Zach Carter and Alexander C. Kaufman — The War On Climate Change Won’t Be Won Quibbling Over The Green New Deal’s Costs

The Green New Deal unveiled last week by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is a powerful and ambitious statement. It’s more than just a delineation of the enormous changes that will be required to stave off the most cataclysmic impacts of climate warming. It offers a portrait of the better world we can create by doing so.

It also has no chance of becoming law, not while Republicans control the Senate and climate change denier Donald Trump resides in the White House.

Markey and Ocasio-Cortez know this. That’s why the Green New Deal is framed as a joint resolution, not a formal law, meaning even if it passed, the measure wouldn’t bind the government to any new policies. This distinction is key to understanding what the Green New Deal is — and is not — and how to usefully talk about it now. It is a major statement of the Democratic Party’s political priorities. It is not a detailed blueprint of how to get there — or how to pay for it.

The Green New Deal’s agenda, however, is clear: Dramatic action must be taken to avert a climate disaster that will otherwise render much of the world uninhabitable. This is an emergency that deserves immediate attention. Millions of lives are quite literally at stake....

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The War On Climate Change Won’t Be Won Quibbling Over The Green New Deal’s Costs: The mounting damage of global warming is a crisis far greater than the deficit.
Zach Carter and Alexander C. Kaufman