CLEAN AIR AND GOOD JOBS

A call to scrap the notion that a healthy environment and a healthy economy cannot coexist.

Labor union activist and scholar Vachon advocates the so-called Green New Deal, which would remake the economy to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and replace them with renewable energy. He notes that the labor unions associated with service, such as nurses and communications workers, are most likely to favor this transition, while those involved in extractive industries are naturally inclined to oppose it. For example, even though coal is declining as a power source, “the workers and their unions…blamed the devastation not on the forces of capitalism but rather on the government—in particular, the Environmental Protection Agency and its pollution and emission regulations.” Vachon argues for a brand of activism that pushes beyond the bounds of “Jobs vs. the Environment,” and instead holds out for the “clean air and good jobs” premise of his title, which, by transforming the energy economy, will necessarily demand workers skilled in growing fields. To do so, writes the author, activists will in turn necessarily work “to attempt to redefine the situation, shift the ideological perspective of unions, and build a movement to create an alternative path forward.” Vachon writes from a neo-Marxist point of view, addressing the modern alienation of producer from product while battling the “entire edifice of support for the fossil fuel regime” that is undergirded by “neoliberal, capitalist ideology.” The author too often deploys the bloodless prose of post-postmodernism (“the Green New Deal itself has become a political space where the nested but competing frames of just transition described in this book—protective, proactive, and transformative—are being discussed and debated”), making his text a chore to read at times. Still, the overall argument is worth hearing out.

Arid language notwithstanding, this book will appeal to climate and clean-energy activists.