Today marks the 3-year anniversary of the Green New Deal HR 109 resolution that was introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey. Although the deal has been largely forgotten in the news cycle, it still represents a significant opportunity for us in the Green Party to pursue a sustainable future.
In 2010, Howie Hawkins, the Green Party candidate for Governor of New York, called for a Green New Deal in his platform. The title was meant to capture the spirit of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, but with a focus on a new energy economy and environmental protection. The Green New Deal is an emergency program that ends unemployment, creates 20 million new jobs, ends poverty and addresses climate change all at once through massive investments in sustainable infrastructure and public transit, as well as other measures like conservation, public health care, and reparations.
Christine Pépin and Nassim Nouri members of the Green Party of Santa Clara County, stated “The text of the resolution remains extremely vague and widely open to interpretation. Many climate and social justice groups have already criticized the resolution, including the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Green Party of the United States, Code Pink and Food and Water Watch. They share the general concern that it does not call for an immediate divestment and phase-out of fossil fuels, and investment in renewable energies only. Explicit terms such as “fossil fuels,” “coal,” “natural gas,” “fracking,” or “pipelines” are nowhere to be found in the resolution.
Likewise, federal programs such as single-payer universal healthcare, guaranteed affordable housing, tuition-free public college education and universal basic income do not appear in the document although they were part of the initial “Green New Deal” draft that AOC campaigned on. These concepts have been replaced in HR 109 by weaker terms such as “high-quality healthcare; and affordable, safe, and adequate housing” that are diluting the original social justice concepts.” – A Green Perspective
Read more about real activism for a Green New Deal