Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal Resolution Gets Support From the Major 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidates
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Massachusetts senator Ed Markey have introduced their joint resolution for the Green New Deal—and it has some very well-known names on its list of nine Senate cosponsors, including all of the major 2020 Democratic candidates who have announced their intent to run and a few who haven’t. Their presence confirms that the issue of the United States’s role in averting climate disaster will be the defining platform position in two years when America votes on a new president, especially where Democrats are concerned.
The Green New Deal is a framework for mobilizing the government to lengths not seen since FDR’s original New Deal in order to transform the economy and combat the devastating effects of climate change. Chief among the required transformations would be the elimination of fossil-fuel emissions—but exactly what that entails and how it will be accomplished is still the subject of debate. Transportation, agriculture, and infrastructure will all have to be overhauled. So far, climate activists and supporters have used the idea of a Green New Deal as a rallying cry for massive government involvement, reflecting the dire urgency of the state of the planet and the danger of extreme weather events.
Now the Green New Deal has an official document. The resolution released by Ocasio-Cortez and Markey is mostly goal setting; it is silent, for example, on the alternate types of power (like, presumably, nuclear) that will be allowed under the Green New Deal when the economy leaves oil and gas behind. But it resolves that warming cannot exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius since preindustrial levels (the figure set out by the IPCC report released by the U.N. in October 2018), which will “require global reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from human sources of 40 to 60 percent from 2010 levels by 2030; and zero emissions by 2050.” These are ambitious targets; the document also says that the United States has an outsized role in meeting them.
What the resolution also does is set out two major problems to address: global warming and rampant inequality. The legislators argue that both can be addressed via the Green New Deal through job creation, massive public investment, and reinvigoration of the economy. It outlines 12 projects along these lines and solidifies its progressive ideology: advocating for a people-powered focus over markets, financial institutions, corporations, and technology.
At the same time, there are several ways in which the Green New Deal resolution doesn’t provide specifics; it avoids, for example, the biggest “how will we pay for it” question (a frequent conservative talking point). And it is nonbinding (as many resolutions passed by lawmakers are), meaning that it doesn’t create any actual government programs. But the fact that its cosponsors include 2020 Democratic candidates Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Elizabeth Warren (as well as possible entrant Bernie Sanders) means that it is, at least for now, being taken seriously. And that candidates understand that they will have to answer questions on how they plan to make life in the United States—and the world—sustainable.
Many of Ocasio-Cortez’s progressive freshmen colleagues are also sponsors, including Ayanna Pressley (MA-07), Deb Haaland (NM-01), and Rashida Tlaib (MI-13), all of whom ran on environmental justice as part of their platforms. There are 64 House cosponsors in total; many more will be needed to pass the resolution in that chamber. Before it was released, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was quoted referring to it as the “green dream,” a comment many took to be dismissive—Ocasio-Cortez, for her part, responded that she did not think it was insulting: “It is a green dream.”
Watch Bria Vinaite Explain the Green New Deal:
