No time for delay- must act pragmatically now

(Kate Aronoff is a fellow at the Type Media Center and a contributing writer to the Intercept. Alyssa Battistoni is an editor at Jacobin and a PhD student in political science at Yale University. Daniel Aldana Cohen is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative, or (SC)2. Thea Riofrancos is an assistant professor of political science at Providence College. , 2-5)

This Jacobin series takes up those questions from a left perspective and with no illusions about the climate science. Time’s running short: this is the moment to start a broad debate on the practical challenges and possibilities of fast, transformative change. The Left can’t afford to sit out the biggest debate in half a century over how to restructure the economy. And we can’t leave saving the species from climatic catastrophe to a handful of politicians, their congressional staffers, and allied think tanks, however good their intentions. We can draw on a rich history of radical ideas, like the vision put forth by workers and communities in the Just Transition movement of the 1980s, which sought to counter the Reagan-constructed dichotomy between good jobs and environmental protection. But what will determine how the GND plays out is more than ideas — it’s who has the power to implement them. Not Your Neoliberal Columnist’s Green New Deal This time, the GND’s most visible and compelling champion isn’t a cliché-spouting columnist, but a democratic socialist with the political savvy to match her principles: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Within just a few weeks, AOC has reshaped the political landscape, putting everything from the GND to a 70 percent marginal income tax on the table. Her draft vision of a GND calls for a massive increase in federal government spending, paired with a job guarantee, to decarbonize the entire US economy by 2030. So far, so good. But the details are still vague. Which makes it easy to sign onto: politicians from Cory Booker to Michael Bloomberg are signalling tentative support for a GND. We’ve seen the same dynamic with Medicare for All — including the inevitable backtracking. There’s new energy in the Democratic Party, but Nancy Pelosi’s refusal to grant a Select Committee on a GND real power reveals the party’s limits. Growing but ambiguous interest in climate investment is no guarantee that the climate action we get will be big enough, fast enough, or egalitarian enough to prevent climate catastrophe and improve people’s lives in the process. Only a broad coalition built around short-term material gains for working people can muster the political power to force huge change and keep the planet habitable in the long term.