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https://senecastandard.com/climate-guru-im-calling-bullst-on-ocasio-cortez-climate-fakery/30724/

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Lynn Wilkins on February 17, 2019 at 10:00 pm

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “green dream” plan in Congress has been widely ridiculed, and it

According to the Washington Examiner, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., hasn’t promised it will get time on the floor, and, as of last week, she hadn’t even read the ambitious resolution.

House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern, D-Mass., who helps to determine the floor schedule and debate rules, said leaders are waiting to see how many lawmakers sign on to the bill before deciding whether to bring it to the floor.

But a whole new level of opposition just appeared, with a guru of the environmental movement calling the plan “climate fakery.”

“I am calling bulls–t not just on AOC but on her progressive enablers in the news media who are giving her a pass on the most crucial test of moral and political leadership of our time when it comes to climate change: a person’s stance on nuclear power,” said

He’s a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment” and a “high priest” of the atomic humanist movement.

Shellenburger has helped save nuclear reactors around the world, from Illinois and New York to South Korea and Taiwan, preventing pollution that would be the equivalent of having 24 million cars on the world’s roads.

He’s been profiled in the New York Times, National Review, NPR and other news outlets.

by Marc Morano of Climate Depot.

“Now that more details about the ‘Green New Deal’ from New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been released, a major figure in the environmental community, Michael Shellenberger, is calling ‘bulls–t’ on her plan for failing to support nuclear energy,” Morano wrote.

He noted Shellenberger also labeled Ocasio-Cortez a “climate fraud,”and he is “outraged by the fawning uncritical mainstream media coverage the ‘Green New Deal.‘”

Shellenberger said: “I am calling bulls–t on climate fakery. Anyone who is calling for phasing out nuclear is a climate fraud perpetuating precisely the gigantic ‘hoax’ that [Oklahoma Republican] Sen. James Inhofe famously accused environmentalists of perpetuating.”

He wrote on Twitter that if you “want to be a self-respecting progressive or journalist who is fairly considering or covering the climate issue, please stop giving Ocasio-Cortex and other supposedly climate-concerned greens a pass.”

“THEY ARE INCREASING EMISSIONS,” he wrote.

February 7, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced a Green New Deal resolution. The resolution outlines what they plan to include in formal legislation down the line.

Over the following five days, primetime cable news coverage of the Green New Deal was dominated by Fox News. Fox News aired a total of 34 segments on the resolution, more than three times the combined total of MSNBC (8 segments) and CNN (3 segments).

Obviously, the Fox News coverage of the legislation was terrible. Many segments did not even mention climate change.

This is not the only example of cable news discussion of a policy issue being dominated by the right. In the weeks leading up to the State of the Union, Fox News aired nearly seven hours of coverage of state abortion measures, while CNN and MSNBC covered the same stories for less than 15 minutes combined.

Fox News dominating policy discussions of progressive initiatives has real consequences: They are immediately caricatured, with outright lies getting a massive head start. A large number of people get their first impressions through this distorted coverage, including many in the media.

When one of these issues does eventually jump to mainstream media, myths and lies often make the jump alongside. At minimum, the mainstream debate is partially about debunking the lies that have already happened.

Sunday shows fail again: America is in desperate need of an adult conversation about how to address climate change. Instead of that, the Sunday shows talked about climate change and the Green New Deal only through the narrow lens of the political horse race. Maybe we can prioritize fending off a massive destabilizing rise in sea level instead of worrying about whose poll numbers go up or down as a result of endorsing a resolution.

Meanwhile: Right-wing media are somehow worse than useless on the Green New Deal, as they've repeatedly invoked murderous dictators to complain about the initiative. Michael Savage, who has partied with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, even said of Ocasio-Cortez, "“This is a Stalinist in a skirt; this is a Hitler in high heels.”

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06022019/house-climate-change-hearings-democrats-green-new-deal-infrastructure-bill

With Democrats now in charge, two key committees in the U.S. House of Representatives used their first hearings of the year on Wednesday to press for more vigorous action on climate change, despite the political and practical hurdles.

Democrats and their witnesses, including governors, policy experts and scientists, argued that time is alarmingly short. But it became clear over the hours that if the stakes are high, the odds are long.

In the simultaneous hearings, the minority Republicans seized the moment to bash the so-called Green New Deal, a legislative platform that has been embraced by brash new Congress members as well as seasoned climate hawks. It seeks a rapid, wholesale transformation to a zero-carbon economy that would also be prosperous and equitable.

One hearing, held by a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, was the first in several years by that panel to consider prospective legislation on climate change. The House Natural Resources Committee said its hearing was the start of a month-long series by the full committee and its subcommittees.

Lawmakers noted that President Donald Trump made no mention of the climate crisis during his State of the Union address the night before and that he instead boasted of oil and gas production. They also mentioned that NOAA and NASA, home to much of the government's climate science expertise, had just officially pronounced 2018 the fourth-hottest year on record, reinforcing the evidence that the problems of global warming are worsening steadily.

Governors: Climate Change Is an Economic Risk

For Democrats, the emphasis was on urgency.

Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, opened the hearing with a story from a woman who had narrowly survived a wildfire in California last year, saying his committee would be guided by science and the experiences of Americans like her.

"Climate change is an urgent problem," he said. "It demands urgent action and a sense of purpose from Congress. This committee will offer both."

His committee heard a bipartisan message from Republican Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, about the high costs of climate change on communities in those states and the economic opportunities of building a new energy economy.

Cooper listed a string of weather disasters that have hit his state in recent years, including two so-called 500-year floods that caused mudslides and damaged infrastructure in the mountains and inundated coastal communities. He noted that extreme heat has damaged crops and killed livestock, and said that the federal government needed to do more than simply help the state rebuild.

"We need consistent federal action that meets the urgency of our global climate problem," he said. "Our communities, our economy and our future depend on it."

Baker stressed the steps his state has taken to reduce emissions and energy use while continuing economic growth. He said the expansion of an offshore wind industry presents an enormous opportunity for the state's economy.

Republicans Attack 'Green New Deal'

At Energy and Commerce, there was a lot of talk of bipartisanship. The committee has a long history of working that way, not totally eclipsed even in recent years.

"I implore you, now is the time to join us," said Rep. Paul Tonko of New York, head of the environment and climate change subcommittee. "We want to work together, but inaction is no longer an option."

"We will not be deterred," he added.

Again and again, Republicans on that committee said they, too, recognized the problem and wanted bipartisan solutions.But at both hearings, they spoke harshly of the prospects for a Green New Deal.

Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois, Tonko's predecessor as chairman and now the subcommittee's ranking Republican, called it "radical." He denounced "top down government requirements to rapidly decarbonize" as little more than "wealth transfer schemes." Republican Rep. David McKinley of West Virginia called it "delusional." Rep. Bill Flores of Texas denounced a "chaotic headlong rush into decarbonization." Rep. Billy Long of Missouri called it "a very worthy goal if it was anywhere near possible in the time they want to do it in."

Republicans also repeatedly warned against a heavy-handed approach driven by the federal government to reduce emissions.

Occasionally, Democrats referred obliquely to the possibility of a carbon tax; several of their invited witnesses urged that as part of any effective solution.

At the Natural Resources Committee hearing, Republican Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana told Gov. Baker that it is one thing to decarbonize the economy in Massachusetts, and quite another in Louisiana, an oil and gas center.

Republicans also focused on the risk of driving up energy costs. But Democrats argued that the costs of clean alternative fuels continue to come down.

Climate Solutions in an Infrastructure Bill?

But the hearings were less significant for what the witnesses said than as a way to compare the ebullience of the Democrats for action with the disposition of many Republicans, which tended between phlegmatic and choleric.

With the Senate and the White House held by Republicans, what House Democrats can achieve is less likely to be a law ushering in a new era than a platform for the next election.

The most plausible exception is the possibility that climate policy could inform a big bill on infrastructure, which might include upgrades to the electrical grid or other features that everyone can accept.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07022019/green-new-deal-alexanria-ocasio-cortez-ed-markey-climate-change

The backers of a Green New Deal introduced a resolution in Congress on Wednesday to launch an all-out, decade-long mobilization aimed at transforming the economy to carbon-free energy.

They said their radically ambitious goal would restore America's global leadership on climate change, build national prosperity and protect the most vulnerable.

The non-binding joint resolution, initially sponsored by Democratic House newcomer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Democratic Senate veteran Edward Markey of Massachusetts, has already become an instant political sensation.

Embraced by a coalition of environmental and social justice activists, the idea is also questioned by many in the energy and climate policy establishment. Scorned by influential Republicans and powerful industry lobbyists, it has been endorsed by several early Democratic presidential candidates, including co-sponsors Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren(D-Mass.). Ocasio-Cortez's political mentor, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has not yet announced whether he will make another presidential run, also is a co-sponsor.

"This is an incredible moment," said Markey at a news conference. "Never have the interests of all Americans been as united on a single issue. From the air we breathe, to the jobs that employ us, to the neighborhoods we live in, to the economy we operate in, climate change defines our existence."

In an era when global warming and financial inequality are both setting records, Markey said the Green New Deal was an effort to address not only "the erosion of our coastlines," but also "the erosion of the earning power of workers."

Ocasio-Cortez seemed to respond to critics who have called the plan unworkable or unrealistic. "Climate change and our environmental challenges are one of the biggest existential threats to our way of life—not just as a nation, but as a world. In order for us to combat that threat, we have to be as ambitious and innovative as possible," she said.

'The Green Dream'

Ocasio-Cortez seized on the Green New Deal while campaigning last year. Days after her election, she participated in a sit-in during the lame duck session of Congress, when she joined activists who crowded the office of Nancy Pelosi, then still the minority leader.

On Monday, House Speaker Pelosi appointed Democratic members to a new climate advisory committee, and said this resolution is just one among many ideas the committee might ponder.

"The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is but they're for it, right?" she said in an interview with Politico.

At a press conference, the sponsors shrugged that off. "I think it is a green dream," said Ocasio-Cortez with a smile. Markey said there was "no bigger champion" on climate than Pelosi, who helped him pass a landmark bill in 2009. (It died in the Senate.)

In one sense, Pelosi was right: The new resolution's teeth aren't yet visible.

But that hasn't stopped the Green New Deal from grabbing headlines.

Its real power is as an organizing mechanism around debates and elections yet to come.

As written, it would have Congress declare that it is the "duty" of the federal government "to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers."

The latest science, as the resolution notes, establishes that to stay within a safe carbon budget, the whole world needs to cut emissions roughly in half in about a dozen years and eliminate them by about mid-century. The United States, the resolution asserts, ought to move even faster.

If total decarbonization sounds impossible, backers say, think of the Apollo moon shot or the mobilization of World War II.

If success seems prohibitively expensive, think of the costs of failure, they urge.

Their selling points include creating jobs, meeting infrastructure needs, improving health, redressing injustice—and yes, heading off a climate calamity under laissez-faire capitalism.

A Set of Principles, Not Prescriptions

The Green New Deal has been pushed by a wide array of activists, including the youthful Sunrise Movement and the well-established 350.org network.

Jesse Meisenhelter, a Sunrise Movement activist from Oregon, has been visiting offices of members of Congress for more than a year to call for climate action. Last summer, when she last visited the office of Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley, there were 40 wildfires underway in their home state. Watching him appear as a co-sponsor on Monday, she called the resolution the most important thing she had seen political leaders do in her lifetime.

"Where I live, people are riding bikes and doing all sorts of things to lower their carbon footprints," she said, as she gathered with activists on the lawn outside the Capitol to watch the announcement. "But this is something where more than individual action is needed. We need political action."

Some heavy-hitters among the green groups, such as the Environmental Defense Fund, offered more cautious praise. "The Green New Deal points to the need for boldness and ambition at a time when they are sorely required—and it is generating thoughtful ideas and building real political momentum," said Elizabeth Gore, the group's political vice president. Her statement endorsed a 2050 deadline for decarbonization, and called for using "all available tools," including carbon pricing and technology incentives.

Leaders of the Citizens Climate Lobby, which favors a carbon fee and dividend approach and enlists both Democrats and Republicans, said that "we need to take steps that can generate bipartisan support." They praised the "passion and commitment" of the Green New Dealers and pledged to work for "many of the goals in the resolution."

The resolution doesn't mention a carbon tax. While sponsors don't rule one out, they consider the approach too weak to stand alone. It's also silent on the role of nuclear power and the carbon capture of emissions from fossil fuel plants, though the backers generally call these technologies unnecessary.

When asked about that, Markey said the resolution deliberately was written without mentioning any technology or approach—it was a set of principles, not prescriptions, he said. But he elicited cheers from the crowd of activists, who gathered behind the sponsors of the bill, when he spoke about renewable energy. "Our energy future will not be found in the dark of a mine, but in the light of the sun," he said.

The top coal-state Senate Democrat, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, sees things differently. He spoke out against the Green New Deal on Monday morning as buzz of the impending Ocasio-Cortez/Markey announcement reverberated around a Senate energy hearing.

"In a perfect world, this is an ideological belief," said Manchin, who, to the dismay of climate activists, recently became the ranking minority member on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "But in the real world we're living in, are we able to get there? And in what time frame, and how much are we going to have to invest, and is the rest of the world going to come with us?"

Green New Deal Legislation Next?

Markey and Ocasio-Cortez insisted that in addition to the non-binding resolution, they were pushing forward with an effort to write and pass Green New Deal legislation in this Congress, even though it would likely face insurmountable opposition in the Republican-held Senate.

If the ultimate objective is to enact laws carrying out the Green New Deal after the 2020 election, that political strategy is not without risk. The Green New Deal platform is well-suited for candidates who call themselves progressives, and these ideas served many winners in the midterms. But some in the Democratic Party may fear that trying to advance a sweeping new government-driven climate program will paint a target on the back of the whole party, thwarting its aspirations of ascendancy.

Ultimately, the central legislative challenge will likely come down to a pair of practical questions: How much will this cost, and who will pay for it?

Nobody can guess the cost. That's one reason that this broad approach is presented as a "sense of the Congress" resolution, which doesn't need a budget scorecard.

Afact sheetfrom Ocasio-Cortez's office posted by National Public Radio before the announcement addressed the "who will pay" question.

"The same way we paid for the New Deal, the 2008 bank bailout and extended quantitative easing programs," it said. "The same way we paid for World War II and all our current wars."

"At the end of the day, this is an investment in our economy that should grow our wealth as a nation," the document said, "so the question isn't how will we pay for it, but what will we do with our new shared prosperity."

PUBLISHED UNDER:

POLITICS

GREEN NEW DEAL

https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/07/green-new-deal-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-plan

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Green New Deal: Ocasio-Cortez unveils bold plan to fight climate change

Blueprint for a carbon-neutral economy has been embraced by prominent Democrats and evokes FDR’s famous legacy

Emily Holden and Lauren Gambino in Washington

Thu 7 Feb 2019 07.18 EST Last modified on Fri 8 Feb 2019 04.45 EST

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the Women’s March in January as activists call for a Green New Deal.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is releasing a broad outline of a vision for the Green New Deal, a plan to battle economic and racial injustice while also fighting climate change.

The new congresswoman’s blueprint, co-introduced by Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, aims to develop a carbon-neutral economy in 10 years, which would require huge strides in reducing the US’s reliance on oil, gas and coal. It does not set a date for ending the use of fossil fuels.

Specifically, the resolution says it is the duty of the federal government to craft a Green New Deal “to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions”. That includes getting all power from “clean, renewable and zero-emission energy sources”.

Green New Deal: what is the progressive plan, and is it technically possible?

The document also endorses universal healthcare, a jobs guarantee and free higher education – a huge shift in messaging from nearly a decade ago, when Democrats were advocating for a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse gases by allotting industry permits for pollution.

Sixty members of the House and nine senators are co-sponsoring the resolution, including several presidential candidates, according to a fact sheet from congressional aides that did not include a list of supporters. However, any legislation would be dead-on-arrival with Republicans in control of the Senate and the White House, and would be difficult for Democrats to implement even if they controlled government. In supporting documents staffer acknowledge the investment required would be “massive”.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said a select committee on climate change, which she has announced the members of, will not be tasked with writing a specific bill and called the Green New Deal a “suggestion”.

“It will be one of several or maybe many suggestions that we receive,” Pelosi said in an interview with Politico. “The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it right?”

Discussions on what shape the plan would take also involved major environment, justice and labor organizations, as well as the youth-run Sunrise Movement. Backers hope the six-page resolution will push Democrats vying for the White House in 2020 not just to sign on to the general idea, but to lay out specific legislative goals.

Some environmental groups, including Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, said they were encouraged by the movement on climate change but that the resolution does not do enough to confront fossil fuels. The Sierra Club, however, welcomed the document.

Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist from New York who has been in Congress for just over a month, centered her campaign on climate change and a Green New Deal.

But the resolution itself focuses on the tenets of a progressive policy platform as much as it does on climate change.

It is both a framework for a cleaner-energy future and a plan for a large-scale mobilization that would rival in scale and scope the progressive New Deal policies ushered in under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in response to the Great Depression.

One of its goals is “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”.

Students in Belgium demonstrate against climate change inaction.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Students in Belgium demonstrate against climate change inaction. Photograph: Alexandros Michailidis/Alamy

The resolution says significant portions of the American population are suffering from declining life expectancy, exposure to pollution, and lacking access to healthy food, healthcare, housing, transportation and education. It spotlights wage stagnation, lacking socio-economic mobility, income inequality, a racial wealth divide, a gender pay gap and weakened bargaining power for workers.

The resolution text comes as Donald Trump frequently questions the science that shows humans burning fossil fuels are causing temperatures to rise and exacerbate extreme weather. He did not mention climate change in his annual address to Congress this week, despite increasing warnings from scientists.

Democrats, who hold a majority in the House, are trying to raise awareness of climate change as an impending crisis, with two committees holding hearings this week and a third to follow next week. But Republican lawmakers remain resistant to any legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

House Democrats hold hearings to increase pressure on climate change

Republicans in dual climate change hearings called by House Democrats yesterday attacked the as-yet unwritten Green New Deal, charging that it would be far too expensive and would worsen poverty. Ocasio-Cortez and her supporters say the strategy is designed to do the opposite – to create jobs in a green economy.

Meanwhile, Trump’s agencies continue to roll back climate regulations enacted by the Obama administration. US carbon emissions increased last year, according to analysis by the economic firm Rhodium Group.

Ocasio-Cortez elevated the Green New Deal when she joined activists at a protest outside the then minority leader Nancy Pelosi’s office last year. The activists are planning to protest at Democratic debates in an effort to ensure the proposal, which was until now largely a liberal rallying cry for action on climate change, is a prominent issue for the 2020 election.

Before the text was released, several presidential candidates had already embraced the notion of a Green New Deal, including senators Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Kirsten Gillibrand. The former San Antonio mayor Julián Castro committed to the plan during his campaign announcement.

The Democratic congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, who is the co-chair of the House progressive caucus and a sponsor of the legislation, said the resolution defined the scale and scope of what must be done to combat global warming.

“We really need an urgent and comprehensive approach,” said Jayapal.

Such legislation has little chance of becoming law as long as Republicans control the Senate and Trump is president. But Jayapal said Democrats would continue to lay the groundwork for a Green New Deal while pushing more incremental legislation.

“This is a moment for us to push a comprehensive view of the challenge before us,” she said, “and therefore to offer the solution that we need to address that challenge.”

Supporters of Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal rally in Washington in December.

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Supporters of Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal rally in Washington in December. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

The world has already warmed about 1C since the industrialization in the 19th century and is barreling toward exceeding a 1.5C increase, which climate scientists say will significantly worsen the risks of extreme heat, drought, floods and poverty.

Already, the process for drafting the brief documents has outlined the fights ahead, even among progressives who want climate action.

A background summary prepared by staffers said the plan “sets a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, at the end of this 10-year plan because we aren’t sure that we will be able to fully get rid of, for example, emissions from cows or air travel before then”.

But climate justice advocates who represent the communities seeing the worst of environmental damages and pollution already want to quickly phase out all fossil fuels. Many also oppose nuclear power that uses mined uranium but represents a huge portion of the US’s zero-carbon energy.

Angela Adrar, the executive director of the Climate Justice Alliance, a coalition of communities dealing with environmental problems, said her group supported the vision of the Green New Deal, even though members were concerned about what they saw as loopholes to allow some fossil fuels use.

https://www.ecowatch.com/green-new-deal-farm-food-2624402917.html

https://www.dataforprogress.org/green-new-deal/

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/why-green-new-deal-advocates-should-address-militarism

medea b

https://www.ecowatch.com/new-green-deal-ocasio-cortez-2621867003.html

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Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal Proposal Now Backed by 15 House Democrats

Calls for a Green New Deal are gaining traction in the two short weeks after the young climate activists of the Sunrise Movement and Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stormed Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi's Capitol Hill office.

Fifteen members of Congress have now backed Ocasio-Cortez's proposal to establish a "select committee" in the House of Representatives to develop a plan to—basically—reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to transition the U.S. to 100 percent renewable energy sources within 10 years of passing the Green New Deal legislation.

Supporters in the House include John Lewis, the civil rights leader and Democratic congressman from Georgia, and trailblazers Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, the first two Muslim women ever elected to Congress.

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As ThinkProgress reported, Democratic congresswoman Chellie Pingree of Maine joined the growing list of backers on Tuesday.

"We don't need another report to tell us climate change is a threat to our health, environment and economy," she said in a statement on her website. "We must take urgent action to end our nation's reliance on fossil fuels and stop the damage greenhouse gases have done to our way of life."

Pingree, an organic farmer and member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior and the Environment, said the effects of climate change have greatly impacted her state.

"Look no further than Maine's lobster industry to see the looming economic crisis facing our state due to rapidly warming waters," she said. "Meanwhile rates of asthma and tick-borne illness in Maine have dramatically spiked because of fossil fuel emissions and rising temperatures. I see the crisis of climate change every day in my state and believe a new committee dedicated exclusively to this crisis can support the long-standing work of other House committees and help to fast-track solutions."

Here are the 15 House Democrats supporting the measure:

Jared Huffman (CA-02)

Ro Khanna (CA-17)

Ted Lieu (CA-33)

John Lewis (GA-05)

Joe Neguse (CO-02)

Chellie Pingree (ME-01)

Jamie Raskin (MD-08)

Ayanna Pressley (MA-07)

Rashida Tlaib (MI-13)

Ilhan Omar (MN-05)

Deb Halland (NM-01)

Carolyn Maloney (NY-12)

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14)

José E. Serrano (NY-15)

Earl Blumenauer (OR-03)

The proposal also has the support of nearly 100 environmental, economic and social justice organizations, according to the Sunrise Movement.

To build momentum, the youth climate group is organizing another mass action at the Capitol on Dec. 10, right before Congress breaks for the holidays, "to make sure Ocasio's Select Committee on a Green New Deal makes it on the agenda for 2019," Sunrise Movement founder Varshini Prakash said in an emailed press release.

The group launched the effort only yesterday and 230 people have already signed up to participate. (You can also join the action in DC, or if you're on the West Coast, you can sign up for the action in Nancy Pelosi's office in San Francisco.)

Last week, the National Climate Assessment report—compiled by 13 federal agencies and more than 300 scientists—warned that climate change could kill thousands of Americans each year and slash the GDP by more than 10 percent by 2100.

President Donald Trump, who is fixated on fossil fuels, dismissed his own government's report by saying "I don't believe it."

"People are going to die if we don't start addressing climate change ASAP. It's not enough to think it's 'important.' We must make it urgent," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted after the report's release. "That's why we need a Select Committee on a Green New Deal, & why fossil fuel-funded officials shouldn't be writing climate change policy."

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joel rogers

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Founder of the New Party, COWS, the Apollo Alliance, Green For All, Emerald Cities
Original mastermind of “the green economy”
professor of law, political science, and sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Joel Rogers is an influential figure in progressive politics. He is the author of several books, works as a contributing editor for Boston Review and *The Nation*, and has founded some of the most powerful leftist organizations and coalitions in the United States. Newsweeknamed Rogers one of the 100 Americans most likely to shape U.S. politics and culture in the 21st century, and Glenn Beck has called him “the man behind [Barack] Obama.” Van Jones, the revolutionary communist who served briefly as President Obama’s “green jobs czar,” has Rogers’ “extraordinary set of achievements,” asserting that Rogers has given “three great gifts” to the progressive movement:

- “an economic model,” which is “now reflected in the [Obama] White House”;
- a “new politics,” based upon the “New Party” and its successor, the “Working Families Party,” that “brings together labor, civil rights, and feminists […] which is the basic framework for what just took over the White House [when Obama was elected]”; and
- “a new energy paradigm” as outlined by the Apollo Alliance, an organization Rogers helped create.

Rogers earned a B.A. from Yale College in 1972, a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1976, an M.A. from Princeton University in 1978, and a Ph.D. from Princeton in 1984.

In 1992 Rogers founded the tax-exempt Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS), based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. COWS describes itself as “a national policy center and field laboratory for high-road economic development — a competitive market economy of shared prosperity, environmental sustainability, and capable democratic government.”

That same year, Rogers co-founded the New Party, a socialist coalition that endorsed and helped elect left-wing political candidates; one of its most noteworthy members in the mid-1990s was Barack Obama.

In the fall of 1994, Rogers was listed in a New Party publication that named more than 100 activists “who are building the NP.” Other notable names among the list of 100+ were: John Cavanagh, Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Randall Forsberg, Maude Hurd, Manning Marable, Frances Fox Piven, Zach Polett, Wade Rathke, Mark Ritchie, Gloria Steinem, Cornel West, Quentin Young, and Howard Zinn.

During the early years of the New Party, Rogers fought to institute, in the state of Minnesota, the practice of electoral fusion — where two or more political parties can support the same political candidate and thereby pool the votes for all the parties involved; this practice enables smaller parties to influence the agendas of big-party candidates. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against electoral fusion in 1997, the New Party shut down its operation. It was reincarnated in 1998, however, by Rogers’ partner, Daniel Cantor, as the Working Families Party, which became a powerful front group for ACORN.

As the ’90s progressed, Rogers remained intent upon building a progressive alliance to redress the supposed failure of liberalism in America. “All around us is the wreckage of unrestrained capitalism—falling living standards, families strained to breaking point, rising inequality,” he lamented in 1994. For Rogers, liberals were ill-equipped to save the U.S. from economic decline and stagnation, since they “lack […] confidence in ordinary people” and, therefore, cannot build “organized popular support.” Progressives, by contrast, “actually believe in democracy” and can “do the heavy lifting against entrenched and resourceful corporate actors,” said Rogers.

In 1995 Rogers won a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, nicknamed the “Genius Award.” Meanwhile, his COWS group continued to flourish, receiving the funding of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Carolyn Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Garfield Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, Living Cities, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, George Soros’ Open Society Institute, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, the Wallace Global Fund, and the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development.

In early 1995, Rogers published an essay in The New Left Review – a periodical whose content is largely Marxist/socialist – suggesting that the New Party represented an important new voice in American politics. Moreover, he derided liberals for their failure to gain “social control of the economy” or to put “serious constraints on capital.” With euphemism and convoluted language, Rogers carefully avoided making an open call for socialism. Rather, he advocated “economic democracy,” whose “biggest … barrier,” he lamented, was “capitalism” — an “undemocratic” system featuring “private ownership of the means of production.” Rogers pushed for “reforms” that would “facilitate greater popular control of capital itself, which would permit experimentation with different forms of ownership and production….” Toward this end, he proposed a new “bill of rights” consisting of a de facto guaranteed minimum income, wage controls, and “employment redistribution” – i.e., guaranteed full employment, which could be achieved by a mandated shortening of the work-week at Columbia University, Rogers said that “profit-seeking business” was characterized by “swaggering ruthlessness,” immense “greed,” and “a blank indifference to all that is good and human.” He described capitalism as “monstrous.” He accused “the right in the early 1970s” of having commissioned intellectuals to “produce just tons of junk … books and case studies and made-up studies and empirical studies and fake studies.” Then he declared, “We [progressives] should do the same.” Moreover, he proposed that the U.S. should “double the minimum wage within three years.” He said that every child in America “should be fed, clothed, housed, decently fed, and insured, and eventually they’ll grow up and then vote for national health insurance.” And he made reference to Christian fundamentalists as “ungodly.”

In 1997 Rogers was a guest speaker at the Socialist Scholars Conference in New York City.

On September 20, 2001, Rogers spoke at a New York City gathering to honor the work of Richard Cloward (co-creator of the Cloward-Piven Strategy), who had died a month earlier. Other speakers included such notables as Barbara Ehrenreich, June Jordan, Gus Newport, Frances Fox Piven, Miles Rappaport, Tim Sampson, Cornel West, and Howard Zinn.

Also in 2001, Rogers co-founded EARN, a self-described “poverty group” whose board of directors includes executives from AJW Inc., Citibank, Covington & Burling LLP, Goldman Sachs, Sotheby’s International Realty, and Wells Fargo. In addition, he became an advisor to the Campaign for America’s Future (CAF). Soon after 9/11, Rogers’ COWS partnered with CAF’s sister organization, the Institute for America’s Future, and with the Tides Center, to create the Apollo Alliance (AA), where Rogers served as the nascent group’s first chairman. At the AA, Rogers was able to lay out a strategy for green economics, which, as longtime AA board member Van Jones claimed, became the immediate model for the Obama administration’s environmental policy.

In addition to AA, Rogers’ COWS also developed a host of other progressive projects, most notably the Emerald Cities Collaborative, a major player in the push for Cap-and-Trade legislation, and Green For All (with Van Jones as founder).

In the August/September 2004 issue of *The Nation*, Rogers lamented that “the dismantling of the New Deal welfare state, twentieth-century American liberalism’s greatest domestic achievement” had already taken place, with the Bush Administration representing the culmination of America’s “devolution” and posing “the greatest internal threat to our democracy in our history.” Progressives, Rogers argued, needed a new strategy to wrest power away from conservatives:

“[I]n no state are there functional majorities of self-consciously progressive elected officials, working together off a visible, coherent program of progressive economic, social and political reform, linked systematically to outside progressive forces. That is what the right is building on its side, and what we need to build on ours.”

Rogers calls for progressives to place their own candidates inside government, candidates who will “systematically” follow the agendas of “outside progressive forces” to engineer radical change in America. Such change, Rogers hopes, will cause the U.S. not only to become more judicious in its use of military force overseas, but also to begin to make amends for its “four hundred years’ racism.”

Along with his other duties and affiliations, Rogers is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

A professor of law, political science, and sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Joel Rogers is an influential figure in progressive politics. He is the author of several books, works as a contributing editor for Boston Review and *The Nation*, and has founded some of the most powerful leftist organizations and coalitions in the United States. Newsweeknamed Rogers one of the 100 Americans most likely to shape U.S. politics and culture in the 21st century, and Glenn Beck has called him “the man behind [Barack] Obama.” Van Jones, the revolutionary communist who served briefly as President Obama’s “green jobs czar,” has Rogers’ “extraordinary set of achievements,” asserting that Rogers has given “three great gifts” to the progressive movement:

“an economic model,” which is “now reflected in the [Obama] White House”;
a “new politics,” based upon the “New Party” and its successor, the “Working Families Party,” that “brings together labor, civil rights, and feminists […] which is the basic framework for what just took over the White House [when Obama was elected]”; and
“a new energy paradigm” as outlined by the Apollo Alliance, an organization Rogers helped create.

Rogers earned a B.A. from Yale College in 1972, a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1976, an M.A. from Princeton University in 1978, and a Ph.D. from Princeton in 1984.

In a 1996 speech](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAxYvYfx2rE) at Columbia University, Rogers said that “profit-seeking business” was characterized by “swaggering ruthlessness,” immense “greed,” and “a blank indifference to all that is good and human.” He described capitalism as “monstrous.” He accused “the right in the early 1970s” of having commissioned intellectuals to “produce just tons of junk … books and case studies and made-up studies and empirical studies and fake studies.” Then he declared, “We [progressives] should do the same.” Moreover, he proposed that the U.S. should “double the minimum wage within three years.” He said that every child in America “should be fed, clothed, housed, decently fed, and insured, and eventually they’ll grow up and then vote for national health insurance.” And he made reference to Christian fundamentalists as “ungodly.”

In 1997 Rogers was a guest speaker at the Socialist Scholars Conference in New York City.

“[I]n no state are there functional majorities of self-consciously progressive elected officials, working together off a visible, coherent program of progressive economic, social and political reform, linked systematically to outside progressive forces. That is what the right is building on its side, and what we need to build on ours.”

Along with his other duties and affiliations, Rogers is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

https://www.ecowatch.com/job-losses-renewables-tax-plan-2517421811.html

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