The Green New Deal: Is it Needed?

To read a past op-ed by Sachi Ramachandran on Climate Change please click here.

It is not new to any American when I say that climate change and the effects it has on our planets will be catastrophic to Earth. According to NASA(National Aeronautics and Space Administration), Greenland has lost an average of 286 billion tons of ice from 1993-2016, and Antarctica has lost a whopping 127 billion tons in the same period. The ice mass loss in Antarctica has also tripled in the last ten years. I could talk about all the proof of climate change until the day I die (and I’m 15), but now it’s time we talk about a solution. The Green New Deal is the first step of a plan to turn America into a non-carbon emission country. The plan has been famously headed by New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and aspects have also been supported by 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Let me first start by saying that this “deal” isn’t a deal at all. The Green New Deal is the very first, beginning step towards saving the Earth. The deal is fourteen pages long and is broken into two different parts. The first part is about the economy and how America will cut out carbon emissions completely. This idea scares a lot of people. The deal details how it plans to “cut out carbon emissions as much as technologically feasible” and create a fair economy for those who have long been oppressed such as people of color, lower-income families, minimum wage workers, etc. The creators of this document understand that this huge change is lofty and scary to American politicians and even Americans in general. Through the investment in new clean industries, the Green New Deal to a time where the United States will not rely on the use of harmful practices for economic benefit.

But, the second part of the deal is the most important. The second part of the deal details how we could ensure coal miners and those who work in fossil fuel industries. The plan is to grant jobs and education in the newly established economy. It also plans on making sure the wealthiest of the technological companies don’t benefit from the change by stepping on the toes of those who are lower-wage workers or not offered the same opportunities. The plan centers on many rights being granted such as high-quality healthcare, homing for all, and providing jobs to all. The plan does indeed sound lofty and far-fetched (which is very true!), but we should understand that this plan is in the earliest stages of production. The Green New Deal, at its very core, has its best interest in providing a clean Earth for future generations and transforming America into a new age.

The ideas presented in The Green New Deal are incredibly progressive and unlike anything we have seen thus far in American politics as far as environmental and climate issues are concerned. These ideas in the deal are very scary since it promises a huge economic change. One part of the deal even says that it will work with ranchers and farmers to eliminate methane emissions from cows as much as possible. The Green New Deal is largely modeled after President FDR’s New Deal that sprung America out of the Great Depression. The price tag on the Green New Deal may be quite similar (definitely a lot more) to the price on the New Deal. It is not a shock to anyone that this plan will cost trillions of dollars to execute, but if the plan prevails, it should pay for itself.

The new ideas that this plan presents to not only American politics, but to the American people seem far-fetched and impossible. Whether or not this plan ever gets passed is beyond my control. Putting faith in a government (who time and time again has done little to stop the rise in global warming and climate change) to pass some sort of bill or law to save our Earth is scary. The time to take small steps towards carbon neutrality is over. Something has got to change. It is either the Earth or us.