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WASHINGTON — House Democrats on Thursday introduced a resolution for a Green New Deal, a sweeping measure that calls for an environmental and economic mobilization that would make the United States carbon neutral by 2030 while creating jobs for millions of people.
While the prospects for the measure were uncertain — a resolution is essentially a statement of intention, and this one is not guaranteed to go to a vote on the House floor — it gives shape and substance to an idea that, until now, had been a mostly vague rallying cry for a grand stimulus package around climate change.
Led by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, the proposal does not set a date for eliminating of phasing out fossil fuels. It does call for generating 100 percent of electricity through renewable sources like wind and solar in the next 10 years, eliminating greenhouse emissions in manufacturing and forestry “as much as is technologically feasible,” and re-engineering cars and trucks to end climate pollution.
The measure also includes social justice goals not usually attached to antipollution plans, like eradicating poverty by creating high-paid jobs.
It also aims 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.”
Sixty members of the House and nine senators are co-sponsoring the resolution, including several presidential candidates, according to a fact sheet provided by Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s office. There is no mention of costs or how to pay for the proposed changes.
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