Winning the Green New Deal: Why We Must, How We Can

An urgent and definitive collection of essays from leaders and experts championing the Green New Deal—and a detailed playbook for how we can win it—including contributions by leading activists and progressive writers like Varshini Prakash, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Bill McKibben, Rev William Barber II, and more.

In October 2018, scientists warned that we have less than 12 years left to transform our economy away from fossil fuels, or face catastrophic climate change. At that moment, there was no plan in the US to decarbonize our economy that fast. Less than two years later, every major Democratic presidential candidate has embraced the vision of the Green New Deal—a rapid, vast transformation of our economy to avert climate catastrophe while securing economic and racial justice for all.

What happened? A new generation of leaders confronted the political establishment in Washington DC with a simple message: the climate crisis is here, and the Green New Deal is our last, best hope for a livable future. Now comes the hard part: turning that vision into the law of the land.

In Winning a Green New Deal, leading youth activists, journalists, and policymakers explain why we need a transformative agenda to avert climate catastrophe, and how our movement can organize to win. Featuring essays by Varshini Prakash, cofounder of Sunrise Movement; Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Green New Deal policy architect; Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize–winning economist; Bill McKibben, internationally renowned environmentalist; Mary Kay Henry, the President of the Service Employees International Union, and others we’ll learn why the climate crisis cannot be solved unless we also confront inequality and racism, how movements can redefine what’s politically possible and overcome the opposition of fossil fuel billionaires, and how a Green New Deal will build a just and thriving economy for all of us.

For anyone looking to understand the movement for a Green New Deal, and join the fight for a livable future, there is no resource as clear and practical as Winning the Green New Deal.

Varshini Prakash is the executive director and cofounder of the Sunrise Movement and a leading voice for young Americans in the fight to stop climate change. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, on the BBC, and more. Varshini was one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People and Forbes’s 30 Under 30 in 2019. She currently lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Guido Girgenti is the Media Director for Justice Democrats and a founding Board Member of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led movement to stop climate change and win a Green New Deal. He is a lifelong organizer for racial, economic, and climate justice, and lives in his hometown of Brooklyn, NY.