Anything is possible, if you’re willing to pay the price.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and Senator Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) on Thursday released their resolution for the Green New Deal, an ambitious climate change and social welfare package. It proposes to make the United States economy 100 percent fossil fuel-free in 10 years, and, in doing so, to employ vulnerable Americans and slow global warming. Though Ocasio-Cortez has long listed, on her website, the big goals that the Green New Deal should include, this is the first time she’s put together a text that could be introduced in Congress.
Here at Pacific Standard, I’ve been using research to answer big questions about the Green New Deal. Next up: Is it really possible to meet America’s energy demands without fossil fuels?
But before we can answer this question, we need to address a major point of debate among environmentalists: Should the Green New Deal aim merely to ensure America doesn’t emit any more greenhouse gases? Or should it shoot for America’s energy to come from all renewable sources? The former would mean using a mix of strategies that might include nuclear power and future technology that removes greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, as opposed to powering the country solely through solar and wind energy, biofuels, and hydroelectric dams. Some environmentalists object to nuclear energy and carbon capture technology, but renewables are less controversial.
In its current iteration, the deal seems to aim for the latter. The resolution that NPR published on Thursday says the Green New Deal should meet « 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources. »
Onward to the science.
« If we were treating this issue as a national emergency and there was total buy-in, there’s nothing stopping us, » says Noah Kaufman, an economist who worked on de-carbonization studies for the Obama administration and is now a researcher at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.
