The New York Review of Books - 24.04.2020

58 The New York Review

enough to transform global energy
markets.”
What do we need in order to trans-
form the energy system? First, the au-
thors say, we need to pressure market
analysts to factor the runaway costs
of climate collapse into their valua-
tions of fossil fuel companies. (This is
already beginning to happen, thanks
to the warnings of climate scientists
and the fossil fuel divestment move-
ment.) Second, we need the govern-
ment to buy up majority shares of
(devalued) energy company shares
and quickly cut gas, oil, and coal pro-
duction. (This seems far-fetched,
given American political culture.)
Third, we need a managed transition
to renewable energy, so that current
workers in the industry, and the com-
munities that depend on them, gain
security instead of losing ground. All
of this, they concede, conflicts with the
current direction of US energy policy.
But they believe most Americans are
eager for a radical break from our dirty
sources of power, provided that the
transition does not compromise reliable
service or significantly increase prices.
“We need to directly take on the fos-
sil fuel companies and private utilities
whose business models rest on making
the planet uninhabitable,” they write.
“We can’t avoid a confrontation.”
Industrial policy, not energy policy,
is the key to making a politically ap-
pealing GND, and the most exciting
parts of A Planet to Win describe what
we can build in the name of sustain-
ability, not what we need to bury. The
authors worry about the fate of those

who labor in the coal, oil, and gas sec-

tors, and about the potent Republican

political strategy of pitting workers

against environmentalists. Their re-

sponse is a rousing call for public works

projects that would employ millions

of people while also remaking more

sustainable systems for electricity and

transit. They propose building “10

million beautiful, public, no-carbon

homes over the next 10 years, in cit-

ies, suburbs, reservations, and towns,

in the most transit-rich and walkable

areas.” Ambitious, yes. Realistic? Only

if progressive states like California

and New York change their retrograde

zoning policies and eliminate the “Not

in My Backyard” building restrictions

that limit density in desirable areas.

During the New Deal, the authors re-

call, “workers hired under the Works

Progress Administration constructed

651,000 miles of highway and 124,000

bridges.... They built 125,000 public

buildings, including 41,300 schools,

and 469 airports. They built 8,000

parks, and 18,000 playgrounds and ath-

letic fields.” Most Americans still rely

on these aging resources.

Like Klein and Purdy, the authors of

A Planet to Win champion a guaran-

teed jobs program. They also advocate

restoring workers’ right to unionize.

They see enormous needs for work in

construction, maintenance, education,

recreation, health care, child care, and

ecological care. “The economic ques-

tion is whether this work can be done

profitably,” they proclaim. “Much of

it, we submit, cannot.” As they see it,

though, the current mode of produc-

tion, based on extraction, exclusion,

and exploitation, is even more ruinous.

“For better and for worse,” they argue,

“our choice now is between eco-social-

ism or eco-apartheid.” If we only have

one decade to fix things, it’s time to

chart a course. “We need to pose a sim-

ple question,” they conclude. “Which

side are you on?”

Since this is an election year, we may

soon have an answer. In the prima-

ries, Democratic voters had an option

to support candidates whose version

of a Green New Deal looked similar

to the one that the books discussed

here champion. Instead, they chose

Joe Biden, who has endorsed the GND

framework but dismissed its bold call

for rapid decarbonization as unreal-

istic; refused to incorporate public

works, housing, and jobs programs into

his environmental plan; and left the

details of his sustainability commit-

ments vague.

Some voters may believe that this

is pragmatic. Surprisingly, surveys of

American voters conducted before

the Covid-19 pandemic suggest that a

growing majority are open to a Green

New Deal that pairs public spend-

ing and employment programs with

efforts to combat climate change. In

October YouGov and Data for Prog-

ress released the results of a national

poll about how registered voters from

both parties view different aspects of

the plan. As The Atlantic reported, 59

percent of all respondents—and 52 per-

cent of white voters without a college

degree, a group once assumed to be

against environmental programs—said

they would strongly or somewhat sup-

port $1.5 trillion in federal spending to

build wind and solar energy systems;

60 percent support investing more than

$1 trillion “to weatherize homes and

buildings to make them more energy-

efficient and reduce energy bills”; and

60 percent support a ten-year, $2 tril-

lion green- manufacturing scheme that

would “aggressively encourage large

American manufacturing firms to spe-

cialize in solar panels, wind turbines,

and other climate-friendly technolo-

gies.” These are expensive proposals,

and it’s not clear how much support

they will get in a post- pandemic po-

litical climate. But already, social

policies in all domains are up for

grabs, and big investments in long-

term public health and ecological

sustainability may soon become very

popular.

The authors of the books reviewed

here make persuasive cases that we

need a robust Green New Deal before

it’s too late. But an equally strong case

for it comes from our early experi-

ence with Covid-19. For years, govern-

ments ignored scientists’ urgent pleas

to develop a coronavirus vaccine and

a stronger global preparedness plan.

Today everyone recognizes the value of

these projects, but, alas, it’s too late to

help. Protecting ourselves from global

warming is more difficult and expen-

sive. Now, at least, we can more easily

see the cost of inaction. We are fighting

to survive one preventable emergency,

and no matter what happens, the cli-

mate crisis awaits. Q

—March 26, 2020

LETTERS

MR. CARLA BLANK

To the Editors:

Only in the United States is my partner,
the distinguished choreographer, author,
teacher, and director Carla Blank, referred
to as my “white wife.” Not only was the
designation used in Darryl Pinckney’s re-
view of Thomas Chatterton Williams’s Self-
Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning
Race [NYR, March 26] but also in The New
York Times review of the same book. Mr.
Williams was a guest at a party that I threw
in Paris for black American and Haitian
expatriates in 2015. Who is Carla Blank?
Some recent activities:
Her book Storming the Old Boys’ Cita-
del champions two women architects, Lou-
ise Blanchard Bethune (1856–1913) and
Mother Joseph of the Sacred Heart (1823–
1902), who both continued their careers
until close to their deaths. Bethune was the
first woman Fellow of the American Insti-
tute of Architects. The book was published
in Montreal by Baraka Books.
The Space in Back of You, based on Kool,
a collaboration between Robert Wilson and
Carla and a tribute to their late collaborator
Suzushi Hanayagi, was broadcast by Arte TV
in France and Sundance in the US. She di-
rected an Arab-speaking cast of Syrian and
Palestinian actors in an Al-Kasaba Theatre
production of Philip Barry’s 1928 play, Holi-
day. None of the Arab media called her that.
She directed an all-Chinese cast in a produc-
tion of my play Mother Hubbard. The play
received praise from the Hunan Daily, circu-
lation two million. No mention she was my
“white wife.”
The film of Yuri Kageyama’s powerful
choreopoem News From Fukushima, Med-
itation on an Under-Reported Catastrophe,
just won the grand prize at the Oniros Film

Awards in Italy. It is based upon the 2017

San Francisco live performances, directed

by Carla.

Photos and video documentation of

Carla’s young performance works appeared

in the Judson Dance Theater exhibit at

New York’s Museum of Modern Art in

2018–2019.

With all of her accomplishments, why

aren’t I called Carla Blank’s black husband?

Ishmael Reed

Distinguished Professor

California College of the Arts

Oakland, California

Darryl Pinckney replies:

I have had the honor of meeting Carla

Blank. I most certainly know who she is.

I was referring to a passage in Thomas

Chatterton Williams’s book in which he re-

calls an evening in Paris when he did not

bring his white wife to a dinner of black

artists and was surprised to find that the

black men whose good opinion mattered to

him would not have held his having a white

wife against him. He says that David Mur-

ray was the host and Ishmael Reed one of

the guests. He does not identify their wives

by name. He is remembering a social sit-

uation and his own ideas about race and

acceptance. It made me look for Harold

Cruse’s Crisis of the Negro Intellectual and

his description of a black militant group in

the East Village in the early 1960s. I was in-

terested in the historical parallel. I meant

no disrespect in not stopping to name the

wives who might have been present.

JUST SAY NO

To the Editors:

Alan Ryan closes his fair review of my book

Reclaiming Patriotism [NYR, March 26]

by suggesting that it does not indicate

“how to get there from here,” referring

to the liberal communal future I outlined.

I wrote, “I am often asked, how can one

have a major effect on society, indeed on

history? When I respond by suggesting that

this is a rather easy question because there

is only one answer, this tends to surprise

people. As I see it, the one and only way to

achieve truly transformative social change

is to launch or join a social movement.” I

cited the examples of “movements for civil

rights, gender equality, economic fairness,

environmental protection, national liber-

ation, and religious freedom” and outline

the ways to form a patriotic movement,

centered around love of country, not hatred

of others.

Ryan argues that when society makes

compromises as various people seek rights

(e.g., a gay couple trying to buy a wed-

ding cake from a Christian cake maker),

usually the bigoted win. I suggest that in-

dividuals should maintain their rights but

sometimes—out of concern for community-

building—voluntarily refrain from exercis-

ing them. Thus, we have the First Amend-

ment right to use the n-word—but decent

members of the community refrain from

uttering it. And a gay couple may choose

to do without a wedding cake from some-

one who views them as horrible sinners—

without that setting a precedent for other

provisions or giving up on the principle that

legally they are entitled to get any cake

they want, from any cake maker. (I called

this the pound of flesh principle, referring

to Shylock from The Merchant of Venice,

who should not take a pound of flesh, even

though his contract entitles him to do so.)

Moreover, calling those who hold values that

profoundly differ from ours “bigoted” (or “de-

plorable”) is morally wrong, as I showed in the

book, because, however misdirected, these

are fellow human beings. It is also politically

unwise. Hillary Clinton might well be the US

president if she had not denigrated an import-

ant segment of the working class in this way.

Amitai Etzioni

Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies

George Washington University

Washington, D.C.

CORRECTION

Sylvia Legris’s contributor’s note in the

April 9 issue should have said that her next

collection of poems, Garden Physic, is her

sixth, not her fourth. We regret the error.

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