Will the real Green New Deal please stand up?

One of the first, and best, authors writing about climate disruption and its consequences is Bill McKibben. He started with The End of Nature and now, about 30 years later, has a recently published new book titled Falter. It's going on our "to be read" list. Each of these, and several other of his works, point out that "it doesn't have to be this way."

a disrupted climate means perpetual storm clouds

Photo by J. Harrington

Many of the issues and potential responses McKibben identifies are encapsulated in recent legislative documents at the national level and, even more recently, in a Minnesota-specific version. We spent much of today watching snow melt (even for the North Country, this April is anomalous) while wandering the back roads of the internet trying to find resources and sort out our thoughts on whether any of that recent activity represents real accomplishment. In the hopes that you're interested in the question, and to help save some of your time, here's a set of links to major pieces of the puzzle, as we see it [ymmv].

• National Green New Deal resolution (House version, H.Res.109)


• FactCheck.org The Facts on the ‘Green New Deal’


• Minnesota's Green New Deal (House version, HF 2836)


• Project Drawdown, 100 Solutions to Reverse Global Warming


• Green New Deal background and history


• The Green New Deal and Project Drawdown

So, we believe that the Green New Deal offers a solid basis for building the kind of cooperation and consensus needed to avoid, or at least moderate, the catestrophic effects of the forces we've unleashed. We further believe that using a candidate's support for (or lack thereof) the New Green Deal (in whatever the current consensus version is) might be a worthwhile litmus test for deciding which Democratic candidates to support in the upcoming national and Minnesota primaries. The folks that produced the "IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways" would no doubt appreciate it if we act on the fact that 2030 is no longer 12 years away, we are now down to 11 years and counting. And, taking a wild guess, we bet Bill McKibben wouldn't get too upset if his gloom and doom analyses were proven incorrect, or at least very premature, because the rest of us finally managed to figure out how to pull in the same direction.

Ovid on Climate Change

By Eliza Griswold

Bastard, the other boys teased him,

till Phaethon unleashed the steeds 

of Armageddon. He couldn’t hold 

their reins. Driving the sun too close 

to earth, the boy withered rivers, 

torched Eucalyptus groves, until the hills 

burst into flame, and the people’s blood 

boiled through the skin. Ethiopia,

land of   burnt faces. In a boy’s rage 

for a name, the myth of race begins.

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