Perspective: The Green New Deal isn’t big enough
As progressives have coalesced around the Green New Deal, its proponents say that its ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions would, if adopted, protect the Earth from catastrophic global warming. An article in the Nation called the Green New Deal “our best hope for saving the planet,” because it would “confront climate change on the scale that this crisis demands.
Conservative critics, pointing to inflated estimates of its possible costs, have said the Green New Deal is too big. But when it comes to saving the planet, it’s not nearly big enough. That’s where the United States and its wealthy allies come in. Poorer countries can be induced with subsidies to make bolder commitments. We know because they’ve said so. In the Paris negotiations, developing nations were explicitly open to making more ambitious commitments if developed countries contributed to making them happen. Some nations, including Mexico, went so far as to offer “conditional pledges” that they would make steeper emissions cuts if properly compensated.
These wealth transfers are part of what activists call “climate justice,” which also includes providing support to marginalized communities that are disproportionately affected by climate change in rich countries. The U.N. Environment Program estimated in 2016 that the cost of adapting to climate change in developing countries could reach $300 billion per year in 2030 and $500 billion in 2050. Some of that will be funded by poorer nations — their private sectors and regional institutions.
Still, even $100 billion will not be nearly enough. It was “a made-up number” to prevent the collapse of the Copenhagen negotiations, according to Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, global director of the Sustainable Finance Center at the World Resources Institute. “It wasn’t based on an analysis of what was needed to meet the challenge, necessarily.” Nobody knows how big the ultimate U.S.
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