Ha! We should be so lucky.
According to the February 23 edition of Vox, here’s the big deal about this Green New Deal:
It refers, in the loosest sense, to a massive program of investments in clean-energy jobs and infrastructure, meant to transform not just the energy sector, but the entire economy. It is meant both to decarbonize the economy and to make it fairer and more just.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the freshman sensation of this new Congress. Perhaps you know that she proposed this Green New Deal a few weeks ago. What you may not know is that her “new deal” is little more than a rebranding of old environmental protections and practices.
Gaylord Nelson, a US senator from Wisconsin, proposed them way back in 1969. More to the point, those protections and practices inspired the clarion call for the inaugural Earth-Day rally in 1970.
That Ocasio-Cortez has just cause to merely rebrand Wilson’s proposals betrays how elusive achieving his goals has been. And the increasing ravages of climate change actually make her proposals more exigent, if not existential.
Still, my informed cynicism is such that I suspect she conjured up her goals as little more than a political stunt. But it’s an indication of Ocasio-Cortez’s (social-media) influence that Democratic presidential candidates, who should know better, rushed to endorse her Green New Deal as an article of political faith.
I should also note that Ocasio-Cortez fuses Wilson’s Earth-Day proposals with former president FDR’s (Economic) New-Deal policies. In fact, her slogan is a political appropriation of FDR’s. Except that his slogan led to “a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms and regulations” that provided immediate “relief, reform, and recovery from the Great Depression.”
Nobody expects Ocasio-Cortez’s to have that kind of immediate (and long-term) impact on the environment or economy. But there’s no denying the boosting impact it will have … on her career.
Related commentaries:
Earth Day…