Welcome to this bonus episode of Planet B, everything must change. I'm Harpreet Corp Hall.

This episode features an extended edition of our interview with Kate Aronoth. You may

have already had clips of this interview in our Planet B episode on Infrastructure and

the Global Green New Deal. If you haven't, make sure you check that out on the Navara

Media podcast feed. Before we get started, a reminder that you can order a free copy

of perspectives on a global green new deal, the illustrated book on which this series is

based at www.global-gnd.com.

My name is Kate Aronoth. I am a staff writer for the New Republic and I am based in Brooklyn,

New York.

Kate, thank you so much for joining us. After its explosion in the US, the

Green New Deal framing has become hegemonic for climate activists in the Global North.

Can you give us an insight into how and why the Green New Deal lens became the central

popular frame for the US climate movement?

Yeah, well, the Green New Deal was not a new idea when it re-emerged into headlines

in November 2018, so people might be familiar with Thomas Friedman, the somewhat right-wing

New York Times columnist who first used this phrase in 2007 to refer to a sort of macho

re-imagining of ecological politics. And then on the more positive end of that spectrum

was the Green New Deal group in the UK, of course, which sort of emerged as a collection

of thinkers, people like Ann Petafore, Andrew Sims, sort of thinking through Caroline

Lucas as well, thinking through what it would look like to respond to an economic recession

with a suite of sort of proposals to deal with the climate crisis. But it went a little

dormant, I mean, in part, you know, because of the way that the Great Recession was dealt

...