15 February 2019 - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Unveils Green New Deal
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Unveils Landmark Green New Deal Resolution
Alexander C. Kaufman (The Huffington Post, 07/02/2019)
The Green New Deal is finally taking form.
On Thursday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) unveiled a landmark resolution cementing the pillars of an unprecedented program to zero out planet-warming emissions and restore the middle-class prosperity of postwar America that the original New Deal helped spur.
Just three months after calls for a Green New Deal electrified a long-stagnant debate on climate policy, the Democratic lawmakers released the six-page document outlining plans to cut global emissions 40 to 60 percent below 2010 levels by 2030 and neutralize human-caused greenhouse gases entirely by 2050.
Here's what the Green New Deal actually says
Zachary B. Wolf (CNN, 14/02/2019)
Green New Deal fits perfectly on a bumper sticker.
But the proposal, which is on its way to becoming a litmus test for the Democratic Party's many 2020 contenders, isn't a simple fix for what ails the US. It would equal taking American society back to the drawing board and rebuilding it from the safety net up.
President Donald Trump and Republicans like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell want to use the proposal to paint Democrats as trying to mandate a socialist utopia on the country, which is probably why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been publicly skeptical -- even though most Democrats running for president have signed on, at least conceptually.
3 tests the Green New Deal must pass to work
Andrew Revkin (National Geographic, 14/02/2019)
As an array of recent surveys have shown, growing and increasingly bipartisan ranks of Americans want the government to act to limit human-driven climate change and help expand renewable energy sources like wind and solar.
But after three decades of incremental steps, with emissions of greenhouse gases rising again in the United States and around the world and impacts increasing, what new approaches can make a difference? How should they be paid for?
The climate conversation is now centered on a proposed “Green New Deal,” a massive federal push to cut emissions driving climate change and boost resilience and job prospects for America’s working class and poor communities.
The Green New Deal Is What Realistic Environmental Policy Looks Like
Jedediah Britton-Purdy (The New York Times, 14/02/2019)
Everyone is lining up to endorse the Green New Deal — or to mock it. Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand have all endorsed the resolution sponsored by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts.
Conservative critics predictably call it “a shocking document” and “a call for enviro-socialism in America,” but liberal condescension has cut deeper. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, essentially dismissed it as branding, saying, “The green dream, or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it, right?” Others have criticized it for leaving out any mention of a carbon tax, a cornerstone of mainstream climate-policy proposals, while embracing a left-populist agenda that includes universal health care, stronger labor rights and a jobs guarantee.
What do these goals have to do with stabilizing atmospheric carbon levels before climate change makes large parts of the world uninhabitable? What has taken liberal critics aback is that the Green New Deal strays so far from the traditional environmental emphasis on controlling pollution, which the carbon tax aims to do, and tries to solve the problems of economic inequality, poverty and even corporate concentration (there’s an antimonopoly clause).