What the Green New Deal’s Momentum Actually Means

This article was originally published on the SERC website in March 2019.

“Does she know we are out here? Do you think she can hear us?” asks the young woman standing next to me]She is holding a bright yellow sign that reads, “Do your job” in one hand, and the Sunrise Movement’s songbook pamphlet in the other. We are in a small sea of protestors, all singing together to start off a sit-in for the Green New Deal (GND). It is just after 8:30 AM and somewhere in the lofty heights of the skyscraper above us, Senator Dianne Feinstein, who openly rejects the GND, is in her office. Down below, a crowd has rallied together to have a sit-in, to demonstrate support for the resolution. A banner held facing the busy street declares, “We have 12 years. What is your plan?”

The GND launched on February 7th, and received huge public support and momentum from across the country, especially from young activists and environmentalists. To date 89 house co-sponsors, but only 11 senators, have said they would support the GND in a vote. The massive scale and profound action the resolution calls for has emphasized a divide in ideology in the Democratic Party. In response to the traction and dramatic public response, Mitch McConnell is forcing a vote on the resolution. Meaning Senate will vote before going through committee hearings, in order to make Democrats take a public stance on the issue and potentially split the party. So on Friday morning, February 22nd, the Sunrise Movement organized a sit-in, as it had done before with Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell, outside Feinstein’s San Francisco office.

(Source: Annapurna Holtzapple)

The event picked up momentum and energy as speaker after speaker addressed the crowd with messages of hope they called for massive systemic change and the urgency for the issue. Activists, artists, union leaders, and two student groups spoke, sang, and called for action. Sixteen-year-old Isha Clarke from the high school organization, Teenagers vs. Apocalypse, blew the group away with her passion and her power; A group of three children from Earth Guardians, with a hand-drawn letter on a poster to deliver to the Senator, absolutely captivated the protestors with calls for equitable, conscious restructuring of the nation to preserve the future. These same children were the ones who went up to Feinstein’s office to ask for her support, and to whom she repeatedly told, “I know what I’m doing.”

But amid all of the conversation and the buzz, many people are still confused on what the GND actually is, so in case you missed it, here is a quick rundown: The Green New Deal is a non-binding resolution, introduced by House Member Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Senator Ed Markey. This 10-year plan calls for widespread change and massive mobilization in response to last October’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which states that within 12 years, if there are no changes to current trends of emissions, there will be irreversible damage to the planet. Obviously playing on FDR’s New Deal, the resolution proposes to shift the entire political economy of the US, emphasizing sustainability, environmental justice, and economic equality. The resolution outlines five major duties of the Federal Government: to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, to ensure economic security through high-wage jobs, to invest in infrastructure and industry to meet new challenges, to secure clean air, water, health food, access to nature and a healthy environment for all people, and to promote justice and equity. It is unique in its awareness and explicit acknowledgment of structural racism, and the need for future policy to account for equity in environmentalism. As was repeatedly said at the sit-in, “this is the only plan we have seen that is in line with what science and justice demand.”

But the non-binding status of the resolution means that even if it passes votes in both chambers of Congress, it still doesn’t actually become a law. So why does this vote have so much attention? What matters about it anyways? The GND  matters because if passed, it would establish precedent and a direction for US action. This resolution is important because it is a reaction to science, to the facts presented by the IPCC. As was said at Friday’s rally, “it is no longer enough to say that [climate change] is real and it’s happening, you have to have a plan.”

We live in an age where we have the science to recognize a problem and the technology to start addressing it but lack the policy, public approval, and sense of urgency to act and implement these solutions. While it is ambitious and will require a large-scale overhaul of existing structures in the US political economy, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez insists that it is feasible and necessary. Moreover, the social cost of carbon, the price of inevitable damages and obstacles resulting from the future challenges of climate change, will be much larger than if starting transitions for a more sustainable nation now. It has long been a political strategy of the Republican party to start outrageously big and succeed in getting steps towards the goal when the proposal is boiled down (ie demand a wall and get increased funding for border security). Realistically, passing the Green New Deal would only be a start on a long road to reshaping action and strategies on climate change, but it’s a crucial step in the right direction.

So what can you do? Put pressure on your representatives to support the Green New Deal when it comes to a vote. Act 350 has created a script pertaining to the GND and a system to find your representative and their phone number based on your zipcode.