Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey unveiled a “Green New Deal” plan. It both fails to explain the policy steps needed to end greenhouse-gas emissions and also fails to deal with the political obstacles such an effort faces.
The next time it gains control of the federal government, the Democratic Party is going to need to quickly implement an ambitious program to reduce carbon emissions. So far all the political oxygen on this problem has been sucked up by a slogan, “Green New Deal,” for which a blueprint was unveiled by New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts senator Ed Markey. The strategy they have produced is at best grossly undercooked, and at worst fatally misconceived.
Enacting an aggressive climate-change policy faces two large obstacles. The first is that every aspect of the policy contains a multitude of knotty technocratic challenges. It entails developing programs to wring carbon emissions out of the power sector, buildings, transportation, agriculture, and changing laws at the federal, state, and local levels. The difficultiesfaced by the long-developing bullet train in California, a state entirely controlled by Democrats, show how challenging it can be to carry out reforms that require buy-in from lots of stakeholders.
The second problem is political. Any national-level response quickly runs into the fact that, even if Democrats gain full control of government in 2021, and even if they abolish the filibuster or find a way to design a bill that can get around it, they will need the votes of moderate or conservative Democrats from fossil-fuel-producing states. The overrepresentation of oil, gas, and coal-producing areas in the Senate helped kill a modest energy tax under Bill Clinton, and a more ambitious cap and trade program under Barack Obama.
It would be unfair to expect any plan to solve both obstacles. But the Green New Deal fails to supply useful answers to either problem.
On the policy, the Green New Deal simply outlines ambitious targets for carbon reductions, without delving into specifics as to how the targets will be met. In place of detail it offers optimism. Noting that the International Panel on Climate Change proposes to cut global emission by 40 to 60 percent by 2030, and get to net zero by 2050 — which is itself a heroic goal — the Green New Deal proposes the United States get to net zero emissions by 2030.
