So The Green New Deal Won't Work. Fine. What Do Critics Have - Anything At All? New Republic
As momentum for the Green New Deal grows, so do its detractors. The ambitious plan to fight climate change introduced by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey last week has been called everything from “brainless” to “delusional” by conservatives. President Donald Trump said it sounded like “a high school term paper that got a low mark.” Some Democrats have criticized the Green New Deal, too, saying that its goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2030 is unachievable. Others believe the plan doesn’t go far enough.
What, then, do these critics propose instead? What should America do to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow catastrophic global warming? Most Republicans don’t have an answer to that question because they deny that anything needs to be done at all. But as New Yorker staff writer Osita Nwanevu noted on Twitter, those who accept the dire reality of climate change aren’t helping by offering empty critiques.
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Decarbonization is possible, Naam argued, if the U.S. government invested enough resources in low-carbon agriculture, manufacturing research, and new technologies. “American companies would be the ones exporting the technology for carbon-free cement, carbon-free steel, carbon-free factories, and that would be a huge opportunity,” he said. “I think it will have even more impact than the Green New Deal, because the Green New Deal only decarbonizes the United States. We would only reduce global carbon emissions by 15 percent, and that’s not enough.”
Critics of Naam’s plan might argue that it’s far too risky for a problem as dire as climate change. It relies on scientists’ developing miracle cures for our highest-emitting sectors within just a few years—and then it relies on industry to successfully deploy those cures across the planet. The plan does not seek to reduce excessive consumption, but to somehow make excessive consumption sustainable. The Green New Deal seems less risky by contrast, since it would mandate the transition to low-carbon energy sources that already exist. The are a lot of questions surrounding the Green New Deal—first and foremost whether it could ever become law—but at least it doesn’t rely on miracle cures. It’s an almost impossible solution to an almost impossible problem.
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https://newrepublic.com/article/153096/green-new-deal-alternatives-reversing-climate-change
