A Planet to Win by Alyssa Battistoni
On this cold and crisp Tuesday night, an audience of about 40 people, mostly college students, gathered at the University of Washington Bookstore to listen to author Alyssa Battistoni speak on her book “A Planet to Win”. While the wind was blowing and the air was chilly, the pollen count was quite low, and the anticipation was high. The room was filled with seventy plastic chairs in a 10 x 7 formation, but only half of these chairs were occupied. To be fair, the majority of the people there were most likely students from the same English class, and were attending to get their event checked off. Only around ten of the audience members, who were definitely from the baby boomer era, were genuinely interested in listening to the author speak. Most of the audience appeared uninterested, visible by the wave of yawns, sighs, and individuals sleeping throughout the crowd. While we were also quite tired, we knew the difficulty of speaking in public, so we showed our outmost respect to the speaker. Although the talk was an hour long, others did not share the same mindset, and began to leave around the thirty minute mark. Ok, at that point, I did kind of wish that was me. The room was really hot which, in turn, made it a hauntingly representative example of our planet, if we don’t make changes now. Battistoni presses the importance of making quick and radical changes to reducing carbon emissions.
Over the past decade, climate change has been an especially “hot” topic in both politics, and public discussion. Author Alyssa Battistoni tackles issues regarding climate politics and the profound need for a Green New Deal. Battistoni emphasizes the message: “All politics are climate politics”. She clearly states that climate activism needs to focus on collective action and built environments, rather than individual level actions. One of the questions that was asked was “How do we address working class communities? How do we ensure justice based work transitions?”. Many argue that new climate policies and environmental regulations would be detrimental by destroying jobs and undermining worker rights. Battistoni rebuts that the solution to this was having the government invest in more public works projects in order to provide jobs for those who had lost them. In the past, the solution to loss of jobs was solely job retraining, which the author deemed ineffective, using atomic workers as an example.
In the beginning of her talk, author Battistoni discusses her book “A Planet to Win”, which is set in 2027 in New Orleans, and depicts an imagined scenario of a natural disaster. The natural disaster, called Maggie, was created to be similar to Katrina. The purpose of the imagined extreme weather scenario was to create a sense of urgency towards the issue of climate change, because it shows how something like this could actually happen in the near future. While the weather disaster is similar to Katrina, Battistoni imagines that the level of emergency response will be higher, and that communities will be more prepared than before.
After the discussion, Alyssa and the moderator turned the questions to the crowd. While there was a little hesitant reaction from the crowd, what seems to be a regular chirped in. His name is Doug, and Doug asked Alyssa many, many, many questions. She was visibly uncomfortable after the first ten minutes or so, and I could tell she definitely wanted more student interaction. Nevertheless, Doug persisted. His questions were not really questions, more of rants, but they were still intriguing. He discussed the Obama administration’s action, and how through the years and the Trump administration, it has basically fallen apart. After a while, students began to add in with questions of their own, either because they were genuinely interested or they were tired of Doug’s relentless pestering. These individuals brought up decent points, stating the importance of international assistance, and how the United States plays a key role in both assisting the development of climate change and
Battistoni brought up an interesting new way to look at addressing climate change opponents from both sides of society’s wealth spectrum. In the working class, Battistoni acknowledged that we can’t have low skilled workers “just transition” out of their current jobs in industries that have heavy carbon footprints, and suggested the introduction of a “Green Jobs Programme,” which entails job retraining for workers in fossil fuel industries that will eventually have to be replaced if we are to actually do anything about climate change. In order for this to work though, Battistoni claimed the government has to be what guarantees these workers jobs once they leave their current ones.
Another major problem for the working class is housing. Oftentimes, cheaper housing options leave a greater carbon footprint, so the working class is drawn towards these. Battistoni recognized this issue, but did not have a thorough plan to address it.
As for the upper class, they will be the greatest obstacle towards efforts to reduce carbon emissions as the act of doing so will lead to heavy monetary costs or possibly even going out of business for many large corporations, such as oil companies. Battistoni claimed current carbon taxes and other means to reduce carbon emissions are already not effectively setting us on the path for target temperature increases, and are still constantly being pushed against or gotten rid of by the upper class. Battistoni acknowledged that there was no easy way around this, and as a majority, we just have to override these harmful industries without compromise. She says we have to set our goals extremely high, and even if we miss, that would still be better than hitting goals that have been hammered with compromises with the fossil fuel industry. The only way to actually address our climate crisis is a radical one.
