‘Green dream or whatever’: AOC leads Democrat push for USA economic revolution
- by Troy Mann
- in World News
- — Feb 8, 2019
Democrats launched a sweeping plan Thursday to transform the US economy to combat climate change and create thousands of jobs in renewable energy, signaling its likely elevation as a central campaign issue in 2020 despite President Donald Trump's failure to mention climate change in his State of the Union address.
MSNBC's Chuck Todd questioned the freshman congresswoman about whether her brand of Democratic socialism can appeal outside of her deep blue NY district, before probing about whether the two-party system reflects the diverse viewpoints of the country.
It also picked up the support Thursday of former Vice President Al Gore, who released a statement saying it marked "the beginning of a crucial dialogue on climate legislation in the U.S". Pelosi said Wednesday, however, the panel would not be tasked with writing a specific bill, and brushed off the idea of the Green New Deal as a "suggestion". The Green New Deal (GND) wants to transition the U.S. to "100% clean and renewable energy" while guaranteeing jobs with a family-sustaining wage, family and medical leave, vacations, and retirement security and free higher education, healthy food, healthcare, "adequate housing", and economic security "for all who are unable or unwilling to work", among other things. It envisages sweeping measures to combat both climate change and a raft of social ills.
Florida Rep. Kathy Castor will chair the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.
"I welcome the Green New Deal and any other proposals" to address climate change, Pelosi said.
"We welcome the enthusiasm that is there with the Green New Deal", Pelosi said Thursday at a news conference.
A joint resolution drafted by them and expected to be introduced Thursday sets a goal to meet all power demand in the USA through clean, renewable and zero-emission energy sources by 2030. But it formally outlines the proposal in Congress for the first time and would mark a start on the path toward what Ocasio-Cortez has called "a wartime-level, just economic mobilization plan to get to 100 percent renewable energy".
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Even so, their Green New Deal goes far beyond the Clean Power Plan proposed by President Barack Obama.
"The public is much more aware of the challenge that we face and that is a good thing", Pelosi, a California Democrat, said.
"The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they're for it, right?" she told reporters.
Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Speaker Nancy Pelosi invited her to serve on a select committee studying climate change solutions, but she opted against it because she's already on an Oversight and Reform subcommittee on the environment.
Most of the Democratic presidential candidates, including Senators Kirsten Gillibrand of New York; Kamala Harris of California; Elizabeth Warren of MA; and Cory Booker of New Jersey have also broadly endorsed the idea behind the Green New Deal.
The Green New Deal would be paid for "the same way we paid for the original New Deal, World War II, the bank bailouts, tax cuts for the rich and decades of war - with public money appropriated by Congress", Ocasio-Cortez said. Trump and the Republican-controlled Senate are likely to oppose this one, too.
Trump, who has expressed doubts about climate change, scrapped Obama's plan as a job killer.
