Daniel Aldana Cohen

Kate Aronoff

Thea Riofrancos

Alyssa Battistoni

In the twenty-first century, all politics are climate politics. The age of climate gradualism is over, as unprecedented disasters are exacerbated by inequalities of race and class. We need profound, radical change. A Green New Deal can tackle the climate emergency and rampant inequality at the same time. Cutting carbon emissions while winning immediate gains for the many is the only way to build a movement strong enough to defeat big oil, big business, and the super-rich--starting right now. A Planet to Win explores the political potential and concrete first steps of a Green New Deal. It calls for dismantling the fossil fuel industry and building beautiful landscapes of renewable energy, guaranteeing climate-friendly work and no-carbon housing and free public transit. And it shows how a Green New Deal in the United States can strengthen climate justice movements worldwide. We don't make politics under conditions of our own choosing, and no one would choose this crisis. But crises also present opportunities. We stand on the brink of disaster--but also at the cusp of wondrous, transformative change.

Why We Need a Green New Deal

A Planet to Win

Capitalism is typically treated as a force for relentless commodification. Yet it consistently fails to place value on vital aspects of the nonhuman world, whether carbon emissions or entire ecosystems. In Free Gifts, Alyssa Battistoni explores capitalism’s persistent failure to value nature, arguing that the key question is not the moral issue of why some kinds of nature shouldn’t be commodified, but the economic puzzle of why they haven’t been. To understand contemporary ecological problems from biodiversity collapse to climate change, she contends, we have to understand how some things come to have value under capitalism—and how others do not. To help us do so, Battistoni recovers and reinterprets the idea of the free gift of nature used by classical economic thinkers to describe what we gratuitously obtain from the natural world, and builds on Karl Marx’s critique of political economy to show how capitalism fundamentally treats nature as free for the taking. This novel theory of capitalism’s relationship to nature not only helps us understand contemporary ecological breakdown, but also casts capitalism’s own core dynamics in a new light.

Capitalism and the Politics of Nature

Free Gifts

A era de medidas moderadas para combater as mudanças climáticas acabou. Ao passo que desastres sem precedentes estão se tornando cada vez mais comuns e fatais, inclusive por causa das desigualdades, precisamos de mudanças políticas profundas e radicais. Mas precisamos articular isso com políticas de reativação econômica, que não coloquem trabalhadores e ambientalistas em lados opostos do ringue, quando eles são, na verdade, aliados naturais contra os opressores. Um Green New Deal é a solução para enfrentar simultaneamente a emergência climática e a desigualdade galopante. Cortar as emissões de carbono e, ao mesmo tempo, gerar renda para a maioria da população é a única maneira de construir um movimento forte o suficiente para derrotar a dependência do petróleo, das grandes empresas e dos bilionários. O livro Um planeta a conquistar explora o potencial político e, também, os primeiros passos concretos de um projeto de desenvolvimento ambiental radical. Ele aponta para o desmantelamento da indústria que explora a natureza, a construção de belas paisagens de energia renovável, a garantia de um trabalho amigo do clima, moradias sem carbono e transporte público gratuito. Além disso, é um projeto totalmente viável que pode fortalecer os movimentos de justiça climática em todo o mundo. Não fazemos política nas condições que escolhemos e ninguém escolheria esta crise. Mas as crises também apresentam oportunidades. Estamos à beira do desastre ambiental – mas também à beira de uma mudança transformadora e radical. "O livro Um planeta a conquistar é um grito de esperança. Escrito no âmbito de um movimento social, trata-se de uma proposta pragmática e otimista de reconstrução das formas de produção e consumo. Bebendo nas fontes de tradições progressistas norte-americanas, a proposta articula o enfrentamento da catástrofe ambiental iminente, a catástrofe da concentração de renda e do racismo estrutural, imaginando um futuro de prazer e bem-estar". – Raquel Rolnik, professora da USP "Ao contrário de tentativas anteriores de implementar leis de combate às mudanças climáticas, o Green New Deal tem a capacidade de mobilizar um movimento de massas interseccional de fato — não apesar de sua imensa ambição, mas exatamente por causa dela". – Naomi Klein, escritora e ativista "Um planeta a conquistar chega no momento perfeito, desafiando-nos a encontrar esperança e construir um mundo mais justo diante da catástrofe. Os autores descrevem soluções transformadoras para a crise climática que são economicamente viáveis e politicamente possíveis – se nos organizarmos e lutarmos para conquistar". – Varshini Prakash, Diretora Executiva, Movimento Sunrise

A urgência de um Green New Deal

Um planeta a conquistar

A timely new critique of capitalism’s persistent failure to value nature Capitalism is typically treated as a force for relentless commodification. Yet it consistently fails to place value on vital aspects of the nonhuman world, whether carbon emissions or entire ecosystems. In Free Gifts, Alyssa Battistoni explores capitalism’s persistent failure to value nature, arguing that the key question is not the moral issue of why some kinds of nature shouldn’t be commodified, but the economic puzzle of why they haven’t been. To understand contemporary ecological problems from biodiversity collapse to climate change, she contends, we have to understand how some things come to have value under capitalism—and how others do not. To help us do so, Battistoni recovers and reinterprets the idea of the free gift of nature used by classical economic thinkers to describe what we gratuitously obtain from the natural world, and builds on Karl Marx’s critique of political economy to show how capitalism fundamentally treats nature as free for the taking. This novel theory of capitalism’s relationship to nature not only helps us understand contemporary ecological breakdown, but also casts capitalism’s own core dynamics in a new light. Battistoni addresses four different instances of the free gift in political economic thought, each in a specific domain: natural agents in industry, pollution in the environment, reproductive labor in the household, and natural capital in the biosphere. In so doing, she offers new readings of major twentieth-century thinkers, including Friedrich Hayek, Simone de Beauvoir, Garrett Hardin, Silvia Federici, and Ronald Coase. Ultimately, she offers a novel account of freedom for our ecologically troubled present, developing a materialist existentialism to argue that capitalism limits our ability to be responsible for our relationships to the natural world, and imagining how we might live freely while valuing nature’s gifts.

Alyssa Battistoni

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