Why we need a Green New Deal and Why Garamendi and Feinstein should cosponsor it

Paradise on fire

I just dug up my lecture notes from a class on “Science, Technology, and Values” from Spring 1998, my first year of teaching, more than 20 years ago.  At that time, the Sierra Club warned that global warming would lead to heat waves, disease, vanishing habitat, and extreme weather.  They urged:

1. The Clinton administration should be negotiating a strong, enforceable and legally binding global warming treaty that protects our children's future by cutting global warming pollution 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2005.
2. The president should raise miles-per-gallon (CAFE) standards to from 27.5 mpg to 45 mpg for cars and from 20.7 mpg to 34 mpg for light trucks, as the majority of the commission he appointed recommended.
3. Increase research and investment into clean car technology like hydrogen fuel cells and improved batteries.
4. Cut subsidies for oil and coal development. Increase funding for clean, renewable energy like wind and solar power.
5. Raise energy efficiency standards for home appliances and electronics. Create incentives for homeowners and businesses to become more efficient.
6. Require that any energy industry restructuring encourage energy efficiency and the use of clean, renewable technology, and that dirty, coal-fired power plants switch to cleaner natural gas.

Of the above recommendations, either they have not been done or they were done insufficiently. 

In 1998, our current representative John Garamendi was Secretary of the Interior, responsible for the management and conservation of most federal land and natural resources; Garamendi has refused to sign the Green New Deal, with the baffling excuse that “it does not carry the force of law.”  In 1998, Senator Dianne Feinstein was our state Senator and had been since 1992; she has also refused to sign the Green New Deal and recently berated a bunch of school children for having the nerve to ask that their future be protected. Senator Kamala Harris, to her credit, has signed on as an original co-sponsor of the Green New Deal in the Senate.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned there is only 12 years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people – not to mention the effects on non-human animals, plants, and ecosystems.  Our leaders have failed us and continue to fail us. We have, to borrow the apt word from award-winning Davisite author Kim Stanley Robinson, been dithering.

This is not a time for half-hearted, partway gestures.  This is all hands on deck, full steam ahead to try to slow the worst of the impacts.  We have no time to lose.

According to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, the government has a duty:

(A) to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers;

(B) to create millions of good, high-wage jobs and ensure prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States;

(C) to invest in the infrastructure and industry of the United States to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st century;

(D) to secure for all people of the United States for generations to come—

(i) clean air and water;

(ii) climate and community resiliency;

(iii) healthy food;

(iv) access to nature; and

(v) a sustainable environment; and

(E) to promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (referred to in this resolution as “frontline and vulnerable communities”)

(Follow the link above for additional details).

As John H. Knox, law professor at Wake Forest University, wrote, “the Green New Deal is firmly based on and supported by international human rights law, which recognizes that environmental protection and human rights are interdependent. To protect the environment, we must protect human rights – and vice versa.”

If you live in Representative Garamendi’s district, you can sign a petition at https://YesGND.com to urge him to cosponsor the Green New Deal.  I have found two petitions for Senator Feinstein, here and here.

Update 2/24/19:

The following message was posted to Representative Garamendi's Facebook page:

I am now a co-sponsor of H.Res.109, the Green New Deal. I welcome the energy and commitment of the supporters of H.Res.109, and I join with them as I continue my decades-long effort to stop Climate Change and save our planet.

Thank you, Representative Garamendi, for listening to your constituents and doing the right thing for the planet!