Green New Deal
The name refers to the New Deal, a set of changes and public works projects undertaken by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933-1935 in response to the Great Depression in the United States.
[11] A prominent 2019 attempt to get legislation passed for a Green New Deal was sponsored by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) during the 116th United States Congress, though it failed to advance in the Senate.
Biggers wrote that then-presidential-candidate Obama "should shatter these artificial racial boundaries by proposing a New 'Green' Deal to revamp the region and bridge a growing chasm between bitterly divided Democrats, and call for an end to mountaintop removal policies that have led to impoverishment and ruin in the coal fields.
This reflected the popular support the GND had received in the US in late 2018, growing recognition of the global warming threat resulting from recent extreme weather events, the Greta effect and the IPCC 1.5 °C report.
"[37][38] The 2019 United States congressional resolution Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal introduced by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ed Markey advocated a "just transition", counteracting previous systemic injustices that had disproportionally hurt vulnerable communities.
The policy proposal involves every sector in the economy and the option of a border adjustment mechanism, a 'carbon tariff', is on the table to prevent carbon leakage from outside countries.
[51] A pilot program for a four-day workweek, under development by Spain's Valencian Regional Government, has been described as a "helpful counter to ... fearmongering about the bleak, hamburger-free world climate activists are allegedly plotting to create with a Green New Deal.
[53] In its place, it has been proposed that the EU enacts a "Green New Deal for Europe", which includes more investment, and changes the legal regulation that enables global warming from coal, oil, and gas to continue.
The aim of the group is to push the party to adopt a radical Green New Deal to transform the UK economy, tackle inequality and address the escalating climate crisis.
[60] On April 30, former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband joined Caroline Lucas and former South Thanet Conservative MP Laura Sandys in calling for a Green New Deal in the UK.
[4][63] Polling undertook by YouGov in late October 2019 found that 56% of British adults support the goal of making the UK carbon neutral by 2030 or earlier.
[64] In July 2020, while the UK government promised a "green recovery" from the COVID-19 pandemic, this was criticised as being insufficient, and lacking changes to regulation that enabled coal, oil, and gas pollution to continue.
This has the goal of establishing duties on all public bodies and regulators to end use of all coal, oil and gas "as fast as technologically practicable", with strict exceptions if there are not yet technical alternatives.
For now, it's a platform position that some candidates are taking to indicate that they want the American government to devote the country to preparing for climate change as fully as Franklin Delano Roosevelt once did to reinvigorating the economy after the Great Depression.
[78] By the end of November, eighteen Democratic members of Congress were co-sponsoring a proposed House Select Committee on a Green New Deal, and incoming representatives Ayanna Pressley and Joe Neguse had announced their support.
[81][82] Organizations supporting a Green New Deal initiative include the Sunrise Movement, 350.org, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Extinction Rebellion and Friends of the Earth.
[83][84] A Sunrise Movement protest on behalf of a Green New Deal at the Capitol Hill offices of Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer on December 10, 2018 featured Lennox Yearwood and speakers as young as age 7, resulting in 143 arrests.
[91] Their proposal advocated transitioning the United States to 100% renewable, zero-emission energy sources, along with investment in electric cars and high-speed rail systems, and implementing the "social cost of carbon" that had been part of the Obama administration's plan for addressing climate change within 10 years.
Besides increasing state-sponsored jobs, this Green New Deal also sought to address poverty by aiming much of the improvements in "frontline and vulnerable communities" which include poor and disadvantaged people.
[83][95] (Writing in Gentleman's Quarterly, Jay Willis responded that despite the best efforts of Pallone and De Fazio over many years, "the planet's prognosis has failed to improve," providing "pretty compelling evidence that it is time for legislators to consider taking a different approach.
[102] An article in The Atlantic quoted Greg Carlock, who prepared "a different Green New Deal plan for the left-wing think tank Data for Progress" as responding, "There is no scenario produced by the IPCC or the UN where we hit mid-century decarbonization without some kind of carbon capture.
[101][104] The Director of the Center for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy at George Mason University was quoted as saying, "As long as organizations hold onto a rigid set of ideas about what the solution is, it's going to be hard to make progress ... And that's what worries me.
[68][69] Paul Bledsoe of the Progressive Policy Institute, the think tank affiliated with the conservative Democratic Leadership Council, expressed concern that setting unrealistic "aspirational" goals of 100% renewable energy could undermine "the credibility of the effort" against climate change.
[83] Economist Edward Barbier, who developed the "Global Green New Deal" proposal for the United Nations Environment Programme in 2009, opposes "a massive federal jobs program," saying "The government would end up doing more and more of what the private sector and industry should be doing."
He suggests land use reforms to increase density, congestion pricing, and eliminating parking requirements as measures that can be applied more flexibly to cities with monocentric and polycentric layouts.
Klein relates her meeting with Greta Thunberg in the opening essay in which she discusses the entrance of young people into those speaking out for climate awareness and change.
[208] In 2021, commentators noted that early climate-related executive actions by President Biden, such as re-joining the Paris Agreement, have much in common with the 2019 GND proposed by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Markey.
[209][210][37] President Biden's infrastructure package, which pledges to halve 2005 U.S. greenhouse gas emissions levels by 2030,[211] has been criticized by progressives, including Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, as not being ambitious enough to achieve the scale required to mitigate climate change.
[213] In August 2022, President Joe Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act, which contains the largest climate investment by the U.S. federal government in history.
[221] Yet despite the success of Brown and others in bringing about a short lived worldwide return to Keynesian stimulus policies, the focus of extra government spending was on supporting existing economic activity, rather than speeding the transition to the green economy.
