Climate Memo Mondays #3

 

Climate Memo Mondays #3

Supporting the GND

 WHAT IS THE GREEN NEW DEAL? (Main source: Chomsky and Pollin, Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal.)

464 words

 

     The UN assembled the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1990 to bring the world’s climate scientists together to study the rising temperatures and other atmospheric changes occurring around the world.   The Panel’s Sixth Assessment appeared in 2018.   Their essential discovery is that greenhouse gases (mainly carbon dioxide) created by humans from burning oil, coal, and natural gas were raising the average temperatures.  The consequences have been increasingly catastrophic:  increased incidences of heat extremes, heavier precipitation, droughts, sea level increases, biodiversity losses, and negative impacts on health, livelihoods, food security, water supply.

     The world’s population and leaders recognized the danger and were taking action.  The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement was endorsed by 195 countries.  However, the fossil fuel companies (shareholders and their officers), imitating the tobacco companies, purchased an intense propaganda campaign to question the evidence and instill fear of losing jobs.  Donald Trump became the Climate-Denier-in-Chief and withdrew the US from the Agreement.

      In response in 2018, members of the House of Representatives,  proposed two Resolutions concurrently with the Senate:

H.Res.109 - 116th Congress (2019-2020), Feb. 7, 2019:

Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.
H.Con.Res.52 - 116th Congress (2019-2020), July 9, 2019: Expressing the

the sense of Congress that global warming has resulted in a climate emergency.

    These Resolutions stress two priorities:  replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy and ensuring jobs for those displaced in the transition.

     1.  Greenhouse gas emissions must meet the targets set in 2018 by the IPCC—a 45 % reduction in emissions by 2030 and net zero by 2050.    The goals could be achieved by significantly improved energy efficiency and equally dramatic increase in renewable energy, primarily wind and solar.  Existing nuclear plants would be maintained until renewables are established.

     2.  The rapid transition to a carbon-free economy and climate stabilization must be fair.  It must expand job opportunities for workers in the fossil fuels industry and related vulnerable groups. The ultimate goal is to raise the living standards for working people and the poor worldwide.

     Enactment of these goals is imperative, if we are to avoid the destruction of our existent civilization.  Even though temperatures continue to rise and the consequences to worsen, we can meet the goals, at least technically and economically.  But we must also galvanize the political will to overcome the immense vested interests of the global fossil fuels industry.

      The Green New Deal Resolutions represent the long delayed, next step of bringing the scientific information to Congress, where questions—can the “capitalists’ werewolf hunger for profits” solve the crisis? what are the  alternatives to industrial agriculture? how do we reverse the long rise of inequality of the past forty years?--can be transformed into legislation democratically.

 

TAKE ACTION

Your car’s rear bumper is read by many people.  Paste on your favorite sticker.

Read a book on the GND.  As an introduction, read Greta Thunberg’s collection of speeches, about 100 short pages.