THE GREEN NEW DEAL AND BEYOND

A strictly science-based plan for effectively addressing the dire realities of climate change.

Geneticist and science writer Cox begins with bad news, although good news is rarely in evidence. Earth’s average temperature is now 2.2 degrees higher than in the pre–fossil fuel era. This may sound trivial, but it is anything but. A rise of another half degree will produce widespread human suffering, but we are on course for a catastrophic nearly 6 degree rise by 2100. Activists advocate the Green New Deal plan that cuts carbon emissions to zero through transition to an economy running on non-fossil energy. After expressing admiration, Cox adds that it won’t work. As he writes, the assumption that “renewable energy coming on line each year will be matched by an equivalent amount of coal-, oil-, or gas-fired capacity going off line” is wrong. So far, it’s mostly added to the total energy pool. It’s imperative that we stop using fossil fuels and ditch our obsessions with economic growth, new technology, and quick-fix (and ineffective), market-oriented approaches such as carbon taxes. Cox proposes to ban all mining and extraction, possibly after nationalizing the fossil fuel industries. More realistic than the average activist, he points out that clean sources can’t replace these in the foreseeable future, so the world will have to get along with less energy. Since the poor benefit under the Green New Deal, the burden will fall on the wealthy and upper middle classes, whose standard of living may drop to that of Denmark or Switzerland, nations that use half the energy of the U.S. Cox’s audience, deeply worried about global warming, may protest that his prescriptions seem unrealistic as well as political poison. Anticipating this, he delivers a blunt rebuttal: “Weaning ourselves off high levels of energy use now is good practice for a future in which a weaning is going to happen, like it or not.”

Convincing, painful, and a long shot—but better than the alternative.