On Thursday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey are releasing their proposal for a Green New Deal. The plan calls for taking direct and bold steps to address climate change and reduce greenhouse gases, while at the same time reforming the American economy and providing a pathway to a new generation of jobs and industries. At its heart is a 10-year plan for 100 percent “clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources,” but that’s far from the whole plan. The whole plan would go very, very far in making America the kind of society that it should be.
The best thing that can be said about Donald Trump’s State of the Union address is that it was completely lacking in ideas, with no vision at all for the nation’s future. The same definitely can’t be said of the Green New Deal. The scope of the proposal is vast, and the scale of the effort is daunting. It’s also exactly what is needed. While Trump mentioned both the Apollo program and the D-Day invasion in his speech, he provided nothing in the way of proposals that would even come close to matching those historic events. The Green New Deal has exactly that sort of goal: historic.
The plan will be introduced as non-binding resolutions submitted for consideration in both the House and the Senate. The resolutions call on Congress to begin creating the agencies and programs necessary to bring the deal into existence, but would not directly create those programs overnight. In something this big, there are a wealth of details to be worked out—and even loftier goals to be woven in.
That the name already seems so familiar is a sign of just how terrific a job those involved have done in promoting the ideas behind the plan. It’s also a sign of how receptive the country is to ideas that don’t seem to be mired in the defeatist mud—everything is too big, too costly, too difficult—that Republicans have been peddling for decades. There’s potential here for not just a tremor, but an earthquake.
The Green New Deal isn’t just a plan to rework the way America creates and consumes energy; it’s a plan to rework everything, everything, within that framework. That includes agriculture. That includes transportation. That includes manufacturing. And it includes all those things that Franklin Roosevelt talked about 75 years ago in his “Second Bill of Rights”: decent housing, fair wages, good health care, quality education, and security against losing any of those things due to illness or age.
If the 2018 election was about the return of upfront and proud progressives to a prominent role on the American stage, the Green New Deal reintroduces the nation to the goals that progressives have been hoping to achieve for the better part of a century.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become most associated with the policies in the Green New Deal as she’s become a lightning rod for progressive action to both Left and Right. Fortunately, AOC has proven to be wholly up to the demands of the attention she’s faced. Even as Republicans and the media have unpacked personal attacks and run up the standard defense of programs designed to concentrate wealth, she’s proven capable not just of pushing back, but of doing so in a way that builds awareness of what she supports and how it would work.
She’s not alone. Democrats across the board, not just the 29-year-old Ocasio-Cortez and the 72-year-old Ed Markey, but also newcomers and congressional veterans at every level, have made a successful reintroduction of ideas Republicans thought they had safely hidden behind layers of trickle-down over the decades. In facing off with the Green New Deal, Republicans are refighting battles they thought they’d won circa 1987. They do not like it.
For four decades, every battle Democrats have fought has been fought on Republican turf, on Republican assumptions, using Republican language about wealth, and regulations, and taxes. The Green New Deal doesn’t do that.
And Republicans are right to be afraid.
- Move America to 100% clean and renewable energy
- Create millions of family supporting-wage, union jobs
- Ensure a just transition for all communities and workers to ensure economic security for people and communities that have historically relied on fossil fuel industries
- Ensure justice and equity for frontline communities by prioritizing investment, training, climate and community resiliency, economic and environmental benefits in these communities.
- Build on FDR’s second bill of rights by guaranteeing:
- A job with a family-sustaining wage, family and medical leave, vacations, and retirement security
- High-quality education, including higher education and trade schools
- Clean air and water and access to nature
- Healthy food
- High-quality health care
- Safe, affordable, adequate housing
- Economic environment free of monopolies
- Economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work