With each passing month, we see new and often searing evidence that the climate crisis is deepening. The evidence affirms that a Green New Deal is not some idealistic wish—it’s an environmental and economic necessity.

In this issue, with support from the Open Society Foundations, we present a symposium making the moral case for a Green New Deal and describing how it would be implemented and paid for, what shape it might take legislatively, what long-term targets it would need to hit, and finally, the kind of grassroots movement that would be needed to support and sustain it. Authors include Washington Governor Jay Inslee, who made solving climate change the centerpiece of his presidential campaign. He co-authors the lead essay with Varshini Prakash of the Sunrise Movement. Other contributors to the package include former Representative Tom Perriello; Bracken Hendricks and Sam Ricketts, who worked with Governor Inslee; Rhiana Gunn-Wright, who helped develop the Green New Deal; Leah Stokes of UC-Santa Barbara; J.W. Mason of the Roosevelt Institute; and Maurice Mitchell of the Working Families Party.
Les Gelb passed away last year. He was a dear friend of the journal, a board member since our inception—and, of course, one of the most prominent foreign-policy analysts in recent American history. The issue features nine short essays discussing different aspects of Les’s legacy by some of our leading foreign-policy thinkers: Tony Blinken, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Jake Sullivan, Elizabeth Economy, and many more.

The Democratic presidential contenders are talking about a lot of things, but one topic that has been getting surprisingly and disappointingly short shrift is middle-class wages. Here, John E. Schwarz, Harry Lasker, David Callahan, and William C. Coleman present an original proposal for how to structure corporate taxation to incentivize paying higher wages. It’s an approach that deserves wide attention.

Ganesh Sitaraman and Anne Alstott respond to Vanessa Williamson’s review of their book. Rahul Gupta, the former health commissioner in West Virginia, reviews an important new book on “deaths of despair.” Adele M. Stan reviews Katherine Stewart’s new book on right-wing religious nationalism, and Arthur Goldhammer reviews Branko Milanovic’s meditation on the future of capitalism