Democrats, newly empowered in the House majority, are reviving an effort they began but abandoned a decade ago to curb the nation’s carbon emissions and ramp up green energy initiatives.
But this time their legislation will likely get a jolt from the party’s left wing, which envisions an ambitious pace for eliminating fossil fuels and wants to widen the scope of a climate-change proposal to include such progressive goals as healthcare for all and a guaranteed government job.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., appointed nine Democrats on Thursday to a newly created climate change committee. The panel, she said, “will have a leading role in taking testimony and building current information on solutions to the climate crisis.” Other committees will collaborate to write actual legislation, Pelosi said, and the process will focus on creating jobs and improving the economy.
An important subplot unfolded as Pelosi spoke. The star House freshman Democrat, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., stood in front of the Capitol with Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and unveiled to a cheering crowd her much-anticipated “Green New Deal”, which outlined in several pages the many goals of climate progressives. Among them:
- Move America to 100 percent clean and renewable energy
- Achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in ten years
- Guarantee everyone a job with a family-sustaining wage, family and medical leave, vacations, and retirement security
- Economic environment free of monopolies
- Economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work
In a blog post outlining the plan, Ocasio-Cortez writes that “the level of investment required is massive” and will require speedy “overhauling of whole industries.” All buildings would have to be retrofit to be energy efficient, for example. Airplanes, and perhaps even cows, would have to be phased out, replaced by high-speed rail and sustainable farming.
“We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast,” the blog post states, “but we think we can ramp up renewable manufacturing and power production, retrofit every building in America, build the smart grid, overhaul transportation and agriculture, plant lots of trees and restore our ecosystem to get to net-zero.”
Republicans immediately criticized the plan as far-fetched. Some even laughed.
“If I were to switch the channel right now, would I be out of the twilight zone?” asked Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah, who is the top Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee.
But Democrats are taking the proposal very seriously and most are endorsing it, including the lawmakers vying for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
“I’m proud to co-sponsor @AOC and @EdMarkey’s Green New Deal,” tweeted Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., who is running for president. “We must aggressively tackle climate change which poses an existential threat to our nation.”
Among the presidential hopefuls in the Senate, Ocasio-Cortez said Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., all back the “Green New Deal,” as does former San Antonio mayor Julian Castro and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii.
House Democrats who back the “Green New Deal” say they recognize some of the goals are ambitious. When told the plan includes an effort to “get rid of” air travel, Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona hesitated. “Thats, uh, ambitious.”
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., a co-sponsor, said the goals are ambitious but necessary because of international climate warnings that averting disaster conditions requires that nations be using 45 percent renewable energy by 2030 and 75 to 80 percent by 2050.
“What we have to do now is flesh out the details of how we get there,” Khanna said, claiming that the ‘Green New Deal’ will help America reach that goal.
“I support it as an aspirational vision, in the urgency,” Khanna said. “But the American public expects details and substance and how are we going to do it.”
Only some current lawmakers were in office in 2009 when the House passed a carbon emission cap-and-trade deal. The measure never passed the Senate and was used to help defeat Democrats in 2010, when the GOP regained its House majority.
Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., who voted for the 2009 bill, said the urgency to address climate change through legislation has increased in the past decade.
“This is 2019. People’s awareness of the climate crisis is very different today than it was back then,” McGovern said. “Back then I didn’t hear a lot of people in coffee shops raise this issue. Now I hear it all over the place.”
