Biden’s climate plan has serious defects but Trump’s aggressive climate denial must be defeated, says economist Robert Pollin, co-author with Noam Chomsky of Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet. Additionally, Pollin reveals that a Nobel- Prize-winning economist says that four degrees warming above pre-industrial levels would be “optimal” -- something climate scientists consider cataclysmic. Robert Pollin joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news podcast.

Transcript

Paul Jay

Hi, I'm Paul Jay, and welcome to theAnalysis.news podcast. Please don't forget there's a donate button at the top of the webpage.

We are recording this podcast three days before the November 3rd election. That is, on Halloween, and this is truly the spookiest Halloween of my lifetime.

The Covid crisis is in its second wave with really no end in sight as the production and distribution of an effective vaccine may still be at least a year or more away. And even then, no certainty that it will work. And the election in the United States that could reelect an outright climate-denier as president, which will pretty much make hitting any of the targets set out by the scientists at the IPCC impossible. It may mean the end, as Noam Chomsky says, of organized human life on the planet.

Now joining us to discuss the current moment and his new book he co-authored with Noam Chomsky is Bob Pollin. He's the co-founder of PERI, The Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. And the book is, The Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet.

Thanks for joining us, Bob.

Bob Pollin

Thanks very much for having me.

Paul Jay

So, in the new book, there's a quote from Chomsky, which I'll read: "It might be considered outrageous to assert that today's Republican Party is the most dangerous organization in human history. Perhaps so. But in the light of the stakes, what else can one rationally conclude?" And Noam lays out in the book that it's the twin threats of the climate crisis and the threat of nuclear war that leads him to that conclusion.

Well, most of our audience is going to agree with this, Bob, but does Biden offer a real alternative? Now, you and I have talked before. We know a Biden alternative is better than climate denial. But when you dig into the Biden alternative, I guess what I'm asking really is, is it an effective alternative?

Bob Pollin

Well, certainly, as you say, let's start with the fact that it isn't climate denial. So, there we go. I think that is a major advance on, as Noam said, the most dangerous organization in human history because they're, you know, aggressively climate-denialists.

The Biden plan has some good features. It does talk about a spending level in advancing a green economy, transitioning out of fossil fuels -- well, I don't want to say that -- a green economy at a scale that I think is appropriate. About two and a half percent of GDP every year: that's about right. He does talk about job creation through these investments and that they should be good jobs, union jobs. He talks about a just transition for workers that are now in the fossil fuel economy and will obviously, inevitably see their jobs disappear. So far, so good.