Climate Crisis: Senator Sanders releases a Green New Deal plan along with ways to pay for it

Bernie Sanders unveils $16 Trillion Green New Deal To Combat Climate Crisis

The 2020 Democratic candidate’s climate plan offers a detailed vision that would expand public ownership of utilities and make electricity “virtually free” by 2035.

By Alexander C. Kaufman | Aug 22, 2019 | HUFFPOST

Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders released a sweeping $16.3 trillion climate plan on Thursday, vowing to create 20 million jobs and completely zero out planet-heating emissions by 2050.

The proposal outlines easily the most ambitious vision for a Green New Deal to date, with calls to massively expand public ownership of everything from power generation to groceries. With Washington Gov. Jay Inslee ending his climate-centered bid for the Democratic nomination a day earlier, the plan vaults the Vermont senator ahead of his 2020 rivals on what’s emerging as the defining policy issue of the Democratic primary.

At a moment when record wildfires are raging from the Amazon to the Arctic and Greenland is losing up to 12.5 billion tons of ice in a single day, the plan is dense with detail and frank in its goals. Where other proposals, including those from Inslee and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) depict expanded regulatory regimes and public spending aimed at spurring private investment, Sanders charts out a path to a hospitable global climate through Nordic-style social democracy.

“The scope of the challenge ahead of us shares some similarities with the crisis faced by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1940s,” the plan states. “Faced with battling a world war on two fronts ― both in the East and the West ― the United States came together, and within three short years restructured the entire economy in order to win the war and defeat fascism. As president, Bernie Sanders will boldly embrace the moral imperative of addressing the climate crisis.”

The campaign declined a request to interview Sanders on Wednesday evening.
  
 The plan opens with Sanders vowing to slash U.S. emissions 71% below 2017 levels by 2030 with 100% renewable electricity and zero-emissions vehicles. He declares war on the fossil fuel industry with kproposed bans on fracking, drilling on public lands and all imports and exports of oil and gas, and threatens companies with civil and criminal charges for pollution and obstructing climate action. He pledges $200 billion to help developing countries reduce their own climate pollution by 36% in the next decade.

Citing the nuclear disasters in Chernobyl and Fukushima, Sanders, long a critic of nuclear power, swears off new reactors and promises a moratorium on future licenses to existing plants. His plan rules out geoengineering the climate or deploying technologies to capture carbon dioxide from fossil fuel plants, which he derided as “false solutions.” It’s unclear whether he’d consider carbon capture technologies for difficult-to-decarbonize industries like cement making.

Generous pledges for workers animate Sanders’ proposal. The plan, which comes the same week the campaign released its proposal to boost unions, promises five years of unemployment insurance, a wage guarantee, housing assistance, job training, pension support and priority job placement for all workers displaced by the transition. It offers “early retirement support for those who choose it or can no longer work.” It proposes high wages and union protections across nearly every sector.

What stands out first is Sanders’ clear answer to the perennial question of how to pay for it.

There’s the money saved: $1.215 trillion from “scaling back military spending on protecting global oil” and $1.31 trillion from federal and state welfare “due to the creation of millions of good-paying, unionized jobs.”

Then there’s the money earned: $6.4 trillion from selling electricity produced by the Energy Department’s regional power marketing authorities, $3.085 trillion from “making the fossil fuel industry pay for their pollution, through litigation, fees, and taxes, and eliminating federal fossil fuel subsidies,” $2.3 trillion from income taxes on the 20 million new jobs the plan creates, and an additional $2 trillion from forcing “the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share.”

Those pushing a Green New Deal, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and the grassroots group Sunrise Movement, have shied away from talking numbers, even as Republicans fabricated a bogus $93 trillion price tag. Instead, advocates have pointed to the costs of sticking to a business-as-usual. The Sanders plan touches on that, too, highlighting that the costs of catastrophic warming could total $70.4 trillion over 80 years.

“This plan will pay for itself over 15 years,” the policy memo reads. “Experts have scored the plan and its economic effects.”

The 13,840-word document includes 85 dollar signs. Sanders sets aside $5.9 billion for regional economic development plans, with the lion’s share ― over $2.5 billion ― earmarked for Appalachia. There’s $15 billion for coal miners’ Black Lung Disability Fund. Another $25 billion goes to clearing the national park maintenance backlog. The restored Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal program that planted 3 billion trees in the 1930s, gets $171 billion.

U.S. Senator Schumer blasts Republican Denial of Human-caused Climate Crisis

By David Kowalski

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) delivered an important speech on the Senate floor (Feb. 14), standing up for the reality of a climate change crisis, its human causation, and the need for Congress to act to address the existential threat to the planet, our children, grandchildren and all of us right now. 

Schumer issued a challenge to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Republican colleagues, most all of whom deny the reality of human-caused climate change. Schumer said:

"I challenge leader McConnell to say that our climate change crisis is real, that it is caused by humans, and that congress needs to act. 

That is what two-thirds of the American people agree with, two-thirds.

I would say to our Republican colleagues this is no game. It is no joke. Climate change is deadly serious. And the time for all of us to treat it that way is now before it is too late."

Schumer's speech was a response to McConnell's plan to bring the Democrats' non-binding 'Green New Deal' resolution up for a vote so that he and Republican Senators could vote against it.

Schumer said: 

"I hope the American people are paying attention because they need to see what's going on here. The American people need to see that this is all there is to the Republican plan to deal with climate change. This is all they can muster. A political stunt, not designed to make progress, not designed to move the ball forward." 

"So when the Republican leader says he wants to bring the 'Green New Deal' up for a vote, I say go for it. Bring it on!"

Schumer concluded, "Let's see if anything is changed since 2015 when only five brave Republicans were able to vote yes on a resolution saying climate change is real and caused by humans."

The full Senate session was taped by C-span. I made a Video clip of Schumer’s climate speech. To view the Video clip on the C-span website, click here.

Below is the Transcript of U.S. Senator Schumer's Climate Speech:

Climate & Energy: Cuomo's 'Green New Deal' is not comprehensive, NY Renews says

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Gov targets 100% clean energy by ’40; Some say it’s not enough

January 21, 2019  | The Villager

BY SYDNEY PEREIRA | Governor Andrew Cuomo recently announced his version of a “Green New Deal” to tackle climate change and ramp up clean energy.

Under his plan, 100 percent of the state’s electricity would be generated by clean power by 2040. This would be achieved by using a mix of energy sources like solar, wind, nuclear and hydropower.

A new Climate Action Council would develop a plan for carbon neutrality across the entire economy — meaning reducing the carbon footprint across industries and sources of greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change.

“We know it’s coming,” Cuomo said in his State of the State address on Jan. 15. “Let the economy be here.”

Cuomo’s “Green New Deal” also includes green technology development, a $1.5 billion investment in offshore wind projects, and a $70 million property-tax compensation fund to help communities transition when old power plants close.

“We want those old plants closed. We want more efficient plants,” Cuomo said. But the state should fund the transition, so “those communities don’t shoulder the burden themselves,” he said.

Cuomo’s announcement comes after years of planning by a coalition of community groups, NY Renews, that have pushed for their own version of a climate action plan. Their plan forms the basis of the current Climate and Community Protection Act, sponsored by state Senator Brad Hoylman and Assemblymember Steve Englebright.

That bill would have mandated the state’s electricity be generated by 50 percent renewable energy by 2030, and that all industries eliminate 100 percent of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The community-initiated bill passed three times in the Assembly but has languished in the Senate.

NY Renews welcomed Cuomo’s announcement, but criticized his failure to set a timeline for a transition to clean power economywide.

“For years, the Climate and Community Protection Act has represented a true climate-justice agenda for our state,” NY Renews said in a statement in response to Cuomo’s address. “It is heartening to see progress toward a fossil-fuel-free New York.”

However, the coalition added, a “truly comprehensive plan to tackle climate change needs more specific deadlines, planning processes and accountability for moving our whole economy off of fossil fuels than are currently included.”

Cuomo supports a Green New Deal for Carbon-Free Electricity by 2040

Cuomo sets Goal for Carbon Neutral Electric System by 2040

By MARIE J. FRENCH

12/17/2018 | 04:44 PM EST

ALBANY — Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday set a new goal to reduce emissions from the state's electricity generation and promised to support a Green New Deal to get to a completely carbon-free economy.

Details were sparse on what Cuomo's conception of a Green New Deal would entail or when he'd mandate that the state eliminate carbon emissions across the economy. His current goal for the electric sector is 50 percent renewables by 2030, and for emissions in most sectors of the economy to be cut 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050.

“New York will launch the Green New Deal to make New York’s electricity 100 percent carbon neutral by 2040, and ultimately eliminate the state’s entire carbon footprint," Cuomo said during a speech in New York City, where laid out his agenda for 2019.

Environmental advocates expressed optimism at Cuomo's new goals.

“The new goal is incredibly exciting and motivating,” said Kit Kennedy of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "What happens now is going to be crucial. In other words, is this a goal … and that’s it, or can we get done what we need to get done in New York state on the ground in terms of policy deployment, acceleration of energy efficiency, electric vehicles, Article 10 [the state siting law for large-scale generators] reforms, offshore wind, storage, the whole gamut of zero-carbon technologies."

For advocates who have consistently pushed for more aggressive action, the lack of details or a goal to get to zero percent emissions in the short-run were disappointing.

“A vague pledge of carbon neutrality by the year 2040 is not the bold action necessary to move New York off fossil fuels," said Food and Water Watch's Alex Beauchamp. "Cuomo must go much bigger: A true Green New Deal for New York must include a moratorium on all new fossil fuel infrastructure and a commitment to transition New York to 100 percent renewable energy by 2030."

The Cuomo administration did not respond to questions about what a Green New Deal would include, whether legislative action would be required or whether electric generators would be able to purchase carbon offsets to comply with the 2040 goal.

The Democratic governor has already directed the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to study how the state could get to 100 percent renewables, not just in the electric sector but across the economy. He's said he supports that goal. The study was expected to be completed by the end of this year.

Progressive congressional lawmakers seek a 'Green New Deal' to mitigate climate change, protect health and create jobs

                                                                                                                        ji sub jeong/huffpost

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, diverse lawmakers prioritize climate change with 'Green New Deal'
'Our lives are on the line,' says Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez regarding climate change.
NBC News - 11.30.2018: click here
 

CLIMATE: Sanders plots Green New Deal-style bill

Senate bill would include a transition to 100 percent renewable energy and big investments in clean energy technology and green infrastructure.

E&E News - 12.03.2018: click here

CLIMATE CHANGE - Who will Protect the People of the U.S.?

Ocasio-Cortez and progressive Dems' Green New Deal gains traction as Trump shrugs off dire warnings from climate scientists
While President Trump attributes his climate change skepticism to his “very high levels of intelligence,” a growing legion of lawmakers and young activists are taking heed of dire warnings being issued by experts and scientists about the catastrophic consequences of inaction.
 
Progressives, led by New York City’s own Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are joining forces behind an ambitious plan to wean the U.S. off fossil fuels, boost renewable energy jobs and build a “smart” power grid.
 
The major push to make climate change a priority when Congress convenes in January got off to a high-profile start weeks ago when Ocasio-Cortez applauded young activists from the environmental advocacy group Sunrise Movement protesting at soon-to-be-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office on Capitol Hill.  

A damning federal government report about the economic and societal impacts of climate change released last week, which Trump openly dismissed, has only emboldened believers steeling for a showdown with mainline Democrats and added weight to their calls for a so-called “Green New Deal.”
NY Daily News - 12.02.2018: To read more, click here



VIDEO:  Solving Our Climate Crisis - A National Town Hall
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, environmental author & 350.org founder Bill McKibben, CNN commentator Van Jones, Union of Concerned Scientists Dr. Brenda Ekwurzel and climate activists
Now This - 12.03.2018: To view the video, click here