The launch of the Green New Deal resolution sparked significant criticism for supposedly proposing that high-speed trains could be used to replace air travel and its carbon pollution.
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| ARTIST'S CONCEPT OF NASA'S X-57 MAXWELL AIRCRAFT SHOWS THE PLANE'S SPECIALLY DESIGNED WING AND 14 ELECTRIC MOTORS. |
House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney (R-WY) claimed the Green New Deal — a plan to rapidly decarbonize the entire economy — would “outlaw plane travel.”
But while the resolution, introduced this month by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), makes no such claim, it does fail to consider a game-changing technology for cutting the carbon pollution caused by air travel while still traveling by air: electric planes.
As one of its major goals, the resolution proposes “overhauling transportation systems… to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible, including through investment in” zero-emission vehicles, mass transit, and “high-speed rail.”
Read the ThinkProgress story by Joe Romm - “The Green New Deal doesn’t need to choose between planes or trains. Here’s why.”
