Fresh off her 2018 upset New York Democratic congressional primary win, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (better known as AOC) and Massachusetts Sen. Edward Markey announced they were launching an ambitious legislative plan called the Green New Deal.
While people who had a grounding in economic thought found this new initiative to be naïve at best and destructive at worst, nonetheless it has energized American progressives and other environmental true believers.
The goals for the GND were right out of Central Planning Fantasyland, something that is obvious from reading from the website:
The Green New Deal starts with a WWII-type mobilization to address the grave threat posed by climate change, transitioning our country to 100% clean energy by 2030. Clean energy does not include natural gas, biomass, nuclear power or the oxymoron “clean coal.”
The implementation of the Green New Deal will revive the economy, turn the tide on climate change and make wars for oil obsolete. This latter result, in turn, enables a 50% cut in the military budget, since maintaining bases all over the world to safeguard fossil fuel supplies and routes of transportation could no longer be justified. That military savings of several hundred billion dollars per year would go a very long way toward creating green jobs at home.
On top of that, the Green New Deal largely pays for itself in healthcare savings from the prevention of fossil fuel-related diseases, including asthma, heart attacks, strokes and cancer.
Moving to 100% clean energy means many more jobs, a healthier environment and far lower electric costs compared to continued reliance upon fossil fuels. Studies have shown that the technology already exists to achieve 100% clean energy by 2030. And we can speed up the transition by making polluters pay for the damage they’ve caused, starting with a robust carbon fee program.
The Green New Deal is not only a major step towards ending unemployment for good, but also a tool to fight the corporate takeover of our democracy and exploitation of the poor and people of color. Our transition to 100% clean energy will be based on community, worker and public ownership and democratic control of our energy system, rather than maximizing profits for energy corporations, banks and hedge funds.
We need to treat clean energy as a human right and a common good. We also need a just transition to provide resources to the low-income communities and communities of color most impacted by climate change.
The Green New Deal will provide assistance to workers and local communities that now have workers employed in the fossil fuel industry and to the developing world as it responds to climate-change damage caused by the industrial world.