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.

NY Renews Coalition Reacts to Gov. Cuomo's New Climate, Jobs and Justice Initiatives in the Wake of Trump's Rejection of the Paris Climate Accord

Following President Trump’s decision to exit the Paris Accords, Governor Cuomo announced the creation of a climate and jobs initiative and the creation of an environmental justice and just transition working group.

NY Renews, a coalition of 109 labor, community, and environmental organizations, released the following statement in response:

"We applaud the Governor in the wake of Trump's shameful decision to withdraw from the Paris Accord for taking an important step toward realizing the massive job-creation potential of tackling the climate crisis head-on. NY Renews has been pushing our elected officials at the state level for over a year to implement strong climate legislation—the Climate and Community Protection Act—that prioritizes jobs and justice.

The Governor's announcement in partnership with Climate Jobs NY of a $1.5 billion request for proposals for renewable energy development is a great example of the kind of agency cooperation and investment that will be needed from the state now and in the coming decades to protect New York families from the worst impacts of climate change, while driving a resurgence of good union jobs in the new energy economy. And the commitment from the Governors of CA, WA, and NY to meeting the Paris Accords sends a strong signal to the world. Now New York must turn to the business of meeting and exceeding that commitment.  

To that end, we look forward to working with the Governor to pass visionary legislation that gives New York’s climate and clean energy goals the durable force of law and ensures fair labor standards are attached, so we can keep these ‘climate jobs’ coming for decades to come. Our legislation would also direct a minimum of 40% of state funding to environmental justice communities. The many NY Renews members who have been appointed to the Governor’s new Environmental Justice & Just Transition Working Group will continue to reaffirm that the best way to champion environmental justice is to give it the force of law and ensure that state resources are going to the fenceline and frontline communities that need them most.

As we defy Trump's historically bad decision, we stay grounded in the future we're fighting for: a future where we’ve averted climate catastrophe through the leadership of organized labor and working people. To lock in that future, New York will need to pass ambitious framework policies, like the Climate and Community Protection Act."