Climate Fires and the Green New Deal: Naomi Klein and Keenaga-Yamahtta Taylor on the Impending Climate Crisis

As children, we may have heard about climate change in middle school science class and felt pity towards the polar bears stranded in the melting Arctic. But as time goes on, issues relating to the climate crystallize and become personally salient: the 2018 UN climate report stated that the global community has only 12 years to prevent the Earth’s temperature from increasing by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, otherwise sea levels are likely to rise by ten centimeters. In 2019, we are down to 11 years, and with our current White House administration, the number of years may now be even smaller. At this point, the UN can only seek to slow down the process of climate change, as it has already caused the destruction of homes, lives, and communities, dislocating millions. The Green New Deal, a radical departure from the halfheartedness and blatant apathy towards climate change seen within most government institutions, is sponsored by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey and seeks to ensure not only that climate change is combatted through investment in low carbon activities, but also that American lives are improved overall through policies like the implementation of a livable minimum wage. The Green New Deal proposes all these changes to go forward within ten years.

This was the topic of the conversation between Naomi Klein, Canadian journalist and author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author and assistant professor in Princeton’s Department of African American Studies, which took place on October 1 in Richardson Auditorium. Klein and Taylor are no strangers to criticizing capitalism; they spoke openly about workers’ oppression and the imperialist nature of the extraction of resources. Specifically, they discussed Klein’s most recent book, On Fire: the (Burning) Case for the Green New Deal, which urges its readers to wake up to the current climate crisis and uncovers the deeper level of harm wreaked by apathy.

During her opening remarks, Klein spoke of three fires that are affecting our world today: climate change, politics, and “our fire.” Climate change is responsible for the forced migration of millions, a consequence of the dramatically increasing amount of storms, wildfires, floods and likely hundreds of millions to come. As a result, a political fire is ignited, one that has world powers isolating migrants and asylum seekers through policies of displacement, such as ICE’s raids in America or Australia’s earlier “Pacific Solution” (a governmental policy whereby asylum seekers and migrants impacted by climate change were sent to neighboring countries in Oceania). Klein further pointed out that the increasing climate problem and the exclusionary practices of oppressive regimes in powerful countries fuel one another.

The last fire may be the most vital of the three. As opposed to the other two, “our fire” is not destructive but “life giving”; it “clear[s] away debris.” What Klein means is the mobilization of the youth, such as the Sunrise movement—which challenged Democratic leaders to stop ignoring the climate debate—and the activism of Greta Thunburg. Klein believes that this new climate change movement’s insistence upon planning  and the “building of infrastructure” sets it apart from other waves of protest such as Occupy Wall Street. Professor Taylor agreed and spoke of past sentiments on climate change as a type of cognitive dissonance, where one was aware of the crisis but was not sure how to fix it. The Green New Deal epitomizes a new kind of mindset of organized resistance. Regardless of any specific legislation with the intent to solve the climate issue, what is very clear to Klein and Taylor is that carbon taxes are not enough: we must act both quickly and radically.