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and adaptation. For most of the twentieth century, the top marginal tax rate in the United States was above 50 percent and frequently as high as 90 percent. From 1933, at the start of the New Deal, until 1980, the top rate never dipped below 70 percent. In 1993, Clinton raised the top marginal tax rate from 31 to 39.6 percent; in so doing, he paid down the debt, and by 1998 the federal government was running a surplus.12 If taxes on the superrich were increased, the US government could lower the national debt and have money to invest in clean tech.

Politics

Is there political will to make the transition? Alas, no.

Established corporate interests—the fossil fuel companies and the pampered large banks, for example—do not wish to see downward redistribution of wealth and power, nor the economic annihilation of all the sunk capital that is the fossil fuel economy. Few issues encapsulate this political problem better than the story of the fossil fuel industry’s promotion of climate denialism.

For twenty years the fossil fuel lobby has funded and organized attacks on climate science. Most prominently, between 1998 and 2008, Exxon donated $23 million in support of the climate denial movement.13 In 2006, the Royal Society, the United Kingdom’s most prestigious scientific body, demanded that Exxon stop funding misinformation. The company promised it would, but it continues to do so anyway. In 2009, Greenpeace reported that Exxon gave $1.3 million to organizations with histories of climate change denial, including the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Washington Legal Foundation.14

Another source of climate skepticism is the wealth of the Koch brothers, owners of a huge, privately held conglomerate involved in manufacturing, refining, and distributing petroleum and chemicals, as well as energy, plastics, minerals, and fertilizers. Koch Industries is ranked as the second-largest privately held company in the United States after Cargill, and, not surprisingly, it is ranked among the top ten air polluters in the United States.15 In keeping with the pattern of their investments, the Koch brothers are philanthropists of a hard-right variety, followers of Hayek, and they fund groups that push climate change denial.16 A Greenpeace report found that between 2005 and 2008, Koch-controlled foundations contributed $24.9 million to organizations promoting climate denial. This campaign seems to have borne fruit. Pew research polls have found that in 2006, 77 percent of those questioned agreed that there was evidence that the Earth was warming; by 2009, that number had dropped to 57 percent.17

Resistance North

Where is the countervailing force? Climate-justice movements in the United States are largely moribund and under attack. In Europe, they are somewhat stronger, though they are under pressure there and have been infiltrated by the police. A recent scandal in Britain revealed that at least fifteen police officers had infiltrated and sabotaged that country’s green movement.18 Nonetheless, grassroots greens in the United Kingdom and Europe have a relatively robust climate-justice movement.

In the United States, there is also a movement for climate justice, though it is small, and after an upsurge, has suffered setbacks. As Brian Tokar points out, “[a] marked shift in perception began in 2005–6 when Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans.” Then came Al Gore’s widely viewed documentary An Inconvenient Truth that was followed in 2007 by the IPCC’s dire and authoritative fourth assessment report “on climate science and its consequences.” The combination of all this momentarily forced climate change to the center of our national discussion.19

In this context, efforts to create a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol were gaining momentum. Barack Obama was elected, in part, by promising to invest $150 billion over ten years to jump-start a clean-technology industrial revival. And by 2009, a comprehensive international treaty looked possible. Domestically, Democrats began pushing national climate