What The Hell America!

I began working with Chomsky on climate issues in 2017. At that time, the progressive journalist C. J. Polychroniou, a longtime close friend of his, proposed that Chomsky and I begin a series of joint written-out interviews for Truthout, covering issues around neoliberalism and the climate crisis.

I was both deeply honored and excited by this opportunity. I have been greatly influenced by Chomsky’s writings since I was a sophomore in college (which is to say, a very long time ago). But we had only met in person briefly a couple of times and had never had any extended interactions of any kind on any subject, much less any active collaborations.

Our first joint interview was published in October 2017, and our collaboration was ongoing from that point, with our most recent joint interview published in June 2023. Our most extensive joint project is our 2020 book Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet. This small book is also structured around a series of interview questions that Polychroniou posed separately to Chomsky and me. All direct quotes in what follows come from Chomsky’s contributions to our 2020 book.

The book begins with Chomsky describing the current situation in straightforward — which is to say appropriately stark — terms. He presents the climate crisis as the “twin” of the nuclear crisis in being “unique in human history,” in that both dangers legitimately pose the question as to “whether organized human society can survive in any recognizable form.” While, as he puts it, “history is all too rich in records of horrendous wars, indescribable torture, massacres, and every imaginable abuse of fundamental rights,” the existence of a force threatening the destruction of “organized human life in any recognizable or tolerable form” is “entirely new.”

Chomsky then draws on some key research findings to document his claims:

We are approaching perilously close to the global temperatures of 120,000 years ago, when sea levels were 6–9 meters higher than today. Truly unimaginable prospects, even discounting the effect of more frequent and violent storms, which will put paid to whatever wreckage is left. One of many ominous developments that might fill the gap between 120,000 years ago and today is the melting of the vast West Antarctic ice sheet. Glaciers are sliding into the sea five times faster than in the 1990s, with more than 100 meters of ice thickness lost in some areas due to ocean warming, and those losses doubling every decade. Complete loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet would raise sea levels by about five meters, drowning coastal cities, and with utterly devastating effects elsewhere — the low-lying plains of Bangladesh, for example. Only one of the many concerns of those who are paying attention to what is happening before our eyes.

Chomsky also emphasizes, at the outset of our book, the imperative for action:

Those alive today will decide the fate of humanity — and the fate of the other species that we are now destroying at a rate not seen for 65 million years, when a huge asteroid hit the earth, ending the age of the dinosaurs and opening the way for some small mammals to evolve to become finally the asteroid clone, differing from its predecessor in that it can make a choice.

Chomsky is unsparing in eviscerating some of the major figures, on the US scene in particular, promoting climate denialism. This includes the contemporary Republican Party, starting, of course, with Donald Trump and his acolytes, but only starting there, since the contemptable lineup of Republican climate deniers extends to the full gamut of leading figures, including so-called “moderates.” As he writes about the 2016 Republican primary race:

Every single candidate either denied that what is happening is happening, or said maybe it is but it doesn’t matter (the latter message came from the “moderates,” former governor Jeb Bush and Ohio governor John Kasich). Kasich was considered the most serious and sober of the candidates. He did break ranks by recognizing the basic facts, but added that “we are going to burn [coal] in Ohio and we are not going to apologize for it.”

That’s 100 percent support for destroying the prospects for organized human life, with the most respected figure taking the most grotesque stand. Amazingly, this astonishing spectacle passed with virtually no comment (if any) within the mainstream, a fact of no little import in itself.

Chomsky points out that Republicans have not always been climate deniers. They also haven’t always opposed environmental protection policies more generally. Indeed, the US Environmental Protection Agency was established in 1971 under Republican president Richard Nixon. As recently as the 2008 presidential campaign, the Republican Party platform and its nominee John McCain strongly advocated measures to address climate change.

Chomsky explains what transpired with the Republicans following the 2008 McCain presidential campaign, focusing appropriately on the role of the Koch brothers, David and Charles. The combined net worth of the brothers was about $120 billion at the time of David’s death in 2019, making them two of the world’s richest people at that time. Virtually all of their wealth was tied to the fossil fuel industry.

Chomsky draws on the 2019 book by Christopher Leonard, Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America, in making his case:

Leonard describes David Koch as the “ultimate denier,” whose rejection of anthropogenic global warming was deep and sincere. Let us put aside suspicions that this might have something to with the fact that he had an immense fortune at stake in this denialism, perhaps trillions of dollars of potential losses over a period of thirty years or more if denialism were to fail, Leonard estimates. Let’s nevertheless suspend disbelief and accept that the convictions were entirely sincere. That would come as little surprise. John C. Calhoun, the grand ideologist of slavery, was no doubt sincere in believing that the vicious slave labor camps of the South were the necessary foundation for a higher civilization.

The Koch brothers’ denialism went vastly beyond mere efforts to convince. They launched huge campaigns to ensure that nothing would be done to impede the exploitation of the fossil fuels on which their fortune rests. As Leonard recounts, “David Koch worked tirelessly, over decades, to jettison from office any moderate Republicans who proposed to regulate greenhouse gases.”

No stone was left unturned: networks of rich donors, think tanks to shift discourse, one of the largest lobbying groups in the country, the organization of what can pose as grassroots groups to ring doorbells, pretty much creating and shaping the Tea Party. . . . The Koch brothers’ juggernaut stands out in its careful planning and successful use of the immense profits it has gained from polluting the global atmosphere without cost — a mere “externality,” in the terminology of the trade. But it is symbolic of the savage capitalism that is becoming more and more evident as the neoliberal project that has served private wealth and corporate power so well comes under threat.

To the extent that the fossil fuel industry has acknowledged the threat of climate change at all — and all such recognitions have been grudging and anemic — it is hardly surprising that the industry has also fixated on its own favorite action plan. This is to build out carbon capture technologies on a massive global scale. These are technologies whose purpose is to remove emitted carbon from the atmosphere and transport it, usually through pipelines, to subsurface geological formations, where it would be stored permanently.

The plan would be for these technologies to enable the fossil fuel corporations to continue reaping profits through selling oil, coal, and natural gas. This would follow because carbon capture would allow energy production based on fossil fuels to proceed without necessarily destroying the planet as an unfortunate side effect. The only problem here is that these technologies have never managed to operate successfully at a commercial scale, despite decades of fossil fuel industry bluster on the matter.

Chomsky makes clear that neither carbon capture technologies, nor anything similar, is capable of delivering anything other than an untrammeled stream of outsize fossil fuel industry profits. They certainly cannot be relied on as a viable climate stabilization path. Citing the work of the Oxford University climate scientist Raymond Pierrehumbert, he writes that Pierrehumbert reviews “the possible technical fixes and their very serious problems,” concluding that there is “no plan B.” As such, “we must move to net carbon emissions, and fast.”

At the same time, Chomsky recognizes that there is no way to build the new global clean energy infrastructure that we need without supporting a range of technological advances in the areas of energy efficiency, renewable energy sources, and sustainable agriculture:

There’s wide agreement on the need to move toward electrification — which requires copper, a wasting resource and one that under current technology at least can be mined only in ways that are ecologically quite harmful. Such conundrums are hard to avoid, but that is not a reason not to explore aggressively the kinds of technology that seem best suited to progress toward a sustainable and healthy ecosystem. There is far more to be done. Industrial meat production, even aside from ethical considerations, should not be tolerated because of its substantial contribution to global warming. We have to find ways to shift to plant-based diets derived from sustainable agricultural practices, which aren’t trivial tasks.

Chomsky is clear that responsibility for preventing a climate catastrophe must fall mostly on the present-day high-income countries, starting with the United States, but including Western Europe, Japan, Canada, and Australia, that have burned fossil fuels since the mid-nineteenth century as a foundation for achieving their current levels of wealth.

Even more to the point, responsibility must fall foremost on the richest people in these societies — those who have benefitted most over the long fossil fuel era. As he notes, the crisis “can only be overcome by common efforts of the entire world, though of course responsibility is proportional to capacity, and elementary moral principles demand that a special responsibility falls on those who have been primarily responsible for creating the crises over centuries, enriching themselves while creating a grim fate for humanity.”

But this perspective also leads to a difficult follow-up question. In the spirit of climate justice, should low-income countries be permitted to continue burning fossil fuels as a foundation for their economic growth, just as the now-rich countries had done to become rich? Chomsky responds as follows:

There is some justice in that position, to which we can add that the poor countries, who bear far less of a responsibility for the crisis, are its primary victims. . . . Nevertheless, when we consider the consequences — for these countries in particular — it would be suicidal for them to take this as a reason for delay in confronting the climate crisis. The right response, brought into the international agreements timidly and in far too limited ways, is for the rich countries to provide needed assistance in moving toward sustainable energy.

Needed assistance could be provided in many ways, including very simple ones that could have considerable impact and would barely amount to statistical error in national budgets. To take one example, much of India is becoming barely survivable because of more intense and frequent heat waves — reaching 50ºC in Rajasthan in summer 2019. Those who can afford them are using highly inefficient and severely polluting air conditioners. That could be easily corrected. How much would it cost the rich countries to help people at least endure the fate that we have imposed on them, in our folly?

To be sure, this is a bare minimum. We can surely aspire to far more, even to the day when it is common understanding that the most vulnerable of both domestic and international society must be the prime objects of concern, and when institutions have undergone radical change so as to reflect and facilitate such common understanding.

Of course, Chomsky and I are fully aligned on the basic framework as well as the critical details of advancing a viable climate stabilization project. We would not have continued our collaboration for six years were it otherwise. Chomsky has also largely followed my lead on working out the relevant technical details, as this has been a major research focus for me over the past fifteen years. Such details aside, the basic framework of our joint approach is straightforward, including these main points:

1. Greenhouse gas emission reductions need to at least achieve the main target set in 2018 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, namely near-zero emissions by 2050. This requires the phase-out of fossil fuels as an energy source by 2050 as well as the replacement of corporate agricultural practices, including deforestation, with organic agriculture.
2. Investments to dramatically raise energy efficiency standards and equally dramatically expand the supply of solar, wind, and other clean renewable energy sources need to form the leading edge of the transition to a green economy in all regions of the world. These clean energy investments will become, in turn, major new engines of job creation throughout the world.
3. The green economy transition must include strong measures for a just transition for workers and communities whose well-being are currently dependent on the fossil fuel industry.
4. As noted above, the costs of these investments and just-transition measures must be borne primarily by the rich countries and wealthy individuals who have benefitted most from the fossil fuel era.

All parts of this project need to be operating at a global scale now. We do not have time to wait for neoliberal capitalism to collapse and be replaced by socialism. At the same time, through the large-scale expansion of good job opportunities and establishing generous just transition measures, the climate stabilization program can also become the foundation for a broader egalitarian agenda that is capable of supplanting neoliberalism.

Along with many others, Chomsky and I think that the term “Green New Deal” captured much of the spirit of this overarching project. But obviously, the term itself isn’t the point. What matters is laying out and committing to a project that will succeed.

Toward that end, Chomsky gives serious attention to major questions for the Left, including how to most effectively build coalitions between labor and environmental movements. He also assesses two influential leftist perspectives on the climate crisis, i.e., degrowth and eco-socialism, and offers his perspective on questions of specific tactics as well as overarching strategies in building the strongest possible climate movement.

Chomsky describes the work of the late US labor leader Tony Mazzocchi as providing a powerful example of how to bring together the interests of working people and environmentalists:

It’s well to remember that one of the first and most prominent environmentalists was a union leader, Tony Mazzocchi, head of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union (OCAW). The members of his union were right on the front line, facing destruction of the environment every day at work, and were the direct victims of the corporate assault on individual lives. Under Mazzocchi’s leadership, the OCAW was the driving force behind the establishment in 1970 of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), protecting workers on the job, signed by the last liberal American president, Richard Nixon — “liberal” in the US sense, meaning mildly social democratic.

Mazzocchi was a harsh critic of capitalism as well as a committed environmentalist. He held that workers should “control the plant environment” while also taking the lead in combating industrial pollution. . . . The path that Mazzocchi tried to forge — militant labor as a driving force of the environmental movement — is not an idle dream and should be actively pursued.

Chomsky provides a balanced assessment of the degrowth argument:

A shift to sustainable energy requires growth: construction and installation of solar panels and wind turbines, weatherization of homes, major infrastructure projects to create efficient mass transportation, and much else. Accordingly, we cannot simply say that “growth is bad.” Sometimes, sometimes not. It depends on what kind of growth. We should of course all be in favor of the (very rapid) “degrowth” of energy industries, largely predatory financial institutions, the bloated and dangerous military establishment, and a lot more that we can list. We should be thinking about how to design a livable society — exactly as Bob has been doing. That will involve both growth and degrowth, raising many important questions. How it balances out depends on a wide range of particular choices and decisions.

Chomsky is also balanced in considering eco-socialism:

Insofar as I understand eco-socialism — not in great depth — it overlaps very closely with other left socialist currents. I don’t think we’re at a stage where adopting a specific “political project” is very helpful. There are crucial issues that have to be addressed, right now. Our efforts should be informed by guidelines about the kind of future society that we would like to see come into being, and that can be constructed in part within the existing society in many ways, some already discussed. It’s fine to stake out specific positions about the future in more or less detail, but for now these seem to me at best ways of sharpening ideas rather than platforms to latch on to.

A good argument can be made that inherent features of capitalism lead inexorably to ruin of the environment, and that ending capitalism must be a high priority of the environmental movement. There’s one fundamental problem with this argument: time scales. Dismantling capitalism is impossible within the time frame necessary for taking urgent action, which requires a major national — indeed international — mobilization if severe crisis is to be averted.

Furthermore, the whole discussion is misleading. The two efforts — averting environmental disaster, dismantling capitalism in favor of a more free and just and democratic society — should and can proceed in parallel. And can proceed quite far with mass popular organization.

Chomsky argues that there is no general tactical approach that will be effective or appropriate in all situations. Activists rather need to pay careful attention to circumstances “the nature of the planned action, the likely consequences as best we can ascertain them.” He considers these issues in particular in evaluating the role that civil disobedience can play in advancing the climate movement:

I was involved in civil disobedience for many years, during some periods intensely, and think it’s a reasonable tactic — sometimes. It should not be adopted merely because one feels strongly about the issue and wants to show that to the world. That tactic can be proper, but it’s not enough. It’s necessary to consider the consequences. Is the action designed in a way that will encourage others to think, to be convinced, to join? Or is it more likely to antagonize, to irritate, and to cause people to support the very thing we are protesting? Tactical considerations are often denigrated — that’s for small minds, not for a serious, principled guy like me. Quite the contrary. Tactical judgments have direct human consequences. They are a deeply principled concern. It’s not enough to think, “I’m right, and if others can’t see it, too bad for them.” Such attitudes have often caused serious harm.

Most broadly, Chomsky expresses deep respect for the achievements that the climate movement has made to date throughout the world. He is also emphatic that the movement still has time to achieve its goal, i.e., nothing less than saving the planet from disaster. I will conclude with some of Chomsky’s inimitably bracing reflections on this question:

There are countries, and localities, where serious efforts are being undertaken to act before it is too late. And it is not too late. The answer to the mad race to produce more means of self-destruction is obvious enough, at least in words; implementation is another matter. And there is still time to mitigate the impending climate catastrophe if a firm commitment is undertaken. That is surely not impossible if the facts can be faced. In 1941, the US faced a serious though incomparably lesser threat, and responded with a voluntary mass mobilization so overwhelming that it greatly impressed Nazi Germany’s economic czar Albert Speer, who lamented that totalitarian Germany could not match the voluntary subordination to the national task in the more free societies.