Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal Committee Is Winning Even In Defeat
A month ago, the Green New Deal was a fringe topic. Now it’s mainstream.

By Alexander C. Kaufman
12/20/2018
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5c1c40c0e4b0407e9078ed20

....activists who had quickly garnered support for a resolution establishing a Green New Deal select committee from more than 40 incoming or sitting House Democrats and nearly a half-dozen senators, including three likely presidential contenders. In that, the congresswoman-elect from New York can claim victory.

The push forced a sea change in climate politics, pushing the policy debate from stagnant, wonky and dubious solutions centered on market tweaks to sweeping, dramatic policies that scientists say could actually make a dent in surging greenhouse gas emissions.

For years, the Republican Party’s unabashed embrace of the oil, gas and coal industries established its outright denial of the near-universally accepted science that burning fossil fuels is the main cause of climate change.

Then came Ocasio-Cortez.

In June, the avowed democratic socialist won a shocking primary victory against Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.), one of the most senior Democrats in the House and a powerful deputy of Pelosi. Her campaign platform called for a Green New Deal, at the time described vaguely as 100 percent renewable energy by 2035 and 1940s-style economy-wide mobilization. It was essentially a clarion call to go to war against fossil fuel emissions.

Adding to the urgency of her plan was the report in October from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which found that, to avoid cataclysmic warming beyond 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit, world governments needed to halve global emissions in just 12 years. When the Democratic National Committee’s decision to backtrack on a ban on fossil-fuel corporate donations in August, the party’s rift on climate change became apparent....

Greed and climate-change denial: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

At the climate summit in Poland, a revelation: Our nation stands with the petro-tyrants of Russia and Saudi Arabia

https://www.salon.com/2018/12/17/greed-and-climate-change-denial-pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain/

Like Dorothy’s dog Toto at the end of "The Wizard of Oz,” Donald Trump just pulled down the curtain and exposed the ugly reality of climate-change denial: It is driven neither by intellectual skepticism nor ideological disagreement but by pure greed, the greed of those who own -- or are retained by those who own -- oil, coal and natural gas. Climate denial is simply a cynical strategy to perpetuate inflated monopoly prices on fossil fuels.

In Katowice, Poland, for the first time, the global climate denial bloc linked arms publicly. The U.S. and Russia joined Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in cynically dismissing the latest scientific alarm bells. Not over its science: As Trump climate adviser Wells Griffith proclaimed, “We strongly believe that no country should have to sacrifice their economic prosperity or energy security in pursuit of environmental sustainability.” In other words, oil powers are entitled to their profits, at whatever cost to the rest of us.

Green New Deal Has Overwhelming Bipartisan Support, Poll Finds. At Least, For Now.

Sixty-four percent of Republicans — including 57 percent of conservative Republicans — back the core tenets of the sweeping proposal.

By Alexander C. Kaufman

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5c169f2ae4b05d7e5d8332a5

The Green New Deal is the most popular policy hardly anyone has heard of yet. Eighty-two percent of Americans say they have heard “nothing at all” about the sweeping proposal to generate 100 percent of the nation’s electricity from clean sources within the next 10 years, upgrade the United States’ power grid, invest in energy-efficiency and renewable technology, and provide training for jobs in the new, green economy. But when asked “how much do you support or oppose” the aforementioned suite of policies, 81 percent of registered voters say they either “somewhat support” or “strongly support” the plan, according to new survey results shared exclusively with HuffPost from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University.

Ninety-two percent of Democrats supported the idea, including 93 percent of liberal Democrats and 90 percent of moderate-to-conservative Democrats. But 64 percent of Republicans ― including 75 percent of moderate-to-liberal Republicans and 57 percent of conservative Republicans ― also backed the policy goals outlined in the Green New Deal. Eighty-eight percent of independents endorsed the policies as well.

“Given that most Americans have strong support for the components and ideas of the Green New Deal, it becomes a communication strategy problem,” Abel Gustafson, a postdoctoral associate at Yale who co-authored a report on the findings, said by phone Sunday. “From here, it’s about how you can pitch it so you can maintain that bipartisan support throughout the rest of the process.”

Green New Deal Has Overwhelming Bipartisan Support, Poll Finds. At Least, For Now.

Sixty-four percent of Republicans — including 57 percent of conservative Republicans — back the core tenets of the sweeping proposal.

By Alexander C. Kaufman

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5c169f2ae4b05d7e5d8332a5

The Green New Deal is the most popular policy hardly anyone has heard of yet.

Eighty-two percent of Americans say they have heard “nothing at all” about the sweeping proposal to generate 100 percent of the nation’s electricity from clean sources within the next 10 years, upgrade the United States’ power grid, invest in energy-efficiency and renewable technology, and provide training for jobs in the new, green economy.

But when asked “how much do you support or oppose” the aforementioned suite of policies, 81 percent of registered voters say they either “somewhat support” or “strongly support” the plan, according to new survey results shared exclusively with HuffPost from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University.

Ninety-two percent of Democrats supported the idea, including 93 percent of liberal Democrats and 90 percent of moderate-to-conservative Democrats. But 64 percent of Republicans ― including 75 percent of moderate-to-liberal Republicans and 57 percent of conservative Republicans ― also backed the policy goals outlined in the Green New Deal. Eighty-eight percent of independents endorsed the policies as well.

“Given that most Americans have strong support for the components and ideas of the Green New Deal, it becomes a communication strategy problem,” Abel Gustafson, a postdoctoral associate at Yale who co-authored a report on the findings, said by phone Sunday. “From here, it’s about how you can pitch it so you can maintain that bipartisan support throughout the rest of the process.”

Preserving U.S. Democracy Means Breaking Up Monopolies Like Facebook And Amazon

By Richard North Patterson
12/13/2018

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5c1136c1e4b0ac53717b2ce3

For decades, Americans have feared that an oppressive federal government would strangle political and economic freedom. Instead, massive private institutions increasingly direct public policy, distort political discourse and dominate our daily lives.

The problem is not capitalism per se ― as with the worries about government, it’s size. Allowing business enterprises to accumulate unchecked dominance over key sectors of our economy corrodes competition, constrains opportunity and, ultimately, corrupts representative governance. True democracy, it transpires, can flourish only when economic power and prosperity are more equitably distributed.