The green new deal shows just how grand climate politics can be

If it’s hard to imagine the sweeping changes proposed in the “Green New Deal” actually happening, don’t blame the Green New Deal. It’s just that it has been so long since any politician suggested something so grand. The wildfires, hurricanes, droughts, and sea level rise that climate scientists have long promised are here, but we could get accustomed to that. We could forget that the world of five years ago or a decade ago was any different. And we got used to elected representatives saying predictable things about it too—doubt and denial, or expressions of concern that climate change is too complicated and too expensive to deal with. We grow accustomed to their farce.

US representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
 (D-New York), along with Senator Ed Markey
(D-Massachusetts), introduced the ambitious
 "Green New Deal" resolution on Thursday.

So it’s jarring when something breaks the pattern. A resolution from the US House of Representatives that proposes national, urgent action on climate change and more—well, we’re not used to that. A vast set of policies to fight climate change, prepare for its effects, address income inequality, and save working-class jobs, fronted by a brand-new congressperson with a national profile—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York’s AOC? That’s new. The so-called Green New Deal reads like a wholesale reset to the Democratic Party platform, weaving the existential threat of a warming planet into old-school liberal themes. Defend the working class. Clean up pollution. Give people health care and housing.

Read the Wired story by Adam Rogers - “The green new deal shows just how grand climate politics can be.”