A People's Green New Deal - Paperback

by Max Ajl (Author)

"Hands-down the best book yet on the Green New Deal. Courageous, bold, refreshing....envisions an ecosocialist transition that is rooted in principles of global justice"--Jason Hickel, author, Less is More

The idea of a Green New Deal was launched into popular consciousness by US Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2018 as a way to fight climate change and address wealth inequality. It has become a watchword in the current era of global climate crisis.

But what, and for whom, is the Green New Deal? And when can we expect the US government, and other governments to commit themselves to facing what is clearly a planet-wide danger?

In this concise and urgent book, Max Ajl provides an overview of the various mainstream Green New Deals. Critically engaging with their proponents, ideological underpinnings and limitations, he goes on to sketch out a radical alternative: a "People's Green New Deal" committed to decommodification, working-class power, anti-imperialism and agro-ecology. Chapters include:

*Green Transition - or Fortress Eco-Nationalism?
*Change Without Change: Eco-Modernism
*Energy Use, Degrowth, and the Green New Deal
*Green Social Democracy or Eco-Socialism?
*The World We Wish to See
* Green Anti-Imperialism and the National Question

Ajl diagnoses the roots of the current socio-ecological crisis as emerging from a world-system dominated by the logics of capitalism and imperialism. Resolving this crisis, he argues, requires nothing less than an infrastructural and agricultural transformation in the Global North, and the industrial convergence between North and South. As the climate crisis deepens and the literature on the subject grows,

A People's Green New Deal contributes a distinctive perspective to the debate.

Author Biography

Max Ajl is an associated researcher with the Tunisian Observatory for Food Sovereignty and the Environment and a postdoctoral fellow with the Rural Sociology Group at Wageningen University. He has written for Monthly Review, Jacobin and Viewpoint. He has contributed to a number of journals, including the Journal of Peasant Studies, Review of African Political Economy and Globalizations, and is an associate editor at Agrarian South & Journal of Labor and Society.