The Green New Deal: Can’t We at Least Talk about It?

There has been no shortage of vitriol launched on supporters of the Green New Deal, most of which achieves nothing except to impede fact-based rational debate. Our launch point today is Peggy Noonan’s editorial of 2/17 entitled “The Buck Stops Here,” in which she dismisses the Green New Deal as “an extreme to the point of absurdist plan.” At a time when Gallup polling finds that across Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, 61% of Americans “worry a great deal/fair amount about global warming,” 61% “believe global warming is caused by human activities,” and 42% “think global warming will pose a serious threat in their lifetime,” and given the daily torrent of record flooding, drought, temperatures, coastal erosion, and the like, why can’t we at least talk about it? Let’s try to be fact-based and rational.

As introduced recently in Congress, the Green New Deal envisions a massive mobilization in order to transition our economy to 100% clean, renewable energy by 2030. We would be the first to agree that this is not realistic as policy. In fact, we would go one step further than Noonan and say it isn’t even a “plan.” But rather than leap to disparage it, let’s assume that is not the point. Let’s assume that it is simply a basis for the beginning of a discussion. With that as an objective, it has already served a purpose by pulling some heads out of the sand on climate change. As we describe in our Climate Change Research, the threat to the future of life as we know it is real and immediate. Most of the world acknowledges this, while the US under our current leadership is in denial. The subject needs to be put back on the national agenda and talked about in informed, rational terms. If it turns out that the only value of the Green New Deal is to jumpstart that conversation, it will have served a valuable purpose. Ultimately, we will arrive at a program to reduce carbon emissions that is affordable and achievable: a true plan. In the meantime, no purpose is served if we if can’t even talk about it.

So, I ask Ms. Noonan and others who have rushed to criticize, what is your plan?