Hot & Bothered Podcast #5: Time for a Green New Deal, with Robert Pollin

Economist Robert Pollin joins us to introduce a new series on the promise—and practicalities—of a Green New Deal. We also get an update from Standing Rock, where the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline continues.

Wind farm in Lubbock, Texas (Sandia Labs / Flickr)

It’s Episode 5 of Hot & Bothered and all around us, the bad climate news is falling like hard rain from the hot, damp air of a warming world. Long story short: time is getting uncomfortably tight. But it’s still far from over! In this episode, we take shelter from the storm. It’s the first in our new series on the idea of a Green New Deal to slash carbon emissions, crush inequality, and rebuild our politics.

In our feature interview, Daniel speaks to Robert Pollin, an expert in the macroeconomics of climate change and energy; he’s a professor of economics and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. We talk about his proposal for a massive but utterly feasible program of investment in renewable energy, and how we can decarbonize the global economy while providing good jobs from the United States to India and beyond. All we need is to get the political ball rolling. And as Pollin points out, key coalitions are already mustering, both to support a Green New Deal and to keep fossil fuels in the ground.

Indeed, we start off the show with a report from the front lines of that fight: the indigenous-led encampment against the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock, North Dakota. Kate interviews Desiree Kane, a Miwok organizer and journalist who’s been at Standing Rock for the better part of the last three months.

Anxious listeners, tweet your sighs of relief, questions, comments, and support for #noDAPL to #HotBotheredClimate. And stay tuned for episode six in the coming weeks. In our pre-election special, Kate Aronoff will bring some of her own hard rain down on the Green Party.

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Bad news on our collapsing carbon budgets

Bill McKibben, Recalculating the Climate Math, The New Republic

Robert Watson, former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, The Truth about Climate Change, a sweeping new report

An update from Standing Rock

Standing Firm at Standing Rock: Why the Struggle is Bigger Than One Pipeline (Sarah Jaffe, Moyers & Company)

#noDAPL Communications Support Hub

Robert Pollin, Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Robert Pollin and Brian Callaci, A Just Transition for U.S. Fossil Fuel Industry Workers (The American Prospect)

Robert Pollin, Greening the Global Economy, MIT Press, 2015