[GWSG] AOC to mayors; Maddow's Blowout; Rifkin's GND; bank warning; model cities; Klein's On Fire

[Tilley, Al]

1. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gave the closing speech of the C40 World Mayors summit in Copenhagen, which has adopted a global version of the Green New Deal. She spoke passionately of the need to adopt “a cooperative, collaborative” system, “whose economy … benefits the middle and lower classes and marginalised people”. “Our current logic created this mess and operating in the same way will not get us out.” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/11/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-c40-world-mayors-summit-climate-crisis



2. Rachel Maddow’s new book Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth serves to illustrate Ocasio-Cortez’s “current logic.” Using the influence of oil in Equatorial Guinea, the history of fossil fuels in the US through the growth of the fracking industry, and Putin’s choice to reshape Russia as a petrostate, Maddow explains her subtitle. Climate comes in only for side comments. Maddow is interested in the process by which a basically non-political fossil fuel industry comes to corrupt, pollute, impoverish, and subvert its host countries. https://smile.amazon.com/Blowout-Corrupted-Democracy-Destructive-Industry/dp/0525575472/ref=sr_1_1?crid=GDTMQYDTME53&keywords=rachel+maddow+blowout&qid=1570878914&s=books&sprefix=maddow+%2Caps%2C178&sr=1-1



3. Jeremy Rifkin’s new book The Green New Deal: Why the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold New Plan to Save Life on Earth is another book which, like Rachel Maddow’s, announces its argument in its subtitle. Rifkin foresees the popping of the carbon bubble as soon as 2023. The financial structure of the fossil fuel industry is beginning to reflect the fact that we cannot burn their still-buried reserves. We are beginning to reform our lives around a carbon-neutral culture. The sooner we accomplish that, the better. He discusses UK’s Green New Deal Group which announced their plan in 2008, and describes the GND’s spread. Rifkin, who has been a significant adviser in both European and Chinese planning, imagines a fairly swift (though not painless) transition to a sustainable culture. The book focusses primarily on the US. Rachel Maddow’s Blowout details the disastrous choice of Russia and the US to become petrostates; Rifkin examines the remediation in the US in the coming years, though not the disruptive need to retreat from heat, drought, and flood, nor the challenge of protecting biodiversity, nor the need to remedy the damages to our oceans. He ends with his 23-part version of the Green New Deal (with a carbon tax) and a call for peer assembly governance.   https://smile.amazon.com/Green-New-Deal-Civilization-Collapse/dp/1250253209/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3O24NQM6U8BRO&keywords=jeremy+rifkin%2C+green+new+deal&qid=1570892101&s=books&sprefix=jeremy+rifkin%2Caps%2C177&sr=1-1





4. “Companies and industries that are not moving towards zero-carbon emissions will be punished by investors and go bankrupt, the governor of the Bank of England has warned.” Mark Carney said that corporate transparency is the key to a smoother transition to a zero carbon economy because it will enable investors to back firms with a future. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/13/firms-ignoring-climate-crisis-bankrupt-mark-carney-bank-england-governor



5. Seven award-winning cities demonstrate their prosaic but transformative projects: solar panels outside highrise apartments in Seoul, electric busses in Kolkata, urban green spaces in Medellin. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2019/oct/10/prosaic-but-practical-unsexy-ways-cities-can-fight-the-climate-crisis-in-pictures



6. “You have failed us all so terribly,” said fifteen-year-old Australian climate strike organizer Nosrat Fareha, addressing the political class as a whole. “We deserve better. Young people can’t even vote but will have to live with the consequences of your inaction.” (Page 4) Naomi Klein was listening, and her book On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal explores an answer to satisfy Fareha in this collection of her recent essays, arranged chronologically from 2010 to the present. Unlike Rifkin, her interest is in the outline of a Green New Deal agenda released by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey, now supported by most of the Democratic presidential candidates, 15 senators, and over 100 members of the House.  https://smile.amazon.com/Fire-Burning-Case-Green-Deal/dp/1982129913/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=naomi+klein&qid=1570980371&s=books&sr=1-1

Wikipedia on the 14-page Green New Deal resolution. Footnote 8 links to the resolution.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_New_Deal

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