Green New Deal or Bust
You know America’s national priorities are pretty upside down when the world’s leading climate scientists are saying we have 12 years to get climate change under control and all the President cares about is building a border wall. If you want to talk about threats to national security that require declaring national emergencies and tapping into defense spending, then gee I don’t know, how about the looming global climate crisis that threatens to end all of human civilization as we know it within a century?
If by now you don’t believe global warming is happening, you are in the minority. In fact, you might as well be a Flat-Earther. Climate change deniers are outnumbered by a ratio of 5:1 in America. Most people would take this as a sign of hope for the future, although according to Yale University, only 6% of Americans think that “nations can and will successfully combat climate change.” Climate defeatism, our lack of confidence in ourselves to save humanity from the unmitigated impact of global warming, is widespread among Americans.
But honestly, who can blame these people? Our President thinks climate change is a hoax, he’s pulling us out of the Paris Climate agreement, and his administration is doing everything it can to roll back environmental regulations across the board. According to the experts, the best case scenario is that the planet will warm 2 degrees Celsius (3.7 F) above pre-industrial levels by the year 2100. (This is if all countries signed onto the Paris Agreement actually do meet their carbon emissions goals, of which many experts are doubtful and we’re already up about 1 degree C, so we just have 1 degree of “wiggle room” to work with.) At 2 degrees C, many climate scientists predict we are in for a wild ride of extreme weather events, rapidly rising seas, some ungodly thing called “heat death”, unbreathable air, global food shortages, mass migration, widespread disease, and a whole bunch of other terrifying things that threaten to wipe out many of us within a generation and make life on Earth a living hell for everyone else. In other words, the Paris Agreement — the greatest international effort to fight climate change ever achieved — is maybe a good start, but it’s not even enough.
In acknowledging the dark reality of the current geopolitical body’s feeble, largely ineffective attempts to address climate change, it is indeed hard to be optimistic about the future. Nor can the experts be optimists when they make predictions about our collective ability to fight climate change. We all have to look at the current state of things to make predictions, after all.
But what we also must not forget is that we, as a country, do wield the power to change the state of things. And when we have leaders that inspire confidence in our future, confidence that we can and we will overcome climate change, maybe people will start thinking positively about the future again.
Why the Green New Deal Is the Only Way
At this point, in the midst of this embarrassment of a government shutdown, most of the country is pretty much ready to call this administration what it is — a wash.
Trump has the lowest national average approval rating of any president in modern history. The shared sentiment among most Americans is that it’s time for a new style of leadership. But if we learned anything from the recent, surging momentum of politicians who embrace democratic socialism, it is that a growing number of Americans want strong leaders who are willing to call for radical change. Moderate policies toward big problems just don’t cut it in this day and age. The Affordable Care Act, for example — a piece-meal, free-market-friendly attempt to overhaul healthcare in America — probably would not fly if it were introduced in Washington today. What most people are calling for instead is a single-payer, Medicare-for-All-style nationwide healthcare system. So, when it comes to America’s biggest issues, it seems the conversation is shifting to bigger ideas and more comprehensive, equitable solutions.
So, what we must focus on now, as we seek to elect a new government in 2020, is electing leaders who want to unify bipartisan sentiments for bold change with bold solutions. Enter, the Green New Deal.
The Green New Deal is the idea of a multi-pronged reform package that addresses pretty much everything this country needs right now. While a pathway to a Green New Deal has not exactly been paved yet (a newly resurrected climate change committee being reformed in the House will hopefully discuss it), the basic idea is this: America transitions over to 100% renewable energy and net-zero carbon emissions by 2030, thus creating jobs, and establishing us as a global leader in the nascent but growing renewable energies industry. The Green New Deal also calls for massive social and economic reform policies including substantially raising the rate on multi-millionaire income tax brackets to help fund the project (an historically moderate policy that is massively popular with the world’s leading economists), implementing a single-payer healthcare system, alleviating the student debt burden to help revive the middle-class, a guaranteed government jobs program, and other ideas like implementing a universal basic income package that would help end poverty and homelessness. Based on the “New Deal” reform packages that helped set the stage for America’s recovery from the Great Depression in the mid-20th century, the Green New Deal is a framework of policy, updated for today’s challenges, that can help us overcome the climate crisis in an equitable manner.
We’ve run out of time (in fact, we’re overdue) to address climate change without implementing policies that are proportional in size to that of the problem. Neither the Republican nor the Democratic party establishments have any real plan to address climate change, but the Green New Deal is seeing a meteoric rise in momentum among progressives. As it stands, it’s the only real answer to the very real problem of anthropogenic climate change.
So here’s what needs to happen: Those of us who care about the future need to make as much noise as possible about the Green New Deal. We need to push our peers to do the same, we need to force the issue upon our representatives, and when it comes to electing new leaders we must settle for nothing less than candidates who campaign on, or support implementing a Green New Deal. Period. This needs to be our country’s #1 priority.
At a time when most Americans believe climate change is happening, when implementing renewable energy solutions on a massive scale is finally more technologically and financially feasible than continuing to rely on fossil fuels, and when a sense of urgency has never been greater, the opportunity has never been more ripe for the taking. We need to set an example for the rest of the world that successful, bold, progressive reform of our global energy infrastructure is possible. And we need to start now.
