Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ed Markey Announce Ambitious Green New Deal Framework

Freshman Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced her Green New Deal—a cornerstone of her campaign—on Thursday, together with Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey. Crucially, it comes in the form of a non-binding resolution, so even if the House does pass it, the legislation will mostly serve as a roadmap of where lawmakers would like to go with respect to climate change, and what issues they plan to prioritize.

The agenda outlined in the resolution is dramatic and sweeping in equal measure. The Green New Deal would set ambitious goals for cutting carbon emissions nationwide, across all industries, while also implementing carbon-neutral infrastructure and mass transit, and creating jobs in the process. It calls for a complete switch to renewable energy by 2030.

It's not something the United States could implement overnight, even if it were to become law, because it basically involves the wholesale reconfiguration of the economy and our infrastructure.

"Even the solutions that we have considered big and bold are nowhere near the scale of the actual problem that climate change presents to us," Ocasio-Cortez told NPR, which originally published the resolution. "It could be part of a larger solution, but no one has actually scoped out what that larger solution would entail. And so that's really what we're trying to accomplish with the Green New Deal."

Indeed, a string of alarming climate reports have suggested that, without a radical transformation of the global carbon economy, we will achieve a catastrophic 3.6 degrees of atmospheric warming within about 20 years—much earlier than previously estimated. As a result, experts expect the mass displacement of populations currently living in island and coastal locations; unrelenting, extreme weather (floods, fires, droughts, the whole bit); famine; disease; and by the end of the century, roughly $500 billion in economic damage to the U.S. economy per year. Low-income people would be hit hardest, both because these populations tend to chart higher rates of health problems and have more direct exposure to natural disasters wrought by climate change.

As such, Ocasio-Cortez and Markey's resolution marries social justice issues with environmental policy, demanding the inclusion of the "vulnerable communities" that stand to be worst affected in the drafting process. The current language also commits to the total transition away from nuclear energy and fossil fuels, and toward "clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources." To that end, the deal proposes a pivot to electric cars and the building of a high-speed rail to replace airplane travel, the aviation industry ranking among the nation's most aggressive carbon emissions sources. It also proposes upgrading every single building in the U.S. "to achieve maximal energy efficiency," and commits to working with and supporting farmers to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and agricultural pollution to the lowest possible levels.

At the same time, the Deal would also guarantee every American not only a job with "a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations and retirement security," but also, health care.

A city composed of islands and a lot of coastal building, New York will feel the effects of climate change acutely. Visual learners might particularly appreciate this very scary video depicting the projected result of a failure to head off 3.6-degree warming: Streets submerged in five-to-nine meters of river water by the end of the century.

As WNYC has previously reported, continued warming will mean severe weather could cost us about twice as much as it already does by 2050, with ever-more frequent heat waves potentially claiming as many as 1,500 lives each summer. Hotter temps mean heavier reliance on air conditioning, which in turn means more blackouts. But perhaps the biggest question a city already characterized by a vast income gap and housing scarcity should ask itself is what happens when so much real estate—space currently occupied by businesses and by people—winds up under water?

So that we may more easily wrap our brains around the scale of this impending catastrophe, and understand who will be worst affected, Eddie Bautista—executive director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance—recalled Superstorm Sandy. Flooding damaged 402 NYCHA buildings with 35,000 units, leaving 80,000 residents without heat or hot water, because broad swaths of the city's public housing stock sit within surge zones. Further, roughly 65 percent of renters who applied for FEMA assistance in Sandy's aftermath made less than $30,000 per year. In the inevitable event of a comparable storm surge situation, there's no reason to expect the outcome would be different going forward.

It's worth remembering, too, that over half of NYCHA tenants live in the city's most heat-vulnerable neighborhoods, many of them in apartments without air conditioning. "Whether it's storm surge, whether it's heat exposure, you can draw a straight line between particular climate impacts and how low-income people, people of color, low-income populations, are disproportionately vulnerable," Bautista told Gothamist.

True, Mayor Bill de Blasio has committed to the Paris Climate Agreement, even though (and perhaps because) the current president won't, and that is a step in the right direction. But we also know that the accord doesn't go far enough toward heading off a severe and urgent manmade disaster, and there is scientific consensus that we need to take aggressive action to change course immediately.

Today's Green New Deal is, again, a lofty wishlist, and even so, NPR deems it unlikely to pass. Although the Deal has won support from Congressional big names like Senator and 2020 candidate Kamala Harris, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's support seems tepid at best. Many Republicans will, predictably, be automatic passes, but even those who do believe in science have evinced skepticism.

"Someone's going to have to prove to me how that can be accomplished because it looks to me like for the foreseeable future we're gonna be using a substantial amount of fossil fuels," Republican Representative and co-chair of the Climate Solutions Caucus Francis Rooney told NPR, before the Deal's release on Thursday.

Still, even an untenable Green New Deal serves purpose as a catalyzer of coming presidential campaigns, and as NPR points out, support could serve as a litmus test for Democratic and progressive voters. Actually, belief in climate change now crosses party lines, so perhaps it's not outrageous to expect some Republican challengers might consider paying attention, too. As Ocasio-Cortez put it to NPR, that's where you come in: "The public needs to call their member of Congress and say, 'This is something that I care about,'" she said, adding: "Where I do have trust is in my colleagues' capacity to change and evolve and be adaptable and listen to their constituents."