What We Can Learn from the Green New Deal

By: Ben Baisinger-Rosen

On February 6th, Senator Edward Markey and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez celebrated the five year anniversary of the introduction of the Green New Deal, a landmark moment in the American environmental politics landscape. The Green New Deal is a highly aggressive framework designed to guide the climate policy of the United States. The policy set forth extremely ambitious goals like making the United States fully carbon-neutral, generating all of the country’s energy from renewable sources, and retrofitting most of our infrastructure to make them more environmentally friendly. Crucially, the policy is non-binding; rather than acting as a highly specific law, the Green New Deal was designed to start a conversation and outline the steps necessary to address the climate crisis. However, self-inflicted wounds during the bill’s development coupled with a willful misunderstanding of the goals of the policy created a highly polarized discourse. While the policy ultimately failed to be passed into policy, the impact of the Green New Deal can still be felt today. Indeed, both the achievements and failures of the policy offer important lessons for the broader environmental movement going forward. 

There are a number of positive lessons that stemmed from the Green New Deal. In particular, the key success of the policy is that it undoubtedly changed the conversation around climate policy. As mentioned above, the point of the policy was not to solve the climate crisis by itself, but rather to start conversations on how to address it. Indeed, regardless of how, the climate is an issue that must be at the forefront of the American consciousness in order for significant policy achievements to occur. The mere fact that climate change was being seriously discussed as an issue by relevant political figures (including President Donald Trump) indicated that climate change was rapidly moving towards the forefront of the American political consciousness. Indeed, the Green New Deal changed the conversation so dramatically that some figures across the political aisle began articulating support for climate-friendly policy.  As a whole, the Green New Deal communicated the value of generating public dialogue in motivating support for an issue like the environment. 

The other key positive lesson stemming from the policy is the importance of aligning the scope of the solution with the scope of the problem. The extremely aggressive goals of the policy are useful because of the pressing nature of the issue, regardless of the political viability of the policy. Climate change is a tremendously wide-ranging problem with impacts that extend beyond the bounds of traditional political issues. As such, the development of a solution to climate change must start with the recognition of that fact. Setting goals like net-zero emissions, heavy investment in renewables, and updating buildings to ensure they can meet the stress of climate change are not only ways of addressing the severe impacts that climate change can impose, but also implies recognition of the scope of climate change’s impacts. Similarly, the bill is extremely comprehensive in listing out a variety of ways that we can make progress towards addressing climate change, both proactively and reactively. The bill contains both mitigatory strategies for managing the future effects of climate change while also emphasizing the importance of proactive emissions reduction strategies. As a whole, the Green New Deal is indicative of the importance of matching the scope of the solution to the problem itself for any aggressive, large-scale climate policy. 

However, the primary lesson we can learn from the Green New Deal comes from the failure of the bill’s sponsors to properly engage with the extremely complicated nature of American political attitudes towards the environment. Environmental issues are not immune to the highly polarized nature of American politics, as there is a significant gap between Republicans and Democrats in both the severity of the problem and the extent to which people support the fact that climate change is largely man-made. As such, it is essential that ambitious climate legislation like the Green New Deal is rolled out in a cautious manner. Unfortunately, this did not occur. The principal example of this comes from the mistaken release of an early draft version of the bill that misrepresented the policy’s goals. For instance, the draft version included ill-timed jokes about phasing out “farting cows” and “getting rid of airplanes”, as well as language that suggested the policy would set aside resources for people unwilling to work. While this language is not necessarily catastrophic in and of itself, it created an opening for right-leaning actors predisposed against the bill to savagely critique it and rephrase the issue away from activism and towards fears of “liberals stealing your cars and hamburgers”. It is worth noting that there is an extent to which these critiques were inevitable. There were always going to be bad faith arguments from the right about the cost of the bill, as well as the broader necessity for addressing climate exchange in the first place. However, the failures in the rollout of the bill undoubtedly made those critiques easier to make, which hamstrung the bill and contributed significantly to the failure of the bill to pass. As a whole, the failure of the Green New Deal indicates the importance of precise language and a laser-focused message in order to overcome actors with strong incentives to fight against comprehensive environmental policy.

As a whole, the Green New Deal has a complicated legacy. It is undoubtedly true that since the policy’s proposal, the United States has experienced an increase in the level of climate change belief and calls for comprehensive policy. At the same time, the policy has repeatedly been denied passage into law. As a whole, the Green New Deal teaches us not only the necessity of passing substantive climate policy that addresses the entire scope of the problem, but also of careful consideration of how those solutions are communicated to the general public.