Democrats unveil Green New Deal
Legislators aim to create jobs, take on threat of climate change
Rep. Alexandria OcasioCortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., unveiled their Green New Deal resolution Thursday, outlining the massive piece of legislation they hope will tackle a litany of issues related to the United States’ role in global climate change.
“Climate change and our environmental challenges are one of the biggest existential threats to our way of life. Not just as a nation, but as a world,” Ms. OcasioCortez said at a news conference outside of the Capitol Building.
“What this resolution is doing is saying this is our first step. Our first step is to define the problem and define the scope of the solution,” she added. “And so we’re here to say that small, incremental policy solutions are not enough. They can be part of a solution, but they are not the solution unto itself.”
Mr. Markey predicted more Democrats would sign on and said some Republicans may back the plan.
“This is now a voting issue across the country,” he said. “The green generation has risen up and they are saying they want this issue solved” as one of the top two or three issues in the 2020 election, Mr. Markey said.
The sweeping resolution includes a 10-year commitment to convert “100 percent of the country’s power demands” to “clean, renewable and zero-emission energy sources”; to upgrade “all existing buildings” to meet energy efficiency requirements; and to expand high-speed rail so broadly that most air travel would be rendered obsolete.
The initiative, introduced as nonbinding resolutions in the House and Senate, is tethered to an infrastructure program that its authors say could create millions of new “green jobs,” while guaranteeing health care, “a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations and retirement security” to every American.
Modeled on President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s, the resolution will not move in its current form, but some ideas could advance as part of more modest legislation to address the climate crisis.
The legislation has become a key policy initiative for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive New Yorker who, shortly after being elected in November, joined the Sunrise Movement to protest over the climate change issue in the office of then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. She later paired up with Mr. Markey to begin working on the legislation.
In an interview with NPR earlier Thursday, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said that although their proposed solutions are bold, they’re “nowhere near the scale of the actual problem that climate change presents to us, to our country, to the world.”
The resolution says that the deal will “promote justice and equity” to a dozen communities, including indigenous peoples, migrant communities and lowincome workers.
“So really the heart of the Green New Deal is about social justice and it’s about allowing and fighting for things like fully-funded pensions for coal miners in West Virginia, fighting for clean water in Flint, and fighting for the ability of indigenous peoples to take a leadership role in where we’re moving as a country,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said.
Speaking at a news conference Thursday, Ms. Pelosi said that while she hasn’t yet seen the details of the proposal, “I do know that it’s enthusiastic, and we welcome all the enthusiasm that’s out there.”
Republicans seized on the proposal with relish, portraying the entire resolution as absurd. Bob Salera, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, called the idea “zany.” The Republican National Committee derided it as “a socialist wish list.”
For all of its audacity, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Mr. Markey also steered clear of several thorny issues.
The resolution does not specify a date for eliminating planet-warming emissions, instead calling for the elimination of fossil fuels from major economic sectors “as much as technologically feasible.”
It also avoids denouncing specific types of clean energy alternatives, specifically nuclear.