A review of Jeremy Brecher’s Green New Deal From Below
When I use the phrase green transition in this review, I’m referring to the shift of human society away from a reliance on the burning of fossil fuels — creating a new economic arrangement that can set society on a sustainable ecological path. The Green New Deal is a set of policies or a policy platform that is a particular strategy for the green transition. The Green New Deal is not just about moving the economy away from burning fossil fuels, however, but has a dual goal, which Jeremy Brecher describes this way:
“At its core, the Green New Deal would work toward saving the climate by meeting scientific targets for the reduction of greenhouse gases. It would seek to end the epidemic of poverty by mitigating deeply entrenched racial, regional and gender-based inequalities in income and wealth and distributing federal aid and other investment equitably to historically impoverished and marginalized communities. It would provide good jobs, constructing a just and climate-safe economy.” (p. 4)
Nowhere in this book, however, does Brecher explain what “good jobs” mean or what a “just economy” might be. In this book and other books (such as Common Preservation) Jeremy Brecher assumes the green transition can happen within the framework of capitalist society. Brecher implicitly assumes a “green” capitalism is possible. But the inherent logic of capitalism includes a constant search to shift costs — on to workers, frontline communities and nature. This results in many forms of environmental devastation. And the capitalists and their class organizations (such as the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable) will put on a persistent fight for their right to use nature as a dumping ground. This is why many on the left think a transition to eco-socialism is necessary. For Brecher, however, eco-socialism is “an impossible leftist fantasy.” On the contrary, I would say it is “green” capitalism that is the impossible fantasy.
That said, I would agree that major reforms that move society along the path of the green transition are possible within the capitalist framework. But I suspect these will require a high level of mass, disruptive action and mass opposition — and this may take us beyond the limits of the strategy Brecher is describing.
Brecher recognizes that the Green New Deal has been blocked at the federal level — though Biden’s Inflation Reductio Act was at least a small step in that direction. Together with that law, Biden issued an executive order (called the Justice40 Initiative) that directed federal agencies to deliver at least 40 percent of the “overall benefits” of their environmental and energy spending to “disadvantaged communities that have been historically marginalized and overburdened by pollution and underinvestment.” This was hailed as a major breakthrough by environmental justice organizations. And now the Trump regime has issued various edicts to block or roll back any threats to fossil fuel capital — including an executive order cancelling the Justice40 Initiative.
Brecher describes the Green New Deal From Below as an attempt to “outflank” this blockage by taking the fight to “hundreds of arenas at state, local, and civil society levels.” According to Brecher, “The Green New Deal from Below is…a hybrid movement, one that operates both inside and outside the dominant political framework.” Brecher describes “the dominant political framework” as consisting of “established and aspiring elected officials, party leaders, government bureaucrats and electoral activists.” Pursuing change through this “dominant political framework” would be an approach based on the activity of bureaucratic layers in government and political parties. As such this would be working for the green transition “from above.” I would also suggest that initiatives of the full-time union officials without this being an effort originating in participation by the union members would also be pursuing change “from above.”
Brecher describes his “Green New Deal from Below” as a hybrid approach that “operates both inside and outside the dominant political framework.” In addition to the activity through the “dominant political framework”, the strategy: “also includes communities, ethnic groups, labor organizations, and a great range of other constituencies existing in civil society.” This strategy
“pursues its objectives through a combination of conventional political methods like supporting candidates, proposing and lobbying for legislation, and educating and persuading the public; and direct action methods like occupying the offices of politicians, blocking the building of fossil fuel pipelines, and participating in and supporting strikes that aim for a just transition to a climate-safe economy.” (p. 8)
It seems to me this “inside/outside game” is more accurately described as pursuing the Green New Deal agenda both from above and from below.
It will be useful here to contrast Brecher’s strategy with green syndicalism, which also advocates building the struggle for the green transition “from below.” As we’ll see, there is some overlap in the sense that green syndicalists will agree with aspects of Brecher’s strategy, such as the building of coalitions or a united front between unions, grassroots environmental groups, and other kinds of grassroots community organizations.
Green syndicalism is based on the idea of building labor unions and tenant unions (and other organizations of struggle) that are self-managed — controlled by their members — and building militant direct struggle through things like strikes, occupations, and mass marches. An example of this organizing among tenants exists in the work of the Network of Autonomous Tenant Unions. A third element of green syndicalism is mutual support and coalition building among unions and other grassroots community organizations. Building the self-managed mass organizations to scale and building towards an alliance of unions and other social movement organizations is the green syndicalist strategy for a shift to a self-managed form of eco-socialism. We can see inklings of this occurring in an organic way already. Thus syndicalists understand social change “from below” to refer to participation by working class people in direct struggle and developing the agenda for change, and self-managing the organizations they use to advance the struggle. I’ll come back to this in my conclusion.
Green Unionism
Green syndicalism is based on the recognition that workers — and direct worker and community alliances — can be a force against the environmentally destructive actions of capitalist firms. We use the phrase “green unionism” to refer to actions of workers and their unions to resist the environmentally destructive activities of their employers.
Brecher describes several cases of green unionism, such as the efforts of nurses and teachers to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions generated by schools and hospitals. Another example would be union efforts to push for electric school buses.
An example of green unionism in action is the April 2023 strike of the American Association of University Professors-American Federation of Teachers (AAUP-AFT) local union at Rutgers University in New Jersey. This union includes graduate student employees as well as faculty. A number of the members are long-time climate activists and climate scientists.
Back in 2019 the union adopted a resolution demanding that the university “through bargaining and other means” develop a climate action plan for “carbon neutrality in all University operations by 2030.” After years of campaigning, a march of 700 students, faculty and staff marched in New Brunswick in coordination with the Global Climate Strike. The union initiated “Freedom Schools” to do popular education around the problem of global warming. (p. 59) These organizing efforts over a period years shaped the demands of the April 2023 AAUP-AFT strike at Rutgers. The union was successful in getting the university to agree to set up a committee with labor, management and community representatives to plan a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions produced by the university.
The Rutgers struggle is a good example of “worker counter-planning” — posing a more ecologically sustainable path for a workplace or industry. The 2022 strike of the United Electrical Workers Union at the Erie locomotive works was another recent example (not discussed by Brecher). In that case the workers demanded that they use their skills and the equipment to build “green locomotives” — such as battery-powered switching engines.
Another recent struggle in this direction was at Rolls Royce in Britain — a major manufacturer of jet engines. In that case the workers and their union were able to get an agreement from management to investigate ways the workers could use their skills and the equipment to make low carbon products.
The recent strike of 400,000 German transit workers for lower transit fares as well as a wage increase is another example of green unionism. That strike had the support of virtually all of the environmental organizations in Germany. Support for worker action by environmental organizations was also present in the United Auto Workers union “stand up” strike against the Big Three US automakers. The UAW could see the inevitability of the green transition and sought organizing rights in new battery plants, decision-making rights of workers in plant transitions, and the right to strike over plant closures, to negotiate the terms of the green transition.
The Just Transition
There are currently many workers and communities that are dependent on fossil fuel extraction, refining and fossil fuel use in various industries. If fracking is banned or coal-fired power plants are shut down, what happens to the people who were working in those jobs? What happens to communities that financed their schools and other city programs from property taxes paid by coal mines, power plants or refineries? A “just transition” to a decarbonized economy requires that we don’t throw these people under the bus. We will need to compensate these workers and communities for their losses. The fight for a just transition is also an aspect of green syndicalism and another area where there is an overlap with Brecher’s Green New Deal from Below strategy.
Robert Pollin distinguishes between “thin” and “thick” versions of the just transition. If a program simply includes assistance in job search, retraining, and relocation expenses, this is what Pollin calls a “thin” form of the just transition. In the American labor movement, programs of this sort are derided as “burial insurance.” Some of the state just transition programs listed by Brecher are of this “thin” variety.
A more robust or “thick” version of the just transition would include things like pension guarantees, new jobs, and supplemental payments if the new wage is lower than what a worker was earning previously. A thick form of just transition would include state subsidies for communities that lose taxes due to closures of mines or coal-fired power plants. Robert Pollin’s organization, PERI ( https://peri.umass.edu/ ) worked with a labor and community coalition for an initiative in Washington state that would have included a wage guarantee for displaced workers:
“An unprecedented aspect of [the initiative] was its earmarking of funds from the pollution fee to provide support for fossil fuel workers whose livelihoods might be harmed by the transition away from fossil fuels…Provided that $50 million must be ‘set aside, replenished annually, and maintained’ for worker-support program for workers…This included a ‘wage guarantee’ to make up the difference for workers forced to accept jobs with lower pay.” (p. 129).
This initiative was defeated through a massive ad campaign funded by the fossil fuel industry. But the Washington initiative then became the model for laws passed by the Colorado state legislature, such as the Displaced Energy Worker Bill of Rights. As Brecher describes, this was the result of difficult negotiations between a labor union coalition and another coalition based in community and non-profit organizations. The result was a united front in their lobbying of the state legislature. The Colorado law requires financial advice, continuation of health care and retirement benefits, tax credits for any new business a displaced worker sets up, full college scholarships, and five years of tax base replacement for the local communities. (Robert Pollin — with the help of others in PERI — have produced state green transition plans for Colorado, Main, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and West Virginia.)
Most of the actual shut down of fossil fuel operations in the USA has been shut downs of coal-burning power plants. In 2010 the USA had 530 active coal-fired power plants. As Brecher reports: “Hundreds of local initiatives, many backed by the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, have led to the completed and planned closing of 353 of them.” In many cases this has led to loss of property taxes that support local schools. An example is the 2022 shutdown of the San Juan Generating Station on the Navajo Nation: “Eighty percent of the property taxes that fund…schools in the area come from nearby power plants, mines and associated businesses.” (p. 115)
Colorado is a state where coal-mining has been a significant industry. Thus the shutdown of mines has an impact on rural communities. The Coal Transition Worker Assistance Plan gained $10 million from the state in 2022 to “provide coal workers and their families funding to cover apprenticeship and retraining programs, childcare services, housing assistance, and other expenses” and provided another $5 million for economic development in the affected communities. (p.132)
Unions have occasionally been able to negotiate their own green transition projects. An example would be the United Mine Workers Union partnering with a company to set up a battery plant in West Virginia to employ 350 displaced coal miners.(p. 45)
With the green transition handwriting on the wall, and examples of states and cities working on “just transition” measures, this puts pressure on other states to do likewise. The Illinois legislature, for example, passed a Climate and Equitable Jobs Act which includes just transition measures via a “Displaced Energy Worker Bill of Rights.” This is intended to support workers who lose their jobs in cases of closures of fossil fuel power plants, coal mines, or nuclear power plants. The measure provides retirement packages, financial advice, full tuition scholarships, and tax credits for businesses that hire displaced workers, and also provides replacement for lost tax revenues to local communities.
As Brecher points out, many projects under the Green New Deal label are “designed to provide jobs, access, and training to local communities.” Will wages be lower in the green economy? The wages and conditions of workers in areas of the “green” capitalist economy is an area where the just transition comes into play. Brecher cites the 2021 Clean Energy Workforce Report, which says the pay for green energy workers is 30 percent higher than the national median wage. There is also a higher than average unionization rate here.
Nonetheless, there are some areas where there have been complaints of low pay and unsafe conditions — such as residential solar panel installation. In some cases, union-backed coalitions have been successful at getting state legislation to mandate “Project Labor Agreements.” This is where the developer of a project is required to negotiate with unions over the pay and conditions for this project. The Illinois Climate and Equitable Jobs Act requires project labor agreements for utility-scale wind and solar projects. All non-residential projects are required to pay the “prevailing wage.” (p. 34) This effort was part of a campaign led by the Climate Jobs Network (http://www.cinrc.org/) which Brecher doesn’t detail.
In Maine the unions were able to get a requirement for a project labor agreement for the state’s first offshore wind project. In the wake of that victory a dozen unions and the state AFL-CIO federation have created a Maine Labor Climate Council to work out a labor movement vision for “how to tackle the twin crises of climate change and inequality” and provides “a seat at the table for workers and unions” in this fight. (pp. 60-61)
Despite his discussion of these just transition plans in various states, Brecher leaves out the work done by the Texas Climate Jobs Network (https://www.txclimatejobs.org/) which managed to get the Texas AFL-CIO labor federation to adopt a Green New Deal platform — assisted by Ryan Pollock, a DSA and IBEW member. This effort was inspired by the successful “No Coal in Oakland” campaign of the Alameda County labor council. This was a campaign backed by 21 local unions. The developer of the proposed coal export terminal at the Port of Oakland has still not been able to get permissions from the city of Oakland, due to union opposition.
The Green New Deal in Cities and States
Although this book is only 180 pages of text (not counting the end notes), it is packed with many examples of state and city programs — and local coalitions pushing for programs that fit in with the Green New Deal agenda. I will only describe a few selected examples in this review. The programs and initiatives discussed by Brecher are concentrated in a handful of American states and cities with concentrations of unions and Democratic Party control of state legislatures — “blue states,” in other words.
Sometimes the overview of legislation is a bit superficial. He mentions various examples of state legislation or pronouncements by government leaders that set goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by a certain date. In some cases these seem merely aspirational as we’re not told what will ensure these goals are met. Environmentalists are often critical of these announced goals that lack the actual means to achieve the desired result. It’s “greenwashing,” they say. I think Brecher is trying to show how widespread the movement for the Green New Deal agenda is. And we can see this as a reflection of the social pressure for the green transition — reflected in the many local or regional coalitions that he describes.
Nonetheless, the state measures go beyond aspirations. The Illinois Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, for example, provides rooftop solar funding for low-income homeowners and renters, and requires shut down of all coal-fired power plants by 2030. Municipally-owned power plants must reduce emissions 45 percent by 2035 and 100 percent by 2045. Private gas-fired power plants must freeze their emissions and shutdown by 2045. (p. 33)
There are also many examples of tangible progress. A number of cities — including Los Angeles, Boston and San Francisco — are making efforts towards electrification of school bus and transit fleets. There are also efforts to electrify other city vehicles. Another example of tangible progress (not mentioned by Brecher) was the environmental-justice group led “polluter pays” campaign against the Contra Costa County refineries in California. After a long struggle Chevron (operator of a major refinery in Richmond) did eventually settle and agreed to most of the campaign’s demands.
In 2019 the Los Angeles Green New Deal was launched by then-mayor Eric Garcetti. The plan had very aggressive goals such as zero-carbon electricity by 2035 and zero-carbon new buildings by 2030 and all buildings by 2050. The plan laid out 445 initiatives aimed at reaching the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. Brecher doesn’t explain how this would be achieved. But the city did re-assess how much it had achieved in May, 2022. Their assessment claims the city had met 60 percent of its 97 Green New Deal goals. The city was getting 43 percent of its electricity via renewables, and was ahead of schedule on setting up electric vehicle charger stations. Around this time the city also established a moratorium on all oil drilling (in a city that originally had many oil fields) and allocated $110 million to decarbonize nine city properties. Ordinances were also passed to prohibit use of natural gas in new developments. Thus new buildings are required to be all-electric. These measures partly reflect grassroots pressure from Leap LA, an alliance of environmental justice organizations. But there is still the huge task of retrofitting older buildings.
Some “eco-modernists” (such as Matt Huber) think any approach to de-carbonizing electricity must be based on centralized utility-scale projects. In fact distributed solar can play a significant role. Solar power has been growing very rapidly. As Brecher reports: “The amount of solar power installed in 2020 in just seven cities” was larger than all the solar units installed in the USA in 2010. (p. 80) Community solar projects are also discussed by Brecher, such as the “solar gardens” developed in Denver for an affordable housing complex and “community solar” projects in other states. California enacted a proposal in August, 2022 to provide support for community solar with battery backup for low-income communities. Previously, California had passed legislation requiring solar panels on all new residential buildings of three stories or less.
But it’s not enough to build out the capacity of renewable electricity production. Fossil fuels need to be phased out. Most of the discussion of this in the book concerns the phase out of the coal-fired power plants, as I discussed earlier. However, both the city of Los Angeles and the state of California have made moves to phase out all oil and gas extraction in California. As Brecher writes: “After years of pressure from environmental justice, public health, labor, and climate organizations, in April [2022] Governor Newsom announced a ban on fracking projects by 2024.” (p. 37) This means that one of the highest oil and gas producing regions in the world has made a commitment to phase-out oil extraction. Another initiative along this line was banning sale of gas-powered cars by 2035. The state of California is also providing cash to local jurisdictions to electrify school bus fleets.
The many actual movement actions to block the fossil fuel industry — like the XL pipeline blockade initiative by indigenous people — are an aspect to the struggle for phase-out, from below. There are efforts in a number of states to block Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) projects. These CCS projects are typically used by the fossil fuel industry to increase oil and gas extraction by pumping carbon dioxide into depleted fields.
As Brecher points out (in Chapter 8), a fourth of greenhouse gases produced in USA derive from the transportation sector — private cars, delivery vans, big trucks, aviation, school and transit buses, and diesel locomotives. In addition to efforts such as expanding the charger station infrastructure for private cars, Brecher also discusses moves to electrify transit buses (as in Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles), and moves to electrify school buses and city- and state-owned vehicle fleets. There is still a long ways to go on this front.
Moreover, American metropolitan regions were built up around vast, auto-dependent suburban sprawl in the decades after World War 2. Part of the effort to decarbonize our economy also has to look at changing the built environment — such as more compact “mixed-use” patterns that encourage walking or taking public transit rather than driving. This can include construction of compact housing adjacent to rapid transit or bus transit stations. Unfortunately, a lot of the “transit-oriented development” talk has been taken over by for-profit capitalist developers — to help them gain approval for their profit-oriented projects. Except for token amounts of “inclusionary” units (required by law), the capitalist real estate industry doesn’t build much housing for the working class. However, Brecher also discusses affordable social housing developments built around rapid transit stations in Chicago (around the Logan Square Blue Line station) and around MARTA stations in Atlanta. In addition to promotion of public transit, street infrastructure for pedestrians and bicycles are also part of an approach to reducing the demand for miles of personal motorized travel — another aspect of reducing greenhouse gases produced by American society.
The examples discussed thus far are from various “blue states” but Brecher also talks about a grassroots climate justice initiative in the deep south. The Gulf South for a Green New Deal is a major network of grassroots organizations in the five states along the Gulf of Mexico from Texas to Florida. This was the result of a gathering of “eight hundred advocates, farmers, fisherfolk and community leaders” in May, 2019. Their goal was to develop a shared vision of regional sustainability in response to the global climate crisis. They declared that the federal government has an obligation “to create a Green New Deal with the promise to create millions of new high-paying jobs and counteract systemic injustices.” In their view, the Green New Deal “must prioritize the needs and voices of those disproportionately impacted”: “Indigenous Peoples, communities of color, migrant communities,…rural communities, low-income workers, women, elderly, LGBTQ+ people, the unhoused, people with disabilities, youth, and people with criminal records.” (p. 73)
The groups in this network have been organized around state-by-state “hubs” which are groups of local grassroots organizations and initiatives. In Alabama there have been campaigns to elect people to the public utilities commission to advocate for electric power coops. In Miami there has been a campaign for worker coops. And farmworker organizations in Florida — with a large immigrant farm labor force — have organized around immigrant rights. Because of the major presence of the oil and gas industry in Louisiana, there has been organized opposition to Carbon Capture and Storage projects. The “biomass” industry is rooted in these states and cuts forest to process into wood pellets which are burned in power plants for electricity. In Mississippi there is a campaign going on to attack this “biomass” industry as a false solution to global warming. As one report put it: “in reality, burning forests for electricity releases more climate-warming pollution than burning coal, all while degrading Southern forests and harming nearby communities.” A group involved in this effort is the Global Justice Ecology Project (https//globaljusticeecology.org) which was initiated by two green unionists who were comrades with Judi Bari in the struggles against hyper-extractivism in the northern California forests in the 1990s.
Harder Collective Action Is Needed
Coalition building and grassroots constituencies working out a shared agenda is certainly an essential part of the idea of mass struggle “from below” — and Brecher describes various cases of this. Though mass actions like pipeline blockades or strikes figure occasionally in Brecher’s story, they are not the main focus. Most of Brecher’s examples are cases that are, in essence, lobbying politicians. Relying on professionals of representation to do things for us is not my idea of struggle “from below.” “Lobbying,” as I’m using the term here, refers to efforts of leaders, such as union officials, to negotiate with politicians and parties. This differs from attempts to pressure politicians via mass protests or occupations of their offices.
How should we understand the idea of masses of working people engaging in a fight to change society “from below”? If we look at this from a green syndicalist point of view, the working class — understood broadly, with its great internal diversity — has to build its own movement that it controls in order to propel change that furthers working class freedom and well-being. To change the society, you must have the social power to bring that about.
The working class has the advantage of numbers, but it needs to build organization to marshal its forces. The working class also has the advantage of its position in the economy. Through direct action such as strikes, workplace occupations and blockades, workers can bring the flow of profits to a halt, or shut down a government agency. Rent strikes can cut off a landlord’s revenues. Support for worker action can also take the form of people from the community joining picket lines and building of alliances between labor and community organizations.
Green syndicalism follows an “extra-parliamentary” strategy based on mass self-organization and the power of disruptive mass actions that develops independently of the politics of parties and elections. In addition to member-controlled mass organization and mass action, the third element in the syndicalist strategy is the building of a wider and more active solidarity between the different working class sectors and the various disadvantaged and oppressed groups — the groups making up the broad, diverse working class majority. Building a stronger working class social force is going to require revival and expansion of unionism and worker militancy and solidarity. Environmental groups also have an important role to play in this process, as shown in the support of environmental groups in various green unionist actions. More widespread bonds of mutual support has reached its high points historically in actions such as general strikes or a “social strike,” that is, widespread social non-compliance.
As the French anarcho-syndicalist auto-didact Emile Pouget put it, the “union is a school for the will.” As people build power through banding together and building actions of resistance to the employers (or landlords), they develop more of a sense of their potential power for forcing change. As power grows through wider action and mutual support, people often change their aspirations for change. And the presence of radical “militant minorities” have often been able to connect with popular grievances, to help inspire a vision of social change. And this includes the radical vision of workers self-managing the industries, eliminating the autocratic managerial regime and capitalist exploitation. The development of working class social power through action and organization is essential for this change of consciousness. If people don’t see working class social power as an actual presence in society, they are less likely to believe in the possibility of radical change from below.
What I’m describing here is the more or less protracted process that Marxists call class formation. This is one of those ideas where anarcho-syndicalism and Marxism overlap. Class formation is a protracted process, as the working class “forms” itself into a more cohesive force, overcoming internal divisions (as around race and gender), builds its organization and confidence and gains greater mutual support — building a social movement alliance or Class Front around a common agenda. The working class doesn’t really have the power to replace capitalism with a labor-managed, socially accountable, ecologically sustainable mode of production without the social power built through this process.
Some might deride this idea of class formation as “religious.” But its basis is not apriori Marxist metaphysics. It’s an empirical hypothesis and various revolutions and mass worker movements provide evidence for it — from the Spanish working class seizure of 80 percent of Catalonia’s economy in the 1930s to the general strike and widespread workplace occupations in Chile in October, 1972.
Some people might say, “We don’t have the time for this protracted process that could take decades to work itself out. We must eliminate the reliance on fossil fuels in a short period of time.” I would argue, however, that the building of mass grassroots organization and hard, disruptive struggle from below — the strategy advocated by green syndicalism — is exactly what we need to make more progress in the fight against global warming in the present social framework.
Brecher describes many grassroots initiatives and coalitions. Even though the “inside/outside” strategy Brecher describes is probably not sufficient to actually address the environmental crisis that we face, grassroots efforts can be built up and further alliances worked out which could lead to a real green transition — but this is likely to require a transition beyond capitalism.
Tom Wetzel is the author of Overcoming Capitalism: Strategy for the Working Class in the 21st Century.