“Green New Deal” advocates created confusion Thursday with their rollout of a nonbinding resolution that was intended as a first stab at defining the progressive climate change agenda heading into the 2020 presidential election.
The office of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., published a “frequently asked questions” fact sheet on the Green New Deal that included proposed policies that contradicted the text of the actual resolution.
Ocasio-Cortez’s office, which did not respond to comment, later appeared to take down the fact sheet after reporters and commentators noted differences.
Saikat Chakrabarti, the chief of staff to Ocasio-Cortez, dismissed the fact sheet in response to a reporter’s questioning on Twitter and referred to it as a “bad copy.”
[Opinion: Green New Deal? Try, economic Armageddon]
I’d read the resolution. That’s the actual thing introduced. We’ll put up an actual FAQ since this bad copy is floating around.
— Saikat Chakrabarti (@saikatc) February 7, 2019
For example, the fact sheet said the Green New Deal would “not include creating new nuclear plants” as part of its goal to achieve “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions” by 2030.
It says the Green New Deal makes “new fossil fuel infrastructure or nuclear plants unnecessary.”
However the resolution itself is “silent on individual technologies,” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who co-sponsored the bill with Ocasio-Cortez, told reporters at a press conference.
A reporter asked Markey about the antinuclear language, and he replied the wording in the fact sheet is “not part of the resolution.”
The subtle distinction is important. Progressives such as Ocasio-Cortez originally promised the Green New Deal would explicitly call for the end of fossil fuels or a shift to 100 percent renewable energy. The resolution introduced Thursday, however, leaves the door open for noncarbon-emitting energy sources that aren’t wind and solar power to reach the net-zero emissions goal.
The United Nations’ climate change panel has said that policies to eliminate U.S. carbon emissions should include “clean” energy sources that aren’t renewable for it to be technically and economically feasible. These alternatives include nuclear power and carbon, capture, and storage technologies that can collect carbon emissions and store it underground.
The fact sheet also dismissed carbon capture, saying “the technology to date has not been proven effective.”
But Markey specifically left an opening for carbon capture during the press conference.
“While the resolution does not mention any specific technology, it talks about any technology that can dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” he said. “So while it doesn’t mention carbon capture, we are open to whatever works, and will leave it to committees to devise the smartest ways in which those technologies are used.”
Some Democratic senators and lawmakers unaffiliated with the Green New Deal seemed confused what was in the resolution, assuming it included the broader framing.
“I have not done a deep dive into it,” said Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev. “The concept is laudable. It’s about an all-of-the-above portfolio focused on an outcome, which is decarbonization. That’s exactly what it comes down to.”
To be sure, technologies such as small advanced nuclear reactors — which is still in the development stage — and carbon capture are expensive and mostly unproven.
But both technologies have a level of bipartisan support in Congress. Costs for carbon capture are falling because of a bipartisan law passed last year that gives tax credits for companies that build such projects. Sponsors of the Green New Deal resolution, including presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., have co-authored legislation signed into law last year boosting advanced nuclear reactors.
Traditional nuclear power makes up a larger percentage of the electricity mix than wind and solar.
“Any zero-emissions electricity standard that could pass Congress has to include nuclear and carbon capture, along with wind and solar,” said Paul Bledsoe, a former climate change adviser to President Bill Clinton.
Yet nuclear plants are closing at a rapid pace, and only one new reactor has been completed in the last three decades in the U.S, leading some left-leaning environmental groups to oppose nuclear on safety and cost grounds.
The fact sheet published by Ocasio-Cortez’s office included other references that drew confusion and were not included in the resolution.
For example, it says fully eliminating emissions cannot happen in 10 years because “we aren’t sure we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast.” The fact sheet also called for expanding high-speed rail to “a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary.”
In addition, the resolution calls for “upgrading all existing buildings” in the U.S. and building new ones to make them more energy efficient. The fact sheet went a bit further, aiming to “upgrade or replace” every building in the U.S.
Some Democrats said these far-off proposals distracted from other important goals and its underlying purpose: to reduce U.S. emissions at a faster pace.
“Many of the extraneous wish list ideological items in the resolution will disappear long before legislative pens start to write actual bills,” Bledsoe said. “That is the danger of these resolutions. They create expectations that are not achievable. Everyone recognizes we won’t renovate every building and limit people from flying.”
