Greening the Future: The Urgency of the Green New Deal in Addressing Climate Crisis

“Limiting warming to 1.5C is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics but doing so would require unprecedented changes.” I am going to examine the present ecological crisis, stress the importance of recreating ourselves as a nation with a carbon neutral output, and look into the latest environmentally concerned policy, the Green New Deal. I think the Green New Deal can be likened to a policy like the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare). When Bill Clinton was elected, he first tried to roll out a comprehensive health care plan addressing everyone.

This was antagonized as “socialized” health care by republicans, who vilify anything that even faintly of socialism. Bill Clinton’s health care flopped, and the flak caused much division amongst the Democratic.

Bipartisan tension was so strong that pressure was put on the “blue dog” democrats to reject it. Clinton’s own party was turned against him and against each other. So, even when Clinton’s subsequent much watered down health care plan came to the people, they majorly rejected it.

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This is why coalition is firstly important. If you don’t have support of your faction or of the larger whole, then you have no context and nothing to stand on. The voters don’t trust you and it’s all over.

Anyways, fast forward to 2016, now we have socialized health care via Obama. It is not that the reform was never there; it is that people were not ready for reform. As Trump now reigns as president, he’s done away with the affordable health care act, and people are crying out to get their very low cost coverage back.

This is analogous to the climate crisis because it seems like the people are not ready. Unfortunately, we do not have the time to wait three presidential cycles in order for environmental reform to become more palatable. The environment currently undergoing global and irreversible ecological catastrophe.

I am advocating for the implementation of policies to drastically and radically affect the way the United States concerns itself with regards to the global climate. Presently, there are not enough policies in place to combat the rising global temperature. Outside the U.S., there is the Paris Agreement. It was agreed by the countries in attendance that they would alter their practices to mitigate increasing climate change. It was agreed to cap the global temperature rise of this century to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, as well as to endeavor to limit the further limit the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius

While it was great that the United States was able to come together and sign this agreement with nearly other nation on the planet, this is flagrantly not good enough. If the temperature were to reach its estimated 2 degrees, as it is currently expected to by 2050 with present projections, many coastal communities would be thoroughly obliterated, and weather across the planet would be increasingly violent. Already, long established rural coastal communities are facing extinction or relocation, from the damage happening on the planet already. Drastic and harsh weather conditions will wipe out anyone without the economical or physical resources to protect themselves against such harsh environmental chaos, as we are already seeing, with homeless people freezing in the streets from unprecedentedly cold winters.

The Paris Agreement setting the cap at 2 degrees celsius is outrightly immoral. While many want to argue that half a degree could hardly make a difference, the raw and empirical facts state otherwise. When looking at the differences between a 1.5 degree versus a 2 degree increase in global temperature by 2050, the half degree difference can save 10 million people from losing their homes to rising sea levels, 2 million square feet of permafrost would be saved, and a 50 percent reduction in species losing half their geographic range.

Seeing as Trump withdrew from them Paris Agreement and the United States is no longer a part of an agreement signed by nearly every other nation on the planet, I am choosing to examine the Green New Deal. In lieu of being to cooperate with the rest of the world due to its malfunctioning present, maybe the people of American people can come together over the The Green New Deal as a way to combat our current climate crisis. Bearing the word ‘Green’ in its name, it naturally is ripe a target for bipartisan absurdities. I will examine what the New Green Deal offers, and what lengths we must go through to achieve its carbon neutral goals.

What does the Green New Deal entail? I will look at its history, and examine what it offers, and look into steps necessary to overcome in order to achieve it. The Green New Deal is not a quick or cheap fix. The cost of funding the proposal is estimated to be anywhere from $700 billion to $1 trillion per year. The Green New Deal is not singularly an attempt to lower carbon output. It is a comprehensive set of proposed economic stimulus programs. Besides the obvious renewable energy options and optimization of resource efficiency, it takes Franklin D. Roosevelt’s approach of both social and economic reforms in response to the Great Depression of the 1930’s.

It is sponsored house representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey. The name got its origins from a 2007 article in the New York Times, from journalist Thomas Freidman. “But we will only green the world when we change the very nature of the electricity grid— moving it away from dirty coal or oil to clean coal and renewables. And that is a huge industrial project— much bigger than anyone has told you. Finally, like the New Deal, if we undertake the green version, it has the potential to create a whole new clean power industry to spur our economy into the 21st century.”

The Green New Deal will create jobs in 'green' industries. It will boost the national economy, the world economy, and curb climate change at the same time. The Green party took the idea of environmental reform in conjunction with Rooseveltian style social and economic reform, and turned into an extensive plan as part of the Green Party presidential candidate platform. In 2012, Green Party candidate Jill Stein ran with a version of the New Green Deal as part of the platform, and again in 2016, will Howie Hawkins, who helped write it. In 2018, in response to the State of the Union speech, the Green Party reiterated the importance of the Green New Deal it is still officially part of their platforms ideals. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the face and voice of the Green New Deal, as of January 2019, as she released the plan to the people.

In a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (also known as the IPPC), it was suggested that in just about a decade before current carbon emissions plunge the environment into unbearable and catastrophic conditions. In the folly of our two party system, people who identify as “red” ignore or flat out deny the exacerbating and detrimental effect of carbon output on the environment. More of the people who identify as “blue” express concern for human-caused environmental changes. Unfortunately, we have a persistent cycle of the Republican party being obstinate, stubborn and aggressively egoistic. In response, the Democratic party has taken to folding or sacrificing aspects of their party ideals in order placate and appease the violent bully of Republicanism. All this considered, it is still unremarkable for the Democratic party to not go all out in addressing and mitigating climate change. If not them, then who?

The last environmentally concerned plan suggested by Democrats was the American Clean Energy and Security Act. It passed the House in 2009, but did not make it to the Senate floor. There has been nothing proposed to replace (or alter) it since. While many Democratic politicians are supportive of environmentally concerned policies, such as reducing pollution, tax credits for renewable energy, better fuel standards, but each of these policies a piece meal do not form a cohesive whole. The IPCC stresses that it is necessary to not just pass a few policies here and there, but to come up with a comprehensive reformation of current practices.

This younger generation is getting more and more agitated by the state of the planet that was created for them by irresponsibly and selfish, myopic nature of the generation preceding them. The older generation has messed up the planet’s climate by being short-sighted and greedy, and they should be ashamed. Younger people with have to live with the daily devastations of climate change. This is how the the Green New Deal was birthed. The nod to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s is intentional. It is a way to relate to the stubborn older generation and to get them paying attention.

Talk of the Green New Deal has sparked national interest, and is gaining exponential exposure over various social media sites. Climate change might be, for the first time, being talked about as a national conversation. Having one solid plan, albeit open-ended in its procedures, but straightforward with its intentions to become carbon neutral, has created something cohesive that people are eager to support. It’s something politicians can nod to, and use to gain traction with voters. There is concerns that this will divide the democratic party even further, and be just another ‘social issue’ that democrats are distracted by. If it divides democrats, so be it. “Never underestimate the power of public imagination” tweeted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It’s true. Climate change is not only national, it’s a global issue, and that wholistic concern will bring people of all walks of life together.

Embracing change is the only way through the horrors of today, and into the bounty of peace, health, and renewable energy of tomorrow. But we must remember, “We the People.” We must rid ourselves of dated and antiquated fears of socialism. We must unite and come together, truly as ‘One’ nation. If we are to do that, we must put down the red and blue swords of bipartisan bickering. We must emerge as one ‘Green’ party, a green nation, pledging allegiance to our One planet: this big, blue, beautiful earth.