The idea of a Green New Deal was launched into popular consciousness by US Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2018. Evocative of the far-reaching ambitions of its namesake, it has become a watchword in the current era of global climate crisis. But what - and for whom - is the Green New Deal?
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 degrowth, anti-imperialism and agro-ecology.
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.
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.
Discussants:
Roberta Biasillo is an environmental historian and Max Weber Fellow at the EUI. Her research interests include property regimes, natural disasters, and ecological imperialism. She is currently working on the making of Fascist Libya from an environmental history perspective.
Asad Rehman is the Executive Director of War on Want and a lifelong campaigner against racial, economic and climate in/justice. He is co-convenor of the Global Green New Deal Project to connect the climate crisis, neoliberal inequality, Covid and historical exploitation of the global South.
Chair:
Matteo Capasso is a Max Weber Fellow, whose research focuses on the impact of US-led imperialism toward countries of the Global South, and resistance to it. At the EUI, he is currently exploring these dimensions by focusing on Libya and Venezuela.
The seminar will be held on Zoom, please register for the link. It will be recorded so please turn off your camera if you do not wish to be recorded.