The Green New Deal and the Future of Work

Research team: Craig Calhoun, Benjamin Fong

Craig Calhoun and Benjamin Y. Fong convened a meeting of scholars and activists on the subject of the "Green New Deal and the Future of Work" at the end of 2019. They felt that while the Green New Deal was correctly understood as a proposal for tackling the existential threat of climate change, it was no less a vision for the transformation of work in the 21st century. After the conference, they collected and developed participants' contributions into The Green New Deal and the Future of Work, which was published by Columbia University Press in the summer of 2022. From the volume's web description:

Catastrophic climate change overshadows the present and the future. Wrenching economic transformations have devastated workers and hollowed out communities. However, those fighting for jobs and those fighting for the planet have often been at odds. Does the world face two separate crises, environmental and economic? The promise of the Green New Deal is to tackle the threat of climate change through the empowerment of working people and the strengthening of democracy. In this view, the crisis of nature and the crisis of work must be addressed together—or they will not be addressed at all.

This book brings together leading experts to explore the possibilities of the Green New Deal, emphasizing the future of work. Together, they examine transformations that are already underway and put forth bold new proposals that can provide jobs while reducing carbon consumption—building a world that is sustainable both economically and ecologically. Contributors also debate urgent questions: What is the value of a federal jobs program, or even a jobs guarantee? How do we alleviate the miseries and precarity of work? In key economic sectors, including energy, transportation, housing, agriculture, and care work, what kind of work is needed today? How does the New Deal provide guidance in addressing these questions, and how can a Green New Deal revive democracy? Above all, this book shows, the Green New Deal offers hope for a better tomorrow—but only if it accounts for work’s past transformations and shapes its future