Source: NBC News
WASHINGTON — The Green New Deal has always been a plan to make a plan.
It sets an ambitious goal to move the economy toward net-zero emissions by 2030, but as supporters in Congress eagerly work to build out those plans into real legislation, they’re going to face stiff competition from politicians, activists and think tanks working on their own proposals from a different set of assumptions.
Even among backers of the nonbinding resolution introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., its broad strokes could sow disputes about what the Green New Deal means in practice. Ocasio-Cortez herself described the resolution as a
Feb. 7, 201901:34
“This is the first chapter of the book,” said Elizabeth Gore, senior vice president of political affairs at the Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit advocacy group. “Where you start out on these proposals is not where you end up.”
Potential for conflict
One area where the Green New Deal activists could clash with other environmental groups, lawmakers and other officials are their demands for a suite of “economic justice” policies, which include items like single-payer health care, along with guaranteed jobs and housing.
The Green New Deal resolution mentions these issues in passing, but there’s no party consensus around them and health care is already shaping up as a defining debate in the 2020 Democratic primaries.
“My own view is these energy investments and clean energy investments are going to be considered separately when they get to real legislation,” John Podesta, founder and director of the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning advocacy group, told NBC News.
This could lead to confusion down the line. While many Democrats see the Green New Deal economic proposals as general goals, backers on the left see them as a critical component that they say will aid workers affected by the transition away from fossil fuels.
“It isn’t a section of the Green New Deal, it is the Green New Deal,” said Demond Drummer, executive director of New Consensus, a nonprofit that’s advised Ocasio-Cortez and is crafting proposals within the Green New Deal framework that could serve as a basis for legislation.
Many players, many plans
For Ocasio-Cortez and the activists who put the Green New Deal on the top of Democrats’ agenda, the race is on to define the maximalist approach and hold lawmakers to it.
Drummer said that the group’s plan is to produce regular policy proposals through 2019, with a goal of assembling a collection that lines up with all of the Green New Deal’s goals by January 2020.
“It’s not like there’s going to be this magnum opus that’s released in 2020,” he said. “There are some things ready to go now and some things that need to be worked on and revised.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is working on a “comprehensive” climate proposal that “builds on the (Green New Deal) resolution that was introduced and fleshes out a lot of those details,” communications director Josh Miller-Lewis said.
On the activist front, the Sunrise Movement is planning a national tour to promote the Green New Deal. They’ll also keep watch over the politicians working on related proposals, which includes the announced and potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, several of whom are co-sponsors of the resolution and are also likely to roll out their own climate plans on the campaign trail. In particular, they hope to maintain the plan’s strict 10-year path toward a clean economy, a goal some allies see as unrealistic.
“If proposals don’t close in on a timeline to get to net-zero emissions in the time the science demands, they’re not the Green New Deal,” said Stephen O’Hanlon, communications director for Sunrise Movement.
Uncertain allies
Democratic…
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