In These Times To Release Special Climate Issue

Contact: Jessica Stites
Phone: (773) 772-0100x242
Email: jessica@inthesetimes.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
IN THESE TIMES RELEASES SPECIAL ISSUE ON CLIMATE CHANGE

On April 22, In These Times is releasing our first-ever cover-to-cover themed issue. Every story in the May 2019 magazine directly addresses the climate crisis and helps construct a comprehensive and just vision of how to zero out greenhouse gas emissions.

According to The Solutions Project, the technology exists to swiftly transition the country to zero emissions. But the policy does not. Many proposals have been made, but few address the full scope of the problem. Some focus only one sector (on energy, for instance, while ignoring agriculture and deforestation); some put too much trust in market mechanisms; others present a technological pathway without a political program.

The Green New Deal proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey offers, perhaps for the first time, a framework of the scale and ambition we need. Yet it’s only a framework, a set of goals and principles. The next step is a real, detailed plan to fill in that framework. This ambitious issue of In These Times aims to do exactly that, inviting expert progressive thinkers to address each aspect of zeroing out emissions, and to lay out the political and economic change necessary to get there. Contributions include:

• Climate journalist Kate Aronoff on reining in fossil fuels through aggressive supply-side policy, from ending subsidies to banning offshore drilling to nationalizing major companies and phasing them out
• Gar Alperovitz and Johanna Bozuwa of The Next System Project on building up an equitable and renewable-powered energy system, putting utilities under democratic control through a mix of decentralized local projects and large-scale central planning
• Eric Holt-Gimenez of Food First on transforming food production through a government-supported shift from industrial overproduction to environmentally friendly, agroecological farming methods
• Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson on changing the way we manufacture and consume to limit resource extraction, integrate production and reuse with ecological systems and shift the priority from individual, disposable consumer goods to a collective commons
• Jeremy Brecher of the Labor Network for Sustainability on providing a just transition for workers and a climate-oriented jobs guarantee
• Basav Sen of the Institute for Policy Studies on a progressive approach to international climate policy, calling on the U.S. to commit to direct aid, reforming intellectual property law to facilitate technology transfers and renegotiating trade agreements to keep multinational corporations from challenging local and national environmental regulations.

Also inside:
• Ashley Dawson, Tobita Chow and Thea Riofrancos debate whether we can beat climate change under capitalism
• Sarah Lazare and Simon-Davis Cohen expose how corporations, police and state legislatures are trying to suppress fossil-fuel protests
• A “Letter from 2049” by Meera Subramanian imagines day-to-day life after a just transition
• Dispatches by Ari Bee on youth climate strikes; Alex Lubben on “managed retreat” from disappearing shorelines; and Aaron Fernando on public banking for green infrastructure

This magazine offers a teaching tool for readers and organizers to push forward the specific policies and practices we must put in place now, locally and nationally, to achieve a swift and just transition.

One of the takeaways is that climate justice is not just one isolated issue among many, but must become part of the work of every social movement. As climate issue editor Dayton Martindale writes, “The sweeping nature of the climate problem means that everything in our lives, from housing to food to labor, both affect and will be affected by warming.”

Contributors are available for interview, op-eds and speaking engagements. They are based in New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Connecticut, Oakland, Calif., and Jackson, Miss.

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