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The Green New Deal is finally beginning to take shape.
On Thursday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DN.Y.) and Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) Unveiled a landmark resolution laying down the unprecedented program fundamentals to reduce global warming emissions and to restore the prosperity of the post-war American middle class that the initial New Deal helped to stimulate.
Just Three Months After Calls For An Electrifying Green New Deal In the stagnant debate on climate policy, Democratic lawmakers have released the six-page document outlining global emissions reduction projects from 40 to 60% compared to 2010 levels by 2030 and fully neutralize greenhouse gases of human origin by 2050.
Legislators scheduled a press conference at 12:30 EST Thursday.
It is a call for ambitious action, if measured, which, if realized, would make the United States the leader in decarbonization and pave the way for the world to avoid catastrophic warming .
The resolution sets out a "ten-year national mobilization" plan to build "smart" networks and quickly increase the share of solar and wind energy produced in the United States by 10% today. as close to 100% as possible over the next few months. decade. The plan reorganizes tired speeches about repairing the nation's decrepit bridges, highways and harbors in crisis in a new era of billion-dollar storms. It requires local and demanding upgrades of "all existing US buildings" to "achieve maximum efficiency" with the use of energy and water.
This overall framework extends to the way in which the document describes emissions, mentioning the "carbon" only once and using the term "greenhouse gas", which includes methane, the "greenhouse gas", and the "greenhouse gas". nitrous oxide and ozone.
Energy and infrastructure issues are the centerpiece of the resolution, with explicit goals of reorganizing the transport sector – the largest source of climate pollution in the country – in order to Expand public transport and high-speed rail and promote a "cleaning" manufacturing boom with special attention to electric vehicles
But unlike most existing Green New Deal concepts, the # 39, food and water are central points. The resolution proposes to "build a more sustainable food system that ensures universal access to healthy food" and "to ensure universal access to safe water". To achieve these goals, the document describes "working with farmers and pastoralists" to reduce agricultural pollution "sustainable agriculture and land-use practices that improve soil health" and "support
Strongly progressive ideals anchor the resolution A section outlining the guidelines for future Green New Deal bills reads like a long list of populist policies, ranging from the application strengthened antitrust laws – "ensure a business environment where every businessman is safe from unfair competition and dominated by" monopolies "expanded the social safety net," providing all residents with United States high quality health care, affordable, safe and adequate housing, economic security, and access to safe, clean air, no healthy and affordable urition and nature ".
the resolution seems designed for a broad appeal. The fact that Markey, a Liberal pillar co-author of the last big climate bill that the Democrats tried to pass in 2009, is the Senate's main sponsor shows that the insurgent wing Ocasio-Cortez is in train to build bridges with the old guard.
The resolution itself avoids controversial technologies to eliminate greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, but instead calls for solutions with low technological content, such as large-scale preservation and planting new ones. forests to absorb carbon already present in the atmosphere. In a press release, the Ocasio-Cortez team said that "carbon capture technology has not been proven yet."
The resolution contains more obvious compromises. Contrary to the initial protests that gave rise to the Green New Deal, the document avoids asking explicitly to put an end to the development of fossil fuels. This leaves the possibility of keeping the existing nuclear power plants in place after the completion of the initial 10-year mobilization plan, admitting that "we are not sure that we can quickly decommission each nuclear plant".
Bucking the prevailing bipartite orthodoxy in climate policy, the resolution does not mention carbon pricing. The statement said that "the door is not closed to market-based incentives or to a diverse range of policy levers to play a role in the Green New Deal, but that would be a small role".
For the partisans, these candid confessions showed that the document constituted a first feasible step towards the legislation.
"This is how Green Socialists will govern," said Greg Carlock, a researcher at the Data for Progress think tank, whose September Green New Deal master plan resembles resolution. "It will be thoughtful, it will be politically pragmatic, it will always be ambitious."
The resolution was abandoned with poignant timing. In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Donald Trump ignored climate change and touted a fossil fuel program designed to put the world on the path to cataclysmic warming, analyzed the research of more than a dozen environmental groups. On Wednesday, House Democrats opened two climate change hearings less than two hours before NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared the hottest fourth year ever recorded for 2018. [19659002ThisdoesnotnecessarilyimprovethechancesofasuccessfulresolutionTheGOPcontrolstheSenateandtheRepublicanoppositiontotheGreenNewDealbegantocrystallizeduringWednesday'shearings
Even among Democrats, who control the House, support is far from guaranteed. Only a few Democrats and environmental groups approved the resolution before it was published. The type of Green New Deal described in the resolution poses an existential threat to the well-entrenched and deeply cashed industries that make donations to Democrats. Building a strong enough constituency to challenge fossil fuel producers, automakers and utilities requires support from the labor movement.
Yet influential building unions are skeptical of any policy that hinders fossil fuel infrastructure, a reliable source of lucrative contract jobs. The resolution aims to allay these concerns, "by ensuring that the mobilization of the Green New Deal creates quality unionized jobs that pay wages, hire local workers, provide training and development opportunities, and ensure parity. wages and benefits of workers affected by the transition ". 19659002] But this rhetoric is not new and it does not help to quell worries. Renewable energy jobs tend to pay less and use fewer unionized workers than pipeline or coal-type concerts. The problem also lies in the constant erosion of labor legislation over the last few decades and the diminished hope that clean energy work will easily reach wage parity with fossil fuels under existing laws. . A Green New Deal, in this sense, requires labor law changes almost as radical as those governing energy and infrastructure. To this end, the resolution directly calls for "strengthening and protecting the right of all workers to organize, unionize and bargain collectively, without coercion, intimidation or harassment".
The potential opposition of construction professionals has not prevented the Green New Deal from being no less popular with the 2020 candidate pool of Democrats. Almost all the declared and probable candidates – former Vice President Joe Biden, is a notable exception – have proposed to approve the Green New Deal in one form or another.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Who supported the Green New Deal resolution last week, is a potential candidate. Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) Supported the Green New Deal in December, linking his support for his climate goals to a job security bill that he has already tabled. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (DN.Y.) last month sent a letter to the Republican Leader of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, in which she explained her support for a Green New Deal green. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Who should be a favorite when he declares his candidacy, is considering adopting his own legislation on a Green New Deal.
Others are vague. Meaning. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Former Representative Beto O. Rourke (D-Texas) and Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Julián Castro, have all stated to support the idea or "Concept" of a Green New Deal.
The resolution could draw clearer lines of battle.
"I'm waiting to see a lot of people saying that they approve of the spirit, that they like the bill, they just wonder if it could be adopted as a bill, "said RL Miller, chairman of the political action committee. Vote Climate Hawks. "But that's definitely a starting point."
This is how the Green Socialists will govern. He will be thoughtful, politically pragmatic and ambitious.
Greg Carlock, Data for Progress
The Green New Deal, originally invented in the mid-2000s, was a term that wanted the environmental and economic goals resurfaced last year while Ocasio -Cortez and other leftist democrats shared a decidedly progressive vision of reducing climate emissions and eliminating poverty at the same time. In November, activists from the Sunrise Movement and the Justice Justice Democrats group staged sit-in protests in Democratic leaders' offices, demanding that they make the Green New Deal a political priority of the newly overthrown House.
Ocasio-Cortez joined the protests, and soon after unveiling a resolution calling for the creation of a small committee on the Green New Deal in the House. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected the plan as some 40 Democrats agreed to support the resolution. Instead, she revived a small committee on climate change, created about ten years ago, and entrusted the care of the commission to a moderate democrat from the backbench. This turned out to be popular. In December, 81% of registered voters said they support a plan to produce 100% of the country's electricity from clean sources over the next decade, to modernize the US power grid, to invest in electricity, and 39, energy efficiency and renewable technologies and to train the new green economy, according to a survey conducted by Yale's program on climate change communication and George Mason University. That included 92% of Democrats and 64% of Republicans, and 57% of conservative Republicans were deaf to an eyebrow.
Another poll released last week revealed that voters favored raising taxes to fund a green Green New Deal.
"The left is thinking about how we can govern, move from a force of opposition, from a force of resistance to a force capable of doing much strength, instead of 1%, "said Julian Brave NoiseCat, Policy Analyst at 350.org. Speaking of the resolution, he said, "There are a lot of things in there."
Stephen O. Hanlon, Sunrise Movement spokesman, downplayed the discrepancies between the resolution and some of the original demands formulated by fellow activists – namely an explicit removal of fossil fuels or a strict deadline of 2030 for 100% renewable energy.
"This is not a bill, that is, a lot of details have to be settled," he said. "We are still very satisfied with the elements that remain to be determined."
The resolution includes justice provisions that are difficult to criticize. This echoes the protests of the Dakota access pipeline in 2015 which, according to Ocasio-Cortez, inspired it to run for office. In one section, he calls for "the free, prior and informed consent of indigenous peoples for all decisions that affect them and their traditional territories". The document opens with a commitment to "promote justice and equity by ending the current situation, preventing the future, and redressing the historic oppression of Aboriginal peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unemployed, people with disabilities and youth. "
This resolution goes beyond the impact of the Green New Deal at home." A provision, as the HuffPost report said Tuesday, calls on the United States to "promote international technology exchange." , skills, products, financing and services with the goal of making the United States the world leader in the fight against climate change and helping others achieve a green New Deal. "
This could spark a new debate on how climate change should be at the center of the progressive vision of foreign policy for the 2020 elections. Although China has overtaken the United States as a As the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide more than a decade ago, Americans have by far the largest CO2 footprint per capita and remain by far the largest historical emitters in the world.
"We are starting to discuss the debt we owe to the international community for our irresponsible treatment of the environment," said Sean McElwee, co-founder of Data for Progress. "It will be a difficult discussion, but it shows how Ocasio-Cortez is changing the discussion."
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