Chomsky is a brilliant thinker in many areas of social issues and politics and his insight on climate change in this book is no different. This book explains what needs to be done to reduce or avoid a climate catastrophe in the near future and who need to be accountable toward making this happen. A dense, yet helpful read.

This is a book in two parts, one is Chomsky's views on the current political environment and Pollin's analysis of the Green Deal. It is probably one of the more up-to-date books on the climate political discourse, but still flawed in parts by Chomsky's opinions on other countries political stances. While I admire his intellect, I don't always agree with his political views.

The apparent goal of this book is to raise the subject of the Climate Crisis and those factors of current life that have led to where we are today and with a worrisome glimpse of where we could be down the road. There is a discussion, from different perspectives, about what those causes may be and then how we deal with each to reduce the risk of a bad outcome. The facts seem clear, that we need to recognize what we can and cannot change to solidify the future of our world for ourselves and future generations.
I found this to be a compelling read but it could have been simplified in its presentation.

#ClimateCrisisandtheGlobalGreenNewDeal #Netgalley #VersoBooks

I love the idea of this and think that its essential for people to educate themselves about climate change the the political struggle surrounding it. However, this format didn't really work for me. As an average, non-sciency person, a lot of it went over my head and I think that it would have been better in a format like a podcast or online article. Most people who this book would work for have probably already educated themselves directly from studies and primary sources about these topics.

If I’m being perfectly honest, this was hard for me to read. I’d read a section and at the end realized I hadn’t absorbed any of it. So this didn’t really work for me. However, I think if you have more of an analytic brain and prefer non fiction this could work for you! I am interested in learning more about the green new deal still, and will seek something out that works for me.

This book delivers what it needs to do. It's a sobering reminder of the challenge humanity faces, the obvious steps forward required, and the mass movements needed to execute said steps.

If Noam Chomsky is willing to plunge into the Green New Deal (GND) debate, I am certainly willing to read it. Unfortunately, Chomsky’s comments are mostly the same as in his political criticism. He defers to experts for environmental issues. Robert Pollin is that expert, and the two of them answer questions about the Green New Deal from Chronis Polychroniou in Climate Crisis and Global Green New Deal. Sadly, the questions are softball lobs meant only to advance the narrative, and no three-way argument ever takes shape. The book never heats up beyond tepid on the GND.

Chomsky is no fan of Donald Trump. In one of his first answers, he diverts to Trump in language he normally saves for linguists who disagree with his theories of language acquisition or generative grammar, where he is, to put it mildly, biting. “The Chief is an infantile megalomaniac, and very effective conman, who couldn’t care less if the world burns or explodes, as long as he can pretend to be the winner as he two-steps over the cliff waving his little red hat triumphantly.” That sets the stage for Chomsky’s criticisms of the US government’s activities in things environmental.

Just one example: In 2018 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a 500 page environmental impact statement on vehicle emissions. It said that since temperatures will rise by more than four degrees Celsius anyway, the amount of emissions from vehicles will make no significant difference. “If one can find a comparable document of similar malevolence in the historical record, I would be interested in knowing about it.” Classic Chomsky. Classic Trump administration. But he is not nearly as sharp, informed or focused on the Green New Deal, and that’s what the book is supposed to be about.

Pollin is more on topic. In fact, the whole nub of the book is his analysis of how to pay for the Green New Deal. It appears halfway through, and he is able to show it is most doable. If there is the political will.

The four funding sources are:
1, A carbon tax in which 75% of the proceeds are rebated to the public, and 25% into clean energy projects.
2. A transfer of funds out of the military budgets globally
3. A Green Bond lending program from the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank
4. The end of all fossil fuel subsidies, with 25% of amount channeled into clean energy projects.

Pollin backs them up with stats. In 2019 Credit Suisse calculated the total value of global financial assets at $317 trillion. The Green New Deal requires $2.4 trillion a year (at first). This is just 7/10 of one percent of those financial assets. He says the $1.3 trillion from public contribution net investment is all of 2.5% of GDP. That would allow the world to reach zero emissions by 2050, without breaking the bank. He does this for all four sources. Getting governments to agree however, is out of scope.

Sadly, rather reducing the 33 billion tons of carbon dumped into the ecosphere annually, we are still increasing. We’re now looking at 38 billion tons a year. With perhaps a temporary dip from the coronavirus pandemic.

In other words, there is no political will to accomplish anything at all. All of the Paris COP21 nations have failed to live up to their commitments. What is needed is a Franklin Delano Roosevelt to implement the New Deal by directing the entire government to focus on it. FDR mobilized the country to climb out of the Depression and then again to produce everything needed to win World War II. Both Chomsky and Pollin consider the ecological disaster to be an emergency of at least the same magnitude as the ones FDR faced. Like his program, the Green New Deal will create jobs and increase wealth – just not in fossil fuels. But short of an FDR in charge, this book shows no path to avoid oblivion at all.

If all it is is the four funding sources, this would have been better much received as a magazine article. It is not enough for a book.

David Wineberg

This is a book of two halves. The disappointing half, unfortunately, is the contribution of Noam Chomsky. Ranting, railing and rabble rousing – when he is not just regurgitating the works of eminent climatologists that is – Chomsky’s contribution is more a propaganda for his left leaning thinking than a discourse on saving the Planet by employing rational means. The much acclaimed thinker once again exhibits his laughably inadequate and puerile views on India’s internal affairs concerning Kashmir by equating Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party, the BJP with ‘Hindutva’ extremism.

Whatever Chomsky derails, Robert Pollin redeems. An American economist, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and founding co-director of its Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), Pollin provides an impeccably measured view of what he terms the Global Green New Deal – an ambitious target to mitigate if not downright obliterate the perils of Climate Change.

As Pollin informs his readers, in its Fourth Assessment Report issued in 2007, the IPCC proclaimed that if the global average mean temperature was to be stabilized at 2.0 Degrees Centigrade above the pre-industrial average, annual CO2 emissions needed to fall, roughly speaking, between, 4 and 13 billion metric tons by 2050. But as Pollin proceeds to illustrate the premier organisation for protecting our Planet began oscillating in its assessment when, in its Fifth Assessment Report released in 2014, the IPCC reduced the range of necessary emission reductions at 36 – 76 percent (from an earlier 60 – 88 percent), to achieve the same 2.0 Degree Centigrade stabilization point. If this makes your head reel, then digest this: in 2018, the IPCC shifted goal posts yet again, this time reverting to a more urgent and alarmist position!

To a great extent, the trajectory that climate policies take in the modern world, are driven by the philosophy of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism, in a departure from orthodox Economics, represents the nexus between governments and giant corporations where the former allows the latter to pursue the profit element with gay abandon. In the event, the profits of the corporations are adversely impacted or impaired, the governments step in with generous largesse in the form of bail outs.

Then there is also the scourge of what Pollin terms, ‘Industrial Agriculture.’ The use of Industrial Agriculture, according to the International Labour Organisation, contributes to, “soil degradation (the loss of organic matter as a result of over exploitation and mismanagement), Desertification and freshwater scarcity (through inadequate crop and land management), biodiversity loss, pest resistance and water pollution (resulting from change in land use eutrophication [i.e. over enrichment of water with minerals and nutrients, which induces excessive growth of algae], run-off and improper nutrient management.”

As Pollin highlights, Industrial Agriculture also results in four major inter-related channels:

Deforestation;
The use of land for cattle farming, consuming far more of the available earth’s surface than any other purpose, including growing crops for food;
Heavy reliance on natural gas based nitrogen fertilizers along with synthetic pesticides and herbicides to increase land productivity; and
The huge amounts of food that is grown but wasted
So is there any way to break this inextricable linkage between Capitalism and Corporation that would ensure preservation of the environment? Pollin proposes a New Green Deal that would ensure a zero carbon emission by 2050. In 2019, Credit Suisse had estimated that the total value of global financial assets was $317 trillion. Investments into clean energy to attain a zero carbon emission scenario by 2050 would involve a sum of $2.4 trillion dollars to be invested over a period of time beginning 2021. This represents 0.7% of the total value of the global financial wealth.

At the heart of Pollin’s Green New Deal lies four large scale funding sources to encourage and support public investments in clean energy. The four sources are:

A Carbon Tax, wherein 75% of the revenues derived from its levy are rebated back to the public. The remaining 25% would be channeled into clean energy investment projects;
A transfer of funds earmarked for the military/defense budgets across the world in general, but the United States, in particular;
A Green Bond lending programme under the aegis of both the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank; and
The elimination of all existing fossil fuel subsidies and the channeling of 25% of those funds into clean energy investments
Although bold in their sweep and innovative in their wake, it is easy to see objections being raised for these plans. Proposal number two above, involving the diversion of budgets earmarked for defense, to clean energy investments, would more than just stir a hornet’s nest. With China ultra-aggressively challenging America’s economic and military hegemony, and actively pursuing a modernization plan of its maritime arsenal especially in the South China Sea, it is predictable as to what the Trump administration’s reaction would be to such a proposal. More so, considering the fact that this is a Government that has almost succeeded in expunging the world ‘climate change’ from all its official correspondence, cut funding for the Environmental Protection Agency and dragged USA out of the Paris Climate Change Conference.

“Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet” is at once a highly absorbing as well as an informative work. Robert Pollin brings to bear his enviable experience and conflates the principles of economics with that of the environment. This concoction, is, putting it mildly, delectable. The calm, rational and logical postulations of Pollin serves as a perfect antidote to an unending torrent of diatribe that is ‘Chomsky Speak.’

Overall this is one book that makes the reader not just think about the future that the coming generation will inherit but also about the inevitable role which each one of us has an opportunity to exercise in influencing the direction that such a future would assume.

(Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet – Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin with Chronis Polychroniou a Verso Books endeavour in the USA will be published on 22nd September, 2020)