Solar Panels (Photo – Allagash Brewing).
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez garnered a lot of publicity last month when the 28-year-old self-described “democratic socialist” from the Bronx beat longtime US representative Joe Crowley in the New York primaries. She is practically certain to win a seat in Congress in the general election this November.
By Ethan Elkind
While her economic policies have inspired the Democratic base, her advocacy on climate change is noteworthy. Specifically, she’s calling for a “Green New Deal” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transition our economy to one based on clean technology, like renewable energy. While she’s not the first politician to make this part of her platform (Jill Stein also tried), she may be the most high-profile at this point.
As E&E News reports [pay-walled]:
“What we are proposing is the complete mobilization of the American workforce to combat climate change and income inequality simultaneously,” Ocasio-Cortez told HuffPost. “The Green New Deal we are proposing will be similar in scale to the mobilization efforts seen in the World War II or the Marshall Plan. It will require the investment of trillions of dollars and the creation of millions of high-wage jobs.”
Among the specifics, she wants the U.S. to achieve 100 percent renewable electricity by 2035 and otherwise work to modernize the grid.
From my perspective, this bold advocacy is refreshing. It not only summons the urgency of the need to combat climate change, it transforms the solutions into a jobs and economic development strategy. Those economic benefits are both politically important to inspire regions of the country that need the jobs and also a logical and positive consequence of investing billions of dollars to modernize and clean our energy system, from the electricity to the transportation sectors and beyond.
I hope her advocacy will inspire other elected officials to follow suit. It could be a winning strategy for climate advocates in future elections.
Ethan Elkind directs the climate program at UC Berkeley Law, with a joint appointment at UCLA Law. His book “Railtown” was published by the University of California Press.
Thats a great idea maybe we can send all the manufacturing over to China. Solyndra tried with the government giving them over a 1/2 billion dollars of tax dollars, plus tax breaks. That was so successful! NOT. That company lasted a little more two years. That great government sponsored company laid off all of their employees (about 1,600) and declared chapter 11 bankruptcy. And that my friend is how well government does business with my money.
All governments spend money to incubate domestic industries, with huge potential upsides, and the specific program that loaned to Solyndra is actually generating revenue for the government due to successful investments, as of October 2016:
“Interest payments from projects funded by the loan program were $810 million in September, higher than the $780 million in losses recorded, reports Reuters, citing DOE statistics.
Those losses make up 2.28 percent of the loan program’s total commitments, with the $528 million Solyndra loan making up the bulk of that amount.
Per Christian Science Monitor (https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2016/1017/Solyndra-who-The-Energy-Department-s-loan-program-is-now-profitable)