Socialist Night School: Towards a Green New Deal
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In 2018 the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released an alarming report, stating that the world needed to steeply cut its carbon emissions and make radical changes in order to limit the planet’s temperature from rising to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. If that goal wasn’t met, the report predicted a horrifying increase in suffering for almost all life and ecological collapses.
In America, this report was met on the political Left by sustained calls for the abolition of capitalist exploitation of people and the planet. The rationale was that capitalism’s imperative for endless economic growth required massive amounts of energy, the vast majority of which is still produced through fossil fuels. Some of the specific responses were reinvigorated support for anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggles by Indigenous peoples, surges in attendance at climate strikes, and great support for proposals like the Green New Deal by elected officials.
East Bay DSA will explore this theme in a Socialist Night School mini-series, co-organized with our Green New Deal Committee. These three events will explore what it means to be an ecosocialist, the Red Deal and Indigenous struggle, and how to fight for a Green New Deal after Bernie.
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In this final Night School in our mini-series, we’ll attempt to answer a perennial question in our prior sessions: “How do we actually win a Green New Deal, especially after Bernie’s loss?” We’ve dedicated this time to making a space for us to attempt an answer.
Our readings offer an array of ways to understand a Green New Deal and strategies and tactics we might employ, to supplement our own ideas. And we’re joined by Thea Riofrancos, whose experience and expertise has already proved invaluable by way of her books, and who will speak with us about the continuing struggle to win a Green New Deal and our planet.
Thea Riofrancos is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Providence College, a member of DSA Ecosocialist’s working group Steering Committee, and co-author of A Planet to Win and Resource Radicals.
Readings:
Socialism or Barbarism — the fight continues!
“It’s Eco-Socialism or Death”: An Interview With Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson