A Global Green New Deal Would Avert Another Cold War

The future of humanity is threatened by two great— and intertwined—challenges: the climate crisis and the escalating great-power conflict between the United States and China. In order to overcome the climate crisis, we must replace great-power conflict with global cooperation. This will be particularly important when it comes to addressing global climate injustice, a crucial but frequently overlooked part of the struggle to end the climate crisis.

To overcome the climate crisis, we need a radical trans- formation of the global economy. A good model is a Global Green New Deal: the extension of the principles of the Green New Deal across borders. This would include the creation of a global clean energy economy that generates abundant good, green jobs in all countries, led by public investment. Although this would not yet be a post-capitalist global society, it would create better conditions to build more powerful socialist movements worldwide.

A Global Green New Deal is necessary in order to end the current conflict between economic development and climate action in the Global South, where the need for economic development is pressing and strong climate policies can make scarce opportunities for development seem even scarcer. Creating new green jobs in all countries would also eliminate the sense that workers in different countries are trapped in a zero-sum competition for scarce jobs, a mind- set that underlies much of the popular support for dangerous nationalist politics in the United States and around the world.