Waking Up to Climate Action: A Review of On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal
By Caite Lindley
On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal by Naomi Klein. Penguin Random House UK, 2019.
We are facing a climate emergency
The major takeaway from Naomi Klein’s latest book, On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal is that we must act NOW and at all levels — personal, social, political, economic, international, spiritual — to safeguard, repair, and conserve our natural environment, planet earth, for ourselves, our children and our children’s children on into the future. The book primarily addresses an American audience but can also be read with great benefit by those who live in developed economies throughout the world.
Who is Naomi Klein?
Naomi Klein is an award winning journalist, author of four New York Times bestsellers (No Is Not Enough, No Logo, This Changes Everything, and The Shock Doctrine) and activist for human rights and ecological justice causes. She teaches at Rutgers University in Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies.
A Window of Opportunity
The proposal for a Green New Deal offers a starting point for implementing the sweeping changes we urgently need to put into place to meet the eleven-year window of opportunity to change our present trajectory of climate heating to contain the atmospheric level to a minimum of 2°C and preferably to 1.5°C by 2030. (Figures from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The purpose of the IPCC Special Report report is to show “the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty.” (The 2018 report can be found here: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/) The science is clear about the danger of overheating and the timeline is possibly even too optimistic.
The message is…
We can do it! We have the means. We need the determination to come together as a people, regardless of whatever differences we may have, to pull together to put new systems in place and to reform or discard outmoded models of approaching our systemic problems. The situation of life on earth as we know it now requires all humanity to understand where we stand and what must be done to bring our lives into harmony with the life cycle of the planet.
The Green New Deal Meets a Challenge
The idea comes from the first New Deal proposed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to meet the challenges of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s to put the country (USA) back to work on multiple levels: infrastructure, agriculture (including forestry, animal husbandry, and soil regeneration), rural electricity expansion, economic and financial (social security, government savings bonds) and artistic creativity (movies, music, photography, writing, dance to name a few).
The Green New Deal highlights the environmental imperatives that have become familiar to many, particularly tree planting, water harvesting, soil replenishment, and decarbonisation of vehicles. It calls for cessation of extracting any more fossil fuels from the earth. It calls for the inclusion of all people for decision making processes, meaning more local control of resources and how their use impacts their communities.
Living in Partnership with the Natural World
The First Nations of the American continents have always seen themselves as custodians of the lands to which they belonged. “The land does not belong to us; we belong to the land.” The wisdom of living in partnership with the natural world remains part of their treasured heritage, a wisdom which those who carry it are quite willing to share with the newer inhabitants of the Americas, who originated in other continents. One example of this is sharing of the native foods (corn, pumpkin, beans, and turkey) which allowed the survival of non-native settlers in the 1600’s. These foods have now grown familiar and are staples of the autumnal celebration of Thanksgiving and the traditional beginning of winter holiday dinners.
Listening to Wisdom
To meet the immense challenges we now face, willingness to listen to the wisdom of the First Nations’ peoples is crucial. They have taken their responsibilities as caretakers of the land very seriously over the centuries, and everyone can benefit from their knowledge regarding the care and restoration of habitat, along with the scientific discoveries regarding sequestration of CO2. The sense of needing to be more aware of humans co-habiting with other plant and animal species in our immediate environment is also a vital part of the Green New Deal.
A Message from the Future
I recommend this book for its thought-provoking reportage of difficult topics and events which have occurred in the past ten years, and for its presentation of the necessity for a Green New Deal. In service to the challenge, seeing the way of the future could be different through implementing the Green New Deal. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Avi Lewis and Molly Crabapple created a seven-minute video called A Message from the Future, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9uTH0iprVQ ).
Points to Consider
In the Epilogue to the book, Klein briefly outlines nine principles of the Green New Deal, and the author is quick to admit there is much that is not yet fully presented about the specifics of how such a plan might work out in practice. Klein summarizes nine principles of the Green New Deal in the Epilogue at the end of the book. Four of the most important ones are: 1) It will be a massive Job Creator; 2) Paying for it will create a fairer economy; 3) It taps the power of emergency; and 4) It’s recession-proof.
The nine principles are given as a starting point for creative discussion to really inspire all of us to realize that by taking action now we can make the necessary changes to continue living on a habitable planet. Here is a quote from the book that might lead to a fruitful discussion of how to approach climate heating denialists: “This is a crucial point to understand: it is not opposition to the scientific facts of climate change that drives denialists, but rather, opposition to the real-world implications of those facts.” (92)
The principles give you an idea of the Green New Deal approach to economic, social and environmental well-being for the coming decades. They address both economic injustice and climate issues, therefore the author believes the Green New Deal will have popular appeal. To learn more read and share this book.
Banner photo by Adam Bixby from Unsplash