Excerpts From:
Future Hope Column, October 19, 2008
Making a Green Revolution
By Ted Glick

Making a Green Revolution. By Ted Glick, October 19, 2008.

“This is a review of three recently-published books on the climate crisis and what we need to do about it: 1) Thomas L. Friedman’s Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How it Can Renew America; Michael Brune’s Coming Clean: Breaking America’s Addiction to Oil and Coal, and Van Jones’ The Green Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems. All three of these authors are in agreement that the human-caused heating up of the earth, caused specifically by the destruction of forests and the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, has brought the world and the USA to a profoundly critical turning point. All agree that we need to move quickly to a world energy system based upon conservation, efficiency and renewable energy so that, in Van Jones’ words, ‘e can save our ability to survive on the only planetary home we have ever known.’ But... there are very real differences between them...

Friedman’s book... presents pretty much a top-down, elite perspective on the crisis... Friedman is very strong on innovation and the market. He says, ‘We are not going to regulate our way out of the problems of the Energy-Climate Era. We can only innovate our way out, and the only way to do that is to mobilize the most effective and prolific system for transformational innovation and commercialization of new products ever created’... Given the spectacular downfall of a Wall Street and banking establishment that has been barely regulated over the past decade, I wonder if Friedman sees things any differently now. It is problematic, also, that Friedman calls for government support for the building of 100 new nuclear plants... It is even more problematic when Friedman says that our carbon reduction objective is to avoid a doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial levels, or 560 parts per million (ppm) of CO2. This is completely off-target. The U.S.’s preeminent climate scientist, James Hansen, believes that our target has to be to bring CO2 levels down below 350 ppm; it’s at 385 right now...

Michael Brune doesn’t take an elitist approach; just the opposite. His book provides a wealth of information about the specifics of the problem we are confronting, what people are already doing about it and ways that new people can get involved. It is very much, as Brune describes it, a ‘book about action’... There’s much good information in the book about alternatives to the low-mileage-per-gallon, car-centered U.S. culture... There’s a chapter about solar and wind, the primary renewable energy alternatives... And there’s a similar kind of chapter about energy efficiency, a critical part of the solution, especially in the immediate short-term as we face the urgent task of dramatic and rapid reductions of our carbon emissions. My one overall criticism of Brune’s otherwise excellent book is that I did not feel a sufficient sense of urgency about the justice-based, clean energy path which he lays out...

Van Jones supports Al Gore’s vision in his book. In laying out the ‘Top Priorities for the Next President,’ he calls for him to ‘fully embrace the agenda of the climate-solutions group 1Sky: 1) create five million green jobs as a part of a plan to conserve 20% of our energy by 2015; 2) freeze climate pollution levels now, then cut them to at least 25% below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80% by 2050; and 3) ban the construction of new coal plants that emit global-warming pollution, promoting renewable energy instead. Better yet, the new president should publicly pledge to meet Al Gore’s challenge of making United States [electricity] 100% free of fossil fuels by 2018’... Jones’ book is different than the other two in a number of respects. One is the primary emphasis that he puts on the centrality of a ‘green jobs’ approach in the green/clean energy revolution. But it’s much more than that. For Jones ‘green jobs’ means above all else an understanding of the race and class dimensions of U.S. society, the necessity of shifting to a green economy that is inclusive, that brings in those who have been left out or kept at the bottom of the corporatized fossil fuel economy for a long, long time... Jones calls for a broadly-based ‘Green Growth Alliance’ that can build the political power to make these changes, an alliance bringing together labor, social justice activists, environmentalists, students, faith organizations and green businesses.

Ted Glick is the Policy Director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and is staff at the U.S. Climate Emergency Network and is a cofounder and steering committee member of CCC.

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