Bernie Sanders's Green New Deal Is a Climate Plan for the Many, Not the Few

[Uncle Joe]

Yesterday, Bernie Sanders launched his Green New Deal (GND) platform in Paradise, California — a community literally burned to the ground by fossil fuel company greed and state collusion less than a year ago, when the deadliest fire in California history ripped through the state’s northern forests, dried out after baking in intense summer heat. Those fires killed eighty-six people and destroyed tens of thousands of homes. PG&E — the state’s mammoth electric utility — has been found responsible.

Climate-fueled fires are still burning — not in Paradise, but in the Arctic, where Greenland has seen a massive blaze that threatens to drive up ice melt, and in the Amazon, where the rainforest has been burning for three weeks, likely due to intentional arson by ranchers to clear land for cattle. Thousands of miles apart, these fires have common threads: They’re being sparked by the rich and powerful, whether by agricultural conglomerates, complicit right-wing governments, or fossil fuel executives who’ve lied to the public so they can keep spewing heat-trapping carbon up into the atmosphere for a quick buck.

(snip)

The tide is starting to turn against the fossil fuel industry: every major candidate has signed a pledge not to take money from oil and gas companies. But Sanders brings the kind of moral fury we need, pledging not only to take on oil companies but to hold them responsible for obfuscation by pursuing civil and criminal lawsuits in a manner similar to the cases brought against tobacco companies for covering up data on smoking and lung cancer.

(snip)

But Sanders’s announcement in Paradise is the beginning of a tour that will take the GND directly to the people. Climate change isn’t just an issue for wonks: the Sanders GND is for the coal miners being stiffed on pensions and indigenous peoples protecting their water; it’s for the neighborhoods bearing the toxic brunt of environmental racism and the coastal communities facing rising seas. It’s a climate plan for the many, not the few. And, “From the Oval Office to street marches,” it’s the climate plan we should fight for.

https://jacobinmag.com/2019/08/bernie-sanders-climate-green-new-deal

[HerbChestnut]

1. Great post, Uncle Joe.

I'm glad they took the time to mention permafrost fires in the arctic. That's a huge deal that doesn't get a lot of attention.

Edit: Grammar

[Uncle Joe]

2. I hear you HerbChestnut, I'm afraid the Arctic fire in Greenland will release massive

amounts of methane.

By Ellen Gray,
NASA's Earth Science News Team

New NASA-funded research has discovered that Arctic permafrost’s expected gradual thawing and the associated release of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere may actually be sped up by instances of a relatively little known process called abrupt thawing. Abrupt thawing takes place under a certain type of Arctic lake, known as a thermokarst lake that forms as permafrost thaws.

The impact on the climate may mean an influx of permafrost-derived methane into the atmosphere in the mid-21st century, which is not currently accounted for in climate projections.

The Arctic landscape stores one of the largest natural reservoirs of organic carbon in the world in its frozen soils. But once thawed, soil microbes in the permafrost can turn that carbon into the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane, which then enter into the atmosphere and contribute to climate warming.

"The mechanism of abrupt thaw and thermokarst lake formation matters a lot for the permafrost-carbon feedback this century," said first author Katey Walter Anthony at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, who led the project that was part of NASA’s Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE), a ten-year program to understand climate change effects on the Arctic. "We don’t have to wait 200 or 300 years to get these large releases of permafrost carbon. Within my lifetime, my children’s lifetime, it should be ramping up. It’s already happening but it’s not happening at a really fast rate right now, but within a few decades, it should peak."

(snip)


https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2785/unexpected-future-boost-of-methane-possible-from-arctic-permafrost/

[brush]

4. Excuse me, but wasn't the Green New Deal proposed by AOC? How is this Sanders' idea now?

[Uncle Joe]

5. Yes, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey, Bernie was one of

the original co-sponsors. No one said the Green New Deal was Bernie's idea but this is his plan on how to address it.

For the past six months, the Green New Deal — the non-binding proposal introduced into Congress in February by New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey — has been merely a dream-like idea to essentially remake the U.S. into a clean-energy economy. Yesterday, Bernie Sanders released a climate plan that is essentially a first stab at what it would take to hit that lofty goal.

The Vermont senator unveiled an aggressive plan to spend more than $16 trillion in federal dollars on “a ten-year, nationwide mobilization centered around justice and equity” to forestall the climate crisis. And he called it — you guessed it — “The Green New Deal.” (Guess no one had the foresight to trademark that phrase.) As Sanders put it to the New York Times, his plan puts the “meat on the bones” of the landmark proposal that has become a progressive litmus test.

A few pillars of Sanders’ plan include:

Declare climate change a national emergency
Establish a $40 billion Climate Justice Resiliency Fund specifically to help communities of color prepare for climate impacts
Ban fracking and mountaintop coal mining
Ensure a “fair” and “just transition” for fossil fuel workers
Take legal action against fossil fuel companies

(snip)

https://grist.org/beacon/bernies-green-new-deal/

[Uncle Joe]

3. And as for the Amazon which supplies more than 20% of Earth's oxygen.

NASA Images Show Just How Much Carbon Monoxide Is Coming Off The Burning Amazon

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This animation of the new data shows carbon monoxide rising into the atmosphere, indicated by colours green, yellow, and dark red to demonstrate the concentration of the gas by parts per billion by volume (ppvb).

"Green indicates concentrations of carbon monoxide at approximately 100 parts per billion by volume (ppbv); yellow, at about 120 ppbv; and dark red, at about 160 ppbv," NASA wrote in the press release. "Local values can be significantly higher."

As an air pollutant that can travel long distances and stay in the atmosphere for about a month, carbon monoxide plays a significant role in climate change.

While the AIRS evaluated carbon monoxide at a relatively high altitude and has little effect on the air we breathe as of right now, "strong winds can carry it downward to where it can significantly impact air quality," NASA wrote in the press release.

(snip)


https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-images-show-just-how-much-carbon-monoxide-is-coming-off-the-burning-amazon?fbclid=IwAR20TOYVLBIFNESgWV3D_IDonK-D-PHMbwBDqqmil0301N0hS39Z2xhnAgg

There is a gif on the link.

[Hortensis]

6. Only Sanders? :) ALL Democratic plans are. It's who we are.

Last edited Sat Aug 24, 2019, 02:26 PM - Edit history (1)

It's unfortunate that both Sanders' climate plan wasn't released until after Democratic Gov. Inslee stepped down, so that the opportunity to discuss their plans together on the national stage didn't happen. They're both addressing the same problems of necessity, so everyone would have seen that solutions must have far more in common than otherwise.

For instance since it's been brought up, please note the significance of the title of the last part of Democratic Gov. Inslee's climate plan: The "Community Climate Justice plan." And his is only one of a number of significant plans that have been developed by Democrats in government and out.

All the plans developed by Democratic climate, air, water, ag, energy, public health, etcetera committees in congress are designed to genuinely meet the crises we all face and at the same time turn these challenges into opportunities to advance our national wellbeing.

This is entirely different from the Republicans under McConnell, who are currently developing a fake, "damage control" climate plan to sell to the electorate, like their previous national healthcare plans. McConnell has I believe a current rating by the League of Conservation Voters of 7% (that's SEVEN PERCENT out of 100%), only slightly better than the 0% of many of his colleagues.

The Republicans have always been the huge problem we must overcome. And when Sanders says Democrats are really mostly just like Republicans, which he does all the time, just maybe people should wonder what on earth goes on in his head.

In any case, Vox explains here the plan Gov. Inslee made public for all of us to review, and it's a convenient sampling of Democratic thinking in general. Note the "equity impact mapping" just for instance.

This brings to mind our our tragically delayed "10-20-30" plan plan of 2016 to attack the most intractable little pockets of rural poverty in our nation. It still waits for us to get control but is a natural to be incorporated into our big plans for using the need for giant changes to implement them as giant advances.

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/7/30/20731958/jay-inslee-for-president-climate-change-justice-plan-green-new-deal

[George II]

7. Slowly working my way through the 35-page document, I found this:

"...the Green New Deal will redress historical injustices, by tackling poverty inequality, and the disproportionate impacts of environmental damage on poor neighborhoods, communities of color..."

Nowhere in that document does he address Sierra Blanca!

[aidbo]

8. Lol