atrato in Colombia, the Whanganui in New Zealand and the Ganges, and the Yamuna in India.13 To be able to bring about the necessary ecological bifurcation, the articulation of anti-neoliberal and ecological struggles needs to mobilize affects of political and ecological nature whose articulation can result in the construction of a "people." As I have repeatedly clarified, a "people" is not a sociological category but a discursive construction with a symbolic and libidinal dimension. It consists in federating a diversity of democratic demands and its construction necessitates a principle of articulation, a "hegemonic signifier" around which common affects can crystallize. Thanks to this hegemonic signifier, a chain of equivalence can be established among heterogeneous demands to make them coalesce in a "we" that will act towards a common aim, despite the differences among its components. What is the hegemonic signifier that could activate the political and ecological affects for creating such a people? I propose envisaging the ecological bifurcation advocated by the Green New Deal in terms of a "Green Democratic Revolution" as a new front in the radicalization of democracy that redefines democratic principles and then extends them to new fields and a plurality of social relations. Understood in that way, the Green Democratic Revolution reactivates and enriches the democratic imaginary and procures the hegemonic signifier needed to create a chain of equivalence. It would play the role of a "myth" in the sense of Georges Sorel, an idea whose power to anticipate the future gives a new figure to the present. It is a narrative that conveys affects that could be more powerful and more credible than competing neoliberal discourses and provide the impulse for the creation of a social majority. The survival of the planet and the conditions that make it habitable is an objective that concerns a great number of people as well as various movements with heterogeneous demands. Besides trade unions and groups organized around socio-economic issues, we find people involved in a variety of feminist, anti-racist, anti-colonial, and LGBTQ+ struggles. In ordinary circumstances, they generally insist on pursuing their own interests, but in view of the seriousness of the ecological crisis, they might become aware of the need to unite to face the forces responsible for the climate emergency and prevent the advent of authoritarian solutions. All their demands are democratic demands, albeit in different ways, and given their shared opposition to autocracy, they can identify with the vision offered by the Green Democratic Revolution. It is a project that could generate powerful affects across a diversity of groups and resonate with the demands of those who are calling for security and protection while also fighting for equality and against different forms of oppression. For such an identification to take place it is not necessary that the participants share the same world view, and they can have different religious or philosophical convictions. Their concern for the environment can proceed from different sources and they can follow a diversity of approaches, but these differences should not constitute an insurmountable obstacle. Those involved do not have to agree on a fully fledged political programme. Some will define their aims in terms of "eco-socialism," others will prefer thinking in terms of a "citizen revolution."14 What they share is a common adversary and the will to maintain a habitable planet to secure the future of a democratic society that can give them the opportunity to pursue their specific struggles in a multiplicity of agonistic public spaces. By advocating a Green Democratic Revolution, I have been delineating how I think the left populist strategy should currently be envisaged. I contend that such a strategy is the most appropriate for articulating the manifold democratic struggles against different forms of domination, exploitation, and discrimination with the defence of the habitability of the planet. The strength of a left populist strategy lies in acknowledging the partisan character of politics and the importance of mobilizing common affects in the construction of a "we" by drawing a political frontier. The Green Democratic Revolution asserts that, to bring about a real ecological bifurcation, it is imperative to confront the powerful economic forces that resist it and to break with the neoliberal order. But it also accentuates the democratic character of this bifurcation and visualizes this rupture according to the strategy Erik Olin Wright defines as "eroding capitalism."15 The objective is not to "smash" capitalism but to displace it through the implementation of a series of what André Gorz calls "non-reformist" reforms and the development of alternative institutions such as cooperative and bottom-up civil-society-centred initiatives that promote economic activities embodying egalitarian relations. The state needs to be a significant actor in a Green Democratic Revolution because, as many economists recognize, it will not be possible to achieve the necessary transition to renewable energies without ecological planning. It is illusory to imagine that the profound transformations the ecological bifurcation requires could be made by social movements alone. Activists and ecological groupings have an important role to play, but without winning elections and reaching state power it will not be possible to create the conditions to successfully confront the power of fossil capital. To be able to exercise influence on the decisions taken at state level, it is necessary to organize politically. All those who are involved in diverse ecological struggles should realize that they will not be able to make decisive advances if they shun electoral politics. Envisaging the necessary ecological bifurcation as a Green Democratic Revolution could, I believe, provide the strategy that the left needs to successfully thwart the attempts to harness the sense of vulnerability produced by the social, economic, and climatic crises, and the affects it has generated, to promote authoritarian forms of security and protection. These demands can be articulated in a progressive way, and it would be a serious mistake to neglect them. At the moment, when neoliberalism is trying to recuperate these demands for authoritarian purposes, it is imperative for the left to impede such a move by articulating the idea of protection with the defence of the habitability of the planet, conceiving it in line with what Paolo Gerbaudo calls "protectivism," which he defines as follows: "Protectivism encompasses a great variety of policies, including social welfare, workers' representation, environmental protection and other social support mechanisms."16 A Green Democratic Revolution aims to defend society and its material conditions of existence and provide security and protection in a way that empowers people instead of making them retreat into defensive nationalism or a passive acceptance of algorithmic forms of governmentality. Such a project could federate a wide variety of democratic demands because it addresses the challenge of the new climatic regime while providing social justice and fostering solidarity. Activating passions that are central to the democratic imaginary should motivate people to get involved in politics with the aim of establishing the conditions for a society where the democratic principles of liberty and equality are redefined and extended to new domains, including humans and non-humans. I contend that, understood in this way, the left populist strategy is more relevant than ever.

(Alex,EuropeanStudies@King’s, A Debate between John Holloway and Alex Callinicos: “Can we change the world without taking power?” World Social Forum, Porto Alegre (27 January 2005) https://web.archive.org/web/20110726172523/http://archive.iire.org/pamphlet_nsf_2006.pdf )

Whatever our differences, John and I stand for changing the world through a process of self-emancipation, where there aren’t leaders who tell people what to do but rather people who collectively liberate themselves. I admire the honesty, clarity and consistency of John’s work, which is evident in his presentation today. But I also have to be honest and say that I find the ideal of changing the world without taking power ultimately self-refuting. I agree with John about uncertainty. There are lots of things we cannot know. But one thing I am certain about. That is that it is impossible to change the world without addressing and solving the question of political power. I absolutely sympathise with one of the impulses behind the slogan ‘Change the world without taking power’. Among a lot of the traditions on the left worldwide there has been what has been called ‘socialism from above’. Whether it is a Communist party with Stalinist traditions or a social democratic party like the Workers Party in Brazil today, it involves the idea that the party changes things for you and everyone else remains passive. The political tradition I stand in is a very different one. It is that of socialism from below summed up in Marx’s definition of socialism as the self-emancipation of the working class. Socialism is about the oppressed and exploited of the world effectively liberating themselves. My fundamental difference with John is that I believe this process of self-emancipation requires us to confront and overthrow the existing state and replacing it with a radically different form of state power. John invites us essentially to turn our backs on the state. He says that we should carry out what he calls an ‘interstitial’ revolution. It’s been summed up by other thinkers sharing the same ideas as John as life despite capitalism. We should all try and cultivate our autonomous gardens despite the horrors of capitalism. The trouble is that the state won’t leave us alone and that is because capitalism itself, the system that different states sustain, won’t leave us alone. Capitalism today is invading the gardens of the world to carve them up and turn them into branches of agribusiness or suburban speculation and won’t leave us alone. We cannot ignore the state, because the state is the most concentrated single form of capitalist power. This means strategically we have to be against the state, to pursue the revolution against the state. Does this mean we ignore the existing state and do not ever put demands on the capitalist state? No. The existing capitalist states try to legitimise themselves to win the consent of those they oppress and exploit. This means that if we organise effectively, we can force reforms out of capitalism. Also, if we ignore the state, that means we will be indifferent to struggles over privatisation. For example, at the minute George Bush wants to privatise the pensions system in the US. Do we say we don’t care about that because the social security system in the US is organised by the state? I think, no. Finally, many workers these days are employed by the state. Part of the process of privatisation means those employees of private companies replace these workers. Often that means the service to the public is worse and the conditions and wages of those employed by those companies get worse. But if we are not indifferent to the state, that does not mean we can rely on it. In the long run capitalism and the state which seeks to sustain it will seek to take back any reforms it concedes temporarily. That is what they are seeking to do at the present time. Moreover, as John has highlighted, the state is a hierarchical organisation which organises violence to keep the mass of society subordinated. This means we cannot simply try to seize the existing state. If we seize the existing state, in the end, at the worst we will get Stalin, at best we will get someone like Lula or Mbeki in South Africa who comes out of a mass movement which seeks to change the world but ends up administering things for capitalism. What’s the alternative then? It is to build up a movement that is powerful and focused enough to break the existing forms of state power and institute radically different and radically democratic forms of state power. In other words, there has to be a revolution which is not a party taking state power by seizing the existing state, but the oppressed and exploited-above all workers-who break the existing state and in the process of doing so create radically new and democratic forms of power in order to manage society for themselves. This alternative is not just a fantasy that I’ve spun out of my head. If we look at the history of the working class movement over the last 150 years, again and again workers have created new ways of organising in order to wage mass struggles effectively. These have been much more democratic, much more subject to the control of the workers themselves. In order to wage their struggles, they have created delegate structures that break down the hierarchy that John talks about. And in doing so they have created new forms of political power, even if they don’t know it. There are many examples: the soviets in the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 are the most famous examples; there were the workers’ and soldiers’ councils that were formed in the German Revolution of 1918-20; right up to the cordones that were formed in Chile in 1972-73 at the height of the struggles under the Popular Unity government of Allende. There are many other examples of mass popular organisation that represent a new sort of political power. The important thing about these forms of organisation, whatever the intentions that led to their formation, is that they have the capacity to challenge and break the existing state and institute new forms of power. We are not saying, as John was suggesting, ‘Wait for the revolution.’ But any struggles that begin to build towards self-organisation are pointing the way towards the way a future non-capitalist, socialist, society can be organised. The problem is that for any movement towards self-organisation to succeed in breaking the power of capital, there has to be a moment of concentration and centralisation. You can’t deal with the concentrated power of capital-the state and the multinational corporations-without the movements themselves becoming focused to confront the power of those corporations directly. John will say, ‘When you talk about centralisation and concentration, you are returning to the old ways of organising, you are beginning to organise in a way that reproduces the centralised and hierarchical structures of the existing state.’ I agree it isn’t easy. John was very honest and talked about the difficulties with his strategic conception, and I agree there are difficulties with the approach I am defending. Combining centralisation with self-organisation is not easy. But without a degree of centralisation we will be defeated. If we simply have fragmented and decentralised and localised activity, all cultivating our autonomous gardens, capital can isolate us and destroy or incorporate us piece by piece. And we cannot address problems like climate change unless we have the capacity to coordinate and, to a degree, to centralise for global change. We cannot reduce CO2 emissions to the necessary level without global coordination. We will not achieve the world we want to see if we simply rely on the fragment and the local. This is related to the question of parties. John is critical of the party as a form of organisation. He says it reproduces the hierarchical structures of the existing state. But if we look at our movement, there are parties within the movement-that is, there are ideologically organised currents which have in their different ways a total strategic view of the transformation of society. In that sense of party, John and the people who think like him are as much a party within the different movements as are the Workers Party and the PSOL in Brazil,1 or the Socialist Workers Party in Britain. 1: The new left wing party formed by those expelled from the Workers Party. People who organise such a current can say they are not a party, but it is a form of self-deception. Recognising the role parties can play in the movements can lead to a more honest and open articulation of different strategies and visions for change. Parties can contribute to the development of a movement that is both self-organised and sufficiently coherent to take on the task of social transformation, of revolution. My ideal in this respect is the one articulated by the great Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci. He talked about the dialectical interaction between the moment of centralisation represented by the parties and the self-organised impulse from the movement which is the fundamental driving force of revolution. To sum up: First of all we cannot avoid the question of the state and political power. It is a delusion to believe we can avoid it. The critical question is who takes power and how. If it is simply a question of a party taking control of the existing state by whatever means, then it is absolutely true that will be a change that simply reproduces the existing relations of domination. But the conception of a self-organised working class seizing power to institute new forms of political organisation and state organisation along with all the other oppressed and exploited groups changes the question. Revolution then becomes a process of self-emancipation which starts here and now, in the way we organise resistance to capitalism, and culminates when we create a selforganised society, and capitalism and all the oppression associated with it becomes simply a bad memory.

( Tom, SocialJustice&PeaceStudies@Western,https://theconversation.com/taxing-the-wealthy-to-the-hilt-would-make-us-all-much-better-off-203814 )

Though most people naturally dislike inequality, it’s often argued that raising taxes on the rich will do more harm than good by damaging incentives and investment, thereby slowing economic growth and ultimately hurting us all. “Given five fat sheep and ninety-five thin, how [to] induce the ninety-five to resign to the five the richest pasture and shadiest corners?” the famous British philosopher R.H. Tawney once asked. He continued: “By convincing them, obviously, that, if they do not, they will die of rot, be eaten by wolves, and be deprived in the meantime of such pasture as they have. Nor, indeed, hitherto has it been difficult to convince them, for there is nothing which frightens thin sheep like the fear of being thinner.” But is it really true that high taxes — even very high ones — are detrimental to societal well-being? The last few years have witnessed an explosion of new evidence from economists, sociologists, political scientists and ecologists that suggests they’re not. Exaggerated concerns It’s accurate that high taxes on the wealthy bring real risks. But in general, the downsides are highly overblown. For instance, a common worry is that rich people will respond to high taxes by working less. But there’s essentially zero empirical support for this claim. In fact, there is now close to consensus among researchers that while the rich do frequently try to avoid taxes, they don’t do so by working less. The most serious potential cost of high taxes is the reduction of private investment. This is definitely possible. But the key point to keep in mind is that such a reduction is only half the picture. It’s wrong to think of taxes as simply reducing investment, because states do not simply collect taxes — they also spend them. Therefore it’s more accurate to regard taxes not as reducing investment but as rearranging it — from the private sector to the public. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends entirely on the details. In many cases, levying high taxes on the rich will mean money is no longer invested in foreign stock markets or spent on unproductive things like private jets and multiple mansions, but is rather spent on productivity-enhancing entities like schools, hospitals, roads, public research grants and so on. Indeed, critical research shows that, all things considered, high inequality actually tends to reduce an economy’s overall growth rate. The most sensible and cautious conclusion is that high taxes — very high taxes, in particular — could somewhat reduce economic growth, but these costs are likely to be only mild or moderate. What about the other side of the ledger? What are the social and economic benefits from high taxes and reduced inequality? In my book Against Inequality: The Practical and Ethical Case for Abolishing the Superrich, I note that five stand out: 1. The environment It’s well-known that the rich emit far more carbon than the rest of us. The wealthiest 20 people in the world emit 8,000 times more carbon than the poorest billion people on Earth combined. So imposing high taxes on the rich would be doubly effective from an environmental perspective. It would directly reduce the copious emissions of the rich. And it would provide the necessary resources to build the new low-carbon infrastructure — including public transit, green energy grids, etc. — that we desperately need. That would indirectly help the rest of us reduce our emissions too. 2. Our democracy The evidence is overwhelming that inequality erodes democracy. For instance, American scholars Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page examined 1,779 public policy debates between 1981 and 2002 to see whose voices actually mattered in deciding important issues. They found that: “The majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose.” Such evidence demonstrates that significant inequality can actually break a democracy, transforming it into oligarchy, as has arguably already transpired in the United States. 3. Opportunity for all Inequality makes a mockery of the cherished aspiration of equal opportunity. To take one particularly egregious example, the poorest residents of Chicago today face a life expectancy 30 years shorter than their richer neighbours down the street. High redistributive taxes could reverse this most brutal of disparities. We also know that countries with more equality tend to have greater social mobility too. Richard Wilkinson, the famous British epidemiologist and inequalities scholar, likes to quip that if Americans want to live the American dream and not just dream it, they should move to high-tax Denmark. 4. Reduced xenophobia and racism Though right-wing populism has many complex causes, research clearly demonstrates that one of its main drivers is economic insecurity. That’s likely because insecurity increases fear that one’s already precarious position will be worsened by competition from “immigrants” and “others.” The evidence shows that right-wing populism can be effectively reduced by enhancing economic security — for instance by taxing the rich to fund free public services — a stronger safety net and perhaps even a guaranteed basic income. As neo-Nazis once again march in the streets, hate crimes rise, far-right political parties receive more public support than any time since the 1930s, the benefits of reducing such terrifying threats are hard to overstate. 5. Reduced social friction Reducing inequality also builds community health and cohesion. It encourages greater levels of agreeableness and tolerance, better mental health and reduces crime. All in all, the costs of high taxes and low inequality are likely to be only moderate. But the benefits are truly enormous — a different order of magnitude entirely.

(Emmanuel, E. Morris Cox Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Equitable Growth at the University of California, Berkeley and Gabriel, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley https://www.bostonreview.net/forum/gabriel-zucman-taxing-superrich/ , 3-17)

From 1930 to 1980 the top marginal income tax rate in the United States averaged 78 percent; it exceeded 90 percent from 1951 to 1963. These quasi-confiscatory top rates championed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his successors in office were meant to reduce the income of the superrich: not simply to achieve tax justice, but to compress the income distribution. These tax rates applied to extraordinarily high incomes only, the equivalent of more than several million dollars today; only the ultrarich were subjected to them. In 1960, for example, the top marginal tax rate of 91 percent started kicked in at an income threshold that was nearly 100 times the average national income per adult, the equivalent of $6.7 million in income today. The merely rich—high-earning professionals, medium-size company executives, people with incomes in the hundreds of thousands in today’s dollars—were taxed at marginal rates in a range of 25 percent to 50 percent, in line with what is typical nowadays (for instance, in states such as California and New York, when you count state income taxes).According to the evidence, the policy of quasi-confiscatory tax rates for sky-high incomes achieved its objective. From the late 1930s to the early 1970s, income inequality fell. The share of pre-tax national income earned by the top 1 percent was reduced by a factor of two, from close to 20 percent on the eve of World War II to barely more than 10 percent in the early 1970s. In 1960, for example, only 306 families earned more than $6.7 million in taxable income a year (the threshold above which income was imposed at 91 percent). This tax policy reflected the view that extreme inequality hurts the community; that the economy works better when rent extraction is discouraged (indeed, the economy grew strongly in the mid twentieth century); and that unfettered markets lead to a concentration of wealth that threatens our democratic and meritocratic ideals. Extreme wealth concentration, like carbon emissions, imposes a negative externality on the rest of us. The point of taxing carbon is not to raise revenue but to reduce carbon emissions. And the point of high tax rates on the very highest incomes is not fundamentally to fund government programs. They are aimed at reducing the income of the ultra-wealthy. The reason for reducing those incomes is not, as critics sometimes say, to give vent to envy. It is to disrupt privilege, impede rent extraction, and protect democracy. When 90 cents out of any extra dollar earner will go to the IRS, we will disincentivize negotiating a $20 million salary, earning millions by creating a zero-sum financial product, and spiking the price of patented drugs. Quasi-confiscatory tax rates equalize the distribution of pre-tax income, make the market place more competitive, and limit the concentrations of economic power that pave the way for undemocratic concentrations of political power. To see how wealth taxation might work to reduce such concentrations of wealth and power, let’s contrast a moderate with a radical wealth tax. A moderate wealth tax, say with marginal tax rates of 2 percent above $50 million and 3 percent above $1 billion, would generate a lot of revenue—about 1 percent of GDP each year, according to our estimates. Consider now a more radical wealth tax with a marginal tax rate of 10 percent above $1 billion. A person with $1 billion in wealth would pay the same $19 million as under a moderate wealth tax. A radical wealth tax would not make it harder to become a billionaire; it would make it harder to remain a multi-billionaire. A person with $2 billion would pay almost 5 percent a year, a decabillionaire such as David Geffen 9 percent, and a centibillionaire such as Bezos 10 percent (instead of 3 percent with a moderate wealth tax). Just as Roosevelt’s 90 percent top marginal income tax sharply reduced the number of families earning more than $10 million of today’s dollars, a radical wealth tax would eventually lead to a reduction in the number of multi-billionaires. More than collecting revenue, it would de-concentrate wealth. There would still be multibillionaires, no doubt. If a wealth tax of this higher sort had been in place over the last decades, Zuckerberg would still be worth $21 billion in 2018—instead of the $61 billion recorded by Forbes. Why? Because Zuckerberg’s wealth has grown at a rate of 40 percent a year since 2008 when he first became a billionaire. A 10 percent annual wealth tax would not have stopped his stratospheric ascent. But a more mature billionaire such as Bill Gates would be worth “only” $4 billion—instead of $97 billion in 2018—because he has been a billionaire for over three decades now, giving the radical tax more time to reduce his wealth. If a radical wealth tax had been in place since 1982, most of the 400 richest Americans would still be billionaires in 2018, but they would be only one third as wealthy as they currently are (see graph 1). Their share of U.S. wealth would be similar to what it was back in 1982, before the wealth inequality took off. A radical wealth tax would have raised $250 billion in revenue from the 400 richest Americans alone in 2018. That is more than 1 percent of GDP. But if such a tax had been in place since 1982, it would have only raised $66 billion from the 400 wealthiest families in 2018, while a moderate wealth tax, despite its much lower rate, would have yielded almost as much—about $50 billion. In the long run, a radical wealth tax erodes top fortunes so much that it reduces the taxes paid by the ultrarich. Is a radical wealth tax worth it, then? Would society benefit from curbing huge fortunes, even if it means lower tax collection at the top end? Over the years, our own thinking about this question has evolved as the stagnation of working-class income, the boom in extreme wealth, and the threats to democracy became clearer. Perhaps yours will too.

( Josephine Foster is a unionist and climate activist who advocates and organises around the issue of climate justice as part of Tomorrow Movement and United Workers Union's Climate Action Group. https://overland.org.au/2021/10/why-we-need-a-climate-jobs-guarantee/ , 10-5)

It is easy to despair at the state of our world. It is undeniable that the impacts of climate change are here, and only set to increase. The mental and emotional strain this is putting on young people all over the world is immense. In response, governments are treating the greatest threat we have ever faced as a species as if it’s a high school project where all they need to do is create an A3 poster ‘preferably’ by 2050. Alongside the deterioration of our natural world, economic prospects aren’t looking great for young people. For those aged 15-24, unemployment is at a rate of 16 per cent (or 329,000), and underemployment at 20 per cent (or 397,000), a worrying trend in the job market at large that has been steadily worsening since 1990. That’s the equivalent of the combined population of Canberra, Hobart and Darwin, all wanting more work. And that’s just counting people in the single age bracket. Despair, however, should be the last thing on our mind. What those who have co-opted our democracy and stifled our imaginations don’t want us to know is that we already have all that we need to address both the unemployment crisis as well as solving the climate crisis. A Climate Jobs Guarantee (CJG) counters the cruel myth that we have to accept hundreds of thousands of people must be unemployed and puts people into work that is meaningful and useful that swiftly transitions our country to be low-carbon. The most important fact to know is that unemployment is something that our government deliberately and knowingly creates with concrete policy measures. They justify it as a way to keep inflation low with a non-accelerating rate of unemployment [NAIRU]. Our government hasn’t even been using the accurate NAIRU, meaning that hundreds of thousands more people than ‘necessary’ have suffered if you accept the idea that we should sacrifice anyone for the good of the market. If politicians want and need people to be unemployed, why do we create an expensive and elaborate theatre to punish the unlucky people who cannot get a job? What kind of immoral society do we live in where we give billions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations to keep up a punitive game of pretend? Calling something ‘mutual obligations’ is humiliating, given unemployed people are already meeting their obligation, by not having a job, a sacrifice forced upon them in the name of our inflation rate. The fact the state asks them to then apply for a ridiculous twenty jobs every month or they will cut off the measly below the poverty-line amount of welfare is appalling. Our government is so dedicated to keeping up the farce that billions of tax-payer dollars go to fund a private network of ‘job providers’ who churn through the unemployed to make a profit, knowing they will not be able to find jobs for most people. This is set up through the privatised JobActive, an Australian Government-funded network of organisations contracted to deliver ‘employment services’ to unemployed job seekers on Government income support payments. A 2019 senate inquiry concluded that ‘JobActive is not welfare to work, it is welfare to nowhere’. and ex-workers for Jobactive providers have been scathing of the system. A worker for one of the providers involved described the network as hurting the unemployed by ‘taking someone who doesn’t have discretionary income and turning them into a product to make money.’ The ideology unpinning all this, neoliberalism, has always had the main aim and achievement, as David Harvey states, ‘to redistribute, rather than to generate, wealth and income.’ When you consider that billionaires gained $3.9tn, yet workers lost $3.7tn during a global pandemic, it becomes clear that the rich are getting wealthier because many of us are getting robbed. A reserve army of the unemployed is really a tool to assert class power, suppress wages and keep people from making a fuss when their job is unsafe because of cost-cutting measures. It is designed to weaken the power of unions and concentrate capital in the hands of the few, at the cost of the many. The cost of unemployment and the suffering is immense, yet it is often hidden from view, acting as a disease with significant social, health, and economic costs. Ask anyone who has experienced unemployment and struggled to find a job and, if they’re even able to talk about it, they will probably share the shame and humiliation it entails. The stress of unemployment leaves a scar that lingers that even reemployment struggles to fully correct, making it even more important for young people to be protected before these scars are made. Unemployment hurts us all and costs us a lot as a society. The immiseration of our fellow people has a ripple impact on communities and the families of people out of work, entrenching other issues such as addiction and mental illness. A CJG is the best way to immediately address both climate change and provide public jobs for all, by using a pool of publicly employed individuals, instead of having a reserve army of the unemployed, avoiding inflation without the misery and cost of unemployment. Crucially, this idea is popular. Tomorrow Movement has recently surveyed over 700 young people, and overwhelmingly young people want the government to invest in jobs that serve the needs of their community and solve climate change, with 94 per cent of respondents supporting the creation of a CJG. Young people know that we can provide solutions that serve the needs of our communities and address the existential threat of climate change, while also removing the immense employment stress we are experiencing. Providing jobs for all who want one would do more to address the systemic gender, class and racial inequality we face in Australia, giving experience, skills and confidence without the humiliation of being churned by ‘job providers’ who just want to make money from them. It would do more for our mental health than our government asking ‘R U OK?’ once a year and then promptly covering their ears. The jobs we could create would have so many wide-reaching benefits for our society. Imagine what life would be like if we properly funded care work and stopped forcing vital work to be done by charities and volunteers. We could centre justice for First Nations people, with money for self-determined caring for country, rather than the government interventions like the cashless welfare card or exploitative work-for-the-dole programs that we inflict on these communities and that are designed to benefit big business. We could revegetate and help our ecosystems become more resilient to extreme weather while also absorbing more carbon. We could create local renewable energy hubs and batteries, energy efficiency initiatives, community gardens and urban farms to increase our intake of local and healthy food. We could teach people valuable skills such as cooking and nutrition through healthy school lunch programs in our schools. We could run more arts and music programs and fund emerging writers. We could build solidarity and cohesion within our society. In the words of the late David Graeber, ‘the ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently. ’ We know that another world is possible and that despair is a tool used against us to keep the status quo. With a Climate Jobs Guarantee, we could address climate change and unemployment, with the benefits being felt immediately. The only thing left to do is fight for it.

(Jeremy Brecher directs research and policy for the Labor Network for Sustainability. He is the author of more than a dozen books on labor and social movements, including the Climate Insurgency Trilogy: Climate Insurgency: A Strategy for Survival, Climate Solidarity: Workers vs. Warming, and Against Doom: A Climate Insurgency Manual. The Labor Network for Sustainability is engaging workers and communities in building a transition to an ecologically sustainable — and economically just — society. https://inequality.org/research/the-green-new-deal-a-strategy-for-a-more-equal-united-states/)

The Green New Deal often gets portrayed as simply a program for climate protection. But the Green New Deal — as proposed in a new congressional resolution from Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey — stands just as boldly as a strategy to counter America’s grotesque and growing inequality. The resolution they’ve introduced calls for “a new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal era.” Such a mobilization, notes their resolution, provides “a historic opportunity to create millions of good, high-wage jobs, virtually eliminate poverty in the United States, provide unprecedented levels of prosperity and economic security for all U.S. persons, and counteract systemic injustices.” The Green New Deal resolution outlines a vision of what we need to do to address the dual crises of climate change and runaway inequality. What policies and programs could help us realize that vision? My recent Labor Network for Sustainability discussion paper — Eighteen Strategies for a Green New Deal: How to Make Climate Mobilization Work — lays out a comprehensive strategic framework that draws on the experience of the original New Deal and the homefront mobilization for World War II. This framework envisions a Green New Deal active on a variety of fronts. The Green New Deal will use the powers of government to rectify past and present injustices. Green New Deal jobs protecting the climate will be available to those individuals and groups who’ve been denied equal access to good jobs, with job recruitment programs that include strong racial, gender, age, and locational affirmative action to counter our current employment inequalities. Green New Deal programs will also require standards for local hiring and minority business enterprises and provide job ladders within and across employers so those who currently face only dead-end jobs won’t face only dead-end jobs in the climate-protection economy. Green New Deal projects will remedy the concentration of pollution in marginalized and low-income communities and counter the deprivation of transportation, education, health, and other facilities in poor neighborhoods. The Green New Deal will ensure full employment. The original New Deal used the tools of what came to be known as macroeconomic or Keynesian economic policy to steer the economy as a whole. That New Deal employed budget deficits and other fiscal policies as well as low interest rates and other monetary policies to fight unemployment. Neoliberalism today has abandoned Keynesian full-employment policies and steered the United States into the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression, followed by an aftermath of ongoing income polarization and the impoverishment of millions of working people. The Green New Deal’s full-employment macroeconomic policies will reduce fears about climate protection’s impact on prosperity and also give working people a greater stake in the transition. The Green New Deal will guarantee jobs for all. To counter the insecurity of working class life in general and the specific fear that climate protection may lead to job loss, climate protection policies will incorporate the principle of a job for everyone who wants one. A Green New Deal government, if its other policies haven’t led to full employment, would serve as the employer of last resort for all who want to work, putting them into jobs in climate protection and other socially needed activities. Funding provided through this federal jobs guarantee — a commitment somewhat like the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration — will help nonprofits, local governments, and other agencies serving the public employ anyone who wants a job at a wage roughly comparable to the demands of the Fight for $15 campaign. The jobs guarantee will not exclude any individual or group of people who want to work and make whatever special provisions may be necessary to employ veterans, at-risk youth, ex-convicts, people with disabilities, and other people with special needs who face barriers to employment. These jobs will also pay an estimated $15 per hour plus benefits, including health insurance. By guaranteeing every person who wishes to work a public-option job with a wage twice the current federal minimum wage plus benefits, the Green New Deal will establish a standard that all employers will have to meet, ensuring that no working person will live in poverty. And the Green New Deal will also provide the education, training, and apprenticeship opportunities to help make this new economy a reality. The Green New Deal will ensure worker rights and good union jobs. Pay and benefit standards will offer working families a decent life and future. The Green New Deal will support “high road” employers, prevailing wage provisions like those required by the Davis-Bacon Act, and project labor agreements negotiated between unions and employers to ensure that climate protection jobs elevate rather than depress wages and working conditions. The Green New Deal — like the original New Deal — will establish a new framework that protects workers’ fundamental constitutional and human rights. The industrial mobilization during World War II reinforced the rights of workers to express themselves freely, bargain collectively, and organize for concerted action on the job. So will the Green New Deal. The Green New Deal will tax the rich. The Green New Deal offers us an opportunity for correcting our extreme inequality. We can tax the rich to help pay for climate protection. The Green New Deal will put to productive user the trillions of dollars that American banks, corporations, and investors have lying unused in their bank accounts — much of it from government giveaways billed as “economic stimulus.” And the Green New Deal will draw on the enormous resources of the fossil fuel industry. These resources should go to pay for the damage the industry has done to our Earth and every one of its people. The Green New Deal will use the trillions in tax breaks and subsidies given away to America’s wealthy and the corporations they run — and the wealth of the fossil fuel industry itself — to ensure that the transition to climate safety leaves ordinary Americans far better off.