Name: A People's Green New Deal
ISBN: 9780745341750

Max Ajl

An urgent demand for a 'People's Green New Deal', foregrounding global agricultural transformation and climate justice for the Global South

A People's Green New Deal

Yonas

I found this book to be a great analysis of the limitations of the existing proposals to tackle climate change as well as a good exposition of the necessary components of what it would require to have a just “Green New Deal.” Ajl’s focus on anti-imperialism and application of theories such as dependency theory and unequal exchange with an ecological focus was very interesting and underlined the importance of including the most dispossessed globally in building a vision of the future. I personally am very interested in “third-worldist” and other socialist analysis with a focus on the global south that takes into consideration the set-up of the world system that leads to the dispossession of imperialized countries. Ajl’s analysis of world systems and the positionalities of the global north and south within the western hegemonic capitalist system and the relation this has to climate change and ecology was excellent and provided a holistic analysis that is often missing.

Ajl’s exposition of certain ideological threads in the climate solutions presented by hegemonic power was excellent. Chief of which is modernization theory and its ecological green successor “eco-modernization theory”. The discussions around land use and agriculture were also excellent, presenting a mix of scientific statistics along with political analysis and solutions that were very convincing and coherent. Diving deeper into the agrarian question is something I will have to do thanks to understanding its importance from Ajl’s writing. 

Overall a great, short book that does not forget the north is rich because the south is poor and centralizes that dialectical analysis in providing true solutions for global climate cooperation. The book’s brevity prevents Ajl from explaining some concepts in more detailed (a deeper dive into the India’s Green Revolution would’ve been great for example) but that is completely understandable as a short digestible book was achieved.

A People's Green New Deal

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