Climate change is a very real problem that could cause enormous damage to the United States and to the rest of the world.
U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, have submitted a Green New Deal nonbinding resolution to Congress, presenting their ideas for the U.S. to fight climate change.
This column will ask some of the many questions that the resolution’s sponsors need to answer.
1. To what degree is the U.S. culpable for causing this problem? The resolution says, “Whereas the United States has historically been responsible for a disproportionate amount of greenhouse gases…, the United States must take a leading role in reducing emissions through economic transformation.”
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the country that emitted the most carbon dioxide in 2015 (the most recent available data), as measured in millions of metric tons, was China (9,040.74). The United States was a distant second (4,997.50). The U.S. is, however, the leading emitter per capita.
Are other nations more committed than the U.S. to fighting climate change? The Universal Ecological Fund, which is committed to fighting climate change, said this: “195 countries have adopted the Paris Agreement on climate change. Except for a handful of countries, climate change has not been a priority for taking action for almost 20 years.”
2. The GND calls for meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources. Ernest Moniz, the energy secretary under President Barack Obama, said this about the Green New Deal, “I’m afraid I just cannot see how we could possibly go to zero carbon in the 10-year time frame. It’s just impractical.”
3. Would the GND support amending current laws or regulations that conflict with the siting of renewable sources of energy? Would the GND support overriding the objections of local governments and citizens’ groups? All renewables, hydro, wind and solar have faced some kind of opposition based on ascetics, noise, destroying habitat, impacting wetlands, and more.
4. What does the GND plan to do with nuclear power, which generates 20 percent of U.S. electricity and doesn’t emit greenhouse gases?
5. How much control over the U.S. economy does the GND want? Here are a few direct quotes regarding the goals and projects the GND will require:
■Ensures that the public receives appropriate ownership stakes and returns on investment, adequate capital (including through community grants, public banks, and other public financing)
■Directs investments to spur economic development, deepen and diversify industry and business in local and regional economies, and build wealth and community ownership
■Spurs massive growth in green manufacturing
■Overhauls transportation systems in the United States.
6. Why does the GND resolution contain many objectives that are not intrinsically related to climate change? Some of these include providing “high-quality” health care to all people of the United States, providing affordable, safe, and adequate housing; economic security; and clean water, clean air, healthy and affordable food, and access to nature.
7. The resolution calls for “ensuring the use of democratic participatory process that are inclusive of and led by frontline and vulnerable communities and workers to plan, implement, and administer the Green New Deal mobilization at the local level.”
Aren’t leaders elected from the population at large, not chosen from select identity groups?
8. Can you explain to these labor leaders what they don’t know about workers’ jobs?
Terry O’Sullivan, general president of LIUNA, the 500,000-member Laborers’ International Union of North America, said, “It (the GND) threatens to destroy workers’ livelihoods, increase divisions and inequality, and undermine the very goals it seeks to reach. In short, it is a bad deal.”
The AFL-CIO’s energy committee wrote to the resolution’s sponsors: “…the Green New Deal resolution is far too short on specific solutions that speak to the jobs of our members and the critical sections of our economy. We will not accept proposals that could cause immediate harm to millions of our members and their families.”
9. How many trillions of dollars will implementing the GND cost? Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, has estimated the 10-year cost to be between $52 trillion and $93 trillion, depending largely on how extensive the GND guaranteed jobs program would be.
The GND overstates the degree of U.S. culpability, is not technically feasible, leads to a massive increase in the federal government’s control of the economy, mandates sweeping social changes unrelated to climate change, and will destroy existing jobs with no certainty of more or better jobs being created.
The GND is deeply flawed. There are better ways to fight climate change that should be pursued.
Richard Fein retired from the Isenberg School of Management as the Director of the Chase Career Center for undergraduate business students. He is the author of nine books on job search skills and holds an MA in Political Science and an MBA in Economics