Voices in My Head
Green New Deal: What’s the Deal and Why Does It Matter?
The Green New Deal is the political football of the day. It’s being tossed around so much from right to left and back again that most Americans can’t see it long enough to understand what it is. That includes me. So, I wanted to take some time to understand what it is and why it matters.
I began with the Congressional Resolution that started this discussion (if that’s even a word these days): 116TH CONGRESS 1ST SESSION H. RES. 109 Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal. It was introduced by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) There is a comparable resolution that was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), S. Res. 59.
Green New Deal Goals
The Green New Deal resolution (it’s not an actual bill at the moment) has been described as many things including this one from the Green Party: “The Green New Deal will convert the old, gray economy into a new, sustainable economy that is environmentally sound, economically viable and socially responsible.”
Others have been less generous. “Not only would 3.4 million jobs in the energy industry be destroyed by the Green New Deal, at the very least, millions of other jobs would likely be shipped overseas by GND’s mandate to end the use of fossil fuels in all U.S. industries, including the entire manufacturing sector and agriculture,” so says Justin Haskins on FoxNews.com.
To understand what the Green New Deal is, let’s begin with the House Resolution which you can find HERE. Here’s how it opens:
Whereas the October 2018 report entitled “Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 ºC” by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the November 2018 Fourth National Climate Assessment report found that—
(1) human activity is the dominant cause of observed climate change over the past century;
(2) a changing climate is causing sea levels to rise and an increase in wildfires, severe storms, droughts, and other extreme weather events that threaten human life, healthy communities, and critical infrastructure;
(3) global warming at or above 2 degrees Celsius beyond preindustrialized [sic] levels will cause—
The Resolution goes on to describe a long list of consequences from Climate Change and it doesn’t paint a pretty picture.
Whereas, because the United States has historically been responsible for a disproportionate amount of greenhouse gas emissions, having emitted 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions through 2014, and has a high technological capacity, the United States must take a leading role in reducing emissions through economic transformation…
House Resolution 109 doesn’t stop at calling our attention to the consequences of climate change to the environment, it also presses us on the economic consequences:
Whereas climate change, pollution, and environmental destruction have exacerbated systemic racial, regional, social, environmental, and economic injustices (referred to in this preamble as “systemic injustices”) by disproportionately affecting indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (referred to in this preamble as “frontline and vulnerable communities”);
Green Opportunity
The resolution calls for an ambitious program that revolves around an opportunity as they describe it:
Whereas the House of Representatives recognizes that a new national, social,
industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II
and the New Deal era is a historic opportunity—
(1) to create millions of good, high-wage jobs in the United States;
(2) to provide unprecedented levels of prosperity and economic security for all
people of the United States; and
(3) to counteract systemic injustices:
The Grand New Deal calls for a “10-year national mobilization” that focuses on everything from and including “repairing and upgrading the infrastructure in the United States”; “meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources”; and “spurring massive growth in clean manufacturing in the United States and removing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing and industry as much as is technologically feasible, including by expanding renewable energy manufacturing and investing in existing manufacturing and industry.” Trust me, there’s much more.
Photo by skeeze
Ambitious is a mild way of describing the resolution and I don’t mean that as a criticism. When President John F. Kennedy called for the United States to put a human on the moon within a decade, he wasn’t kidding. It proved to be not only ambitious but it also spurred technological changes from which we benefit today. Well, this Green New Deal is much more than that and there are parts of it that rankle the Conservative segment of American politics. For example:
(F) ensuring the use of democratic and participatory processes that are inclusive of and led by frontline and vulnerable communities and workers to plan, implement, and administer the Green New Deal mobilization at the local level;
(G) ensuring that the Green New Deal mobilization creates high-quality union jobs that pay prevailing wages, hires local workers, offers training and advancement opportunities, and guarantees wage and benefit parity for workers affected by the transition;
(H) guaranteeing a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States;
(I) strengthening and protecting the right of all workers to organize, unionize, and collectively bargain free of coercion, intimidation, and harassment;
(J) strengthening and enforcing labor, workplace health and safety, antidiscrimination [sic], and wage and hour standards across all employers, industries, and sectors;
(K) enacting and enforcing trade rules, procurement standards, and border adjustments with strong labor and environmental protections—
And if you still don’t understand the bottom line, the New Green Deal resolution ends with a call for a society where all the people of the United States receive:
- high-quality health care;
- affordable, safe, and adequate housing;
- economic security; and
- clean water, clean air, healthy and affordable food, and access to nature.
H. RES. 109 proposes that meeting climate change challenges is not just environmental and technological but also economic. With a divided government and America, this is nothing more than a wish list in the minds of Progressives and that’s a shame. While I agree that ten-years may not be realistic, there is much here that deserves serious political evaluation and discussion. Unfortunately, America has moved so far into “chaotic-conspiracies-created-by-non-truths” that the time for any serious anything may have passed us by, at least for now. By the time this generation passes the challenge onto the next, it might be too late for Earth. And that’s the real shame.
Photo by geralt
More Information
What Is a Green New Deal? from the Sierra Club
Green New Deal from The Green Party
The Green New Deal, explained from Vox Media
