--:-- Sean Rameswaram: DC's hottest club is the Green New Deal, and we have not yet talked about it on Today Explained. But Noam Hassenfeld, you have been reporting on the Green New Deal for Today Explained, and today is the day.
--:-- Noam Hassenfeld: Today. Today. Explained. Explained. Where do we start?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I think we should actually start with Republican Senator Mike Lee. Utah.
--:-- Noam Hassenfeld: This is, of course, a picture of former President Ronald Reagan naturally firing a machine gun while riding on the back of a dinosaur. Okay, yeah, I think I saw a photo or a video of this online, but it was long. What does this have to do with the Green New Deal?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You just got to be patient. Okay, I can do that. You'll notice a couple of important features here. First of all, the rocket launcher strapped to President Reagan's back, and then the stirring, unmistakable patriotism of the velociraptor holding up a tattered American flag.
--:-- Noam Hassenfeld: Now, critics might quibble with this depiction of the climactic battle of the Cold War, because while awesome, in real life, there was no climactic battle. There was no battle with or without velociraptors.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But this image has as much to do with overcoming communism in the 20th century as the Green New Deal has to do with overcoming climate change in the 21st.
--:-- Noam Hassenfeld: Okay, so, yeah, I heard Green New Deal in there. Is he trying to say that the Green New Deal is like a fantasy? It doesn't exist?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Basically, yeah. The Green New Deal is as much a fantasy as Reagan riding a dinosaur, firing a machine gun.
--:-- Noam Hassenfeld: Okay. Fair. But that actually might understate how ridiculous Mike Lee thinks the Green New Deal is.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay. This is a picture of Aquaman. These images are from the indispensable documentary film Sharknado 4.
--:-- Noam Hassenfeld: Tauntauns, Mr. President. Hairy bipedal species of space lizards. A founding member of the Super Friends. I draw your attention to the 20-foot impressive seahorse he's riding.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We must not allow and cannot tolerate a giant seahorse gap.
--:-- Noam Hassenfeld: Okay, so thanks to C-SPAN, we know that Mike Lee, Republican from Utah, thinks the Green New Deal is about as ridiculous as a giant seahorse, a Sharknado, Reagan riding a dinosaur with machine guns.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, but Mike Lee isn't exactly wrong.
--:-- Noam Hassenfeld: Oh? Right now, the Green New Deal is completely, totally outlandish. It's got two goals. One, get carbon emissions all the way down to zero. And two, create millions of jobs without leaving anyone behind.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, that's it. Just stop carbon emissions and help everyone at the same time. That's it.
--:-- Noam Hassenfeld: And other than that, it's pretty vague. But the thing is, Sean, what's the thing?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is all going exactly according to plan. The Green New Deal isn't trying to be the next tax cut or even the next Obamacare. The Green New Deal wants to be a revolution.
--:-- Noam Hassenfeld: You often hear about revolutions once they're done. But I'm going to tell you how this one might be starting.
--:-- Noam Hassenfeld: So we got to go back to November of last year. Hi, everyone. My name is Varshini Prakash. We are here in front of Nancy Pelosi's office in Washington, D.C.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: We are here, as you can see behind me, hundreds strong. More people turned out than I ever thought they would.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is the moment when a lot of people first heard about the Green New Deal.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: Speaker Pelosi, come of age with us, and we'll join in that great American tradition of rising to meet a challenge.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Jeremy Ornstein had just graduated high school when he spoke outside Nancy Pelosi's office.
--:-- Jeremy Ornstein: But if you can't, if you're too scared to try, They get out of the way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it blew up because of what happened inside the office.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: I just want to let you all know how proud I am of each and every single one of you for putting yourselves and your bodies and everything on the line to make sure that we save our planet, our generation, and our future.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was the first big viral moment for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez after winning her election.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: I want to thank you all because you are giving us as a party the strength to push.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: After AOC left, Sunrise stuck around in Nancy Pelosi's office and the hallway and just started singing.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: This is like when it's 5 a.m. and those strangers no one invited still won't leave the party.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And just like when you're at that party, someone eventually has to call the cops.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: I'm Lieutenant Medell Adams, the United States Captain of Police. This is your final warning. You do not want to be arrested.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 51 activists got arrested. You're in violation of D.C. code.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: Those cheers were because the activists weren't really upset about it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The arrests are kind of the point. Arrests get attention.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: And they've taken the Green New Deal from never gonna happen to probably never gonna happen
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Even so Democratic candidates have started endorsing the plan Elizabeth Warren Green New Deal is a way that people are now getting organized and they behind it
--:-- Varshini Prakash: So what can you do? You keep pushing on it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Cory Booker. Our planet is in peril, and we need to be bold.
--:-- Cory Booker: It's one of the reasons why I signed on to the resolution, I co-sponsored the resolution for the Green New Deal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Kamala Harris. I support a Green New Deal, and I will tell you why.
--:-- Kamala Harris: Climate change is an existential threat to us, and we have got to deal with the reality of it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: These candidates are all riding a wave of energy and attention that's been bubbling up from the bottom.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: So I went to see what it looks like down there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It is wonderful to be with you here today. I have the best job in the world.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: The Sunrise activists are meeting at an old church in D.C. We're here together to fight for a Green New Deal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's February, it's dinner time, and there's some pizza.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: These people never stop singing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sunrise is planning to get a big group arrested again, this time outside Mitch McConnell's office.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: We're going to make a lot of noise.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So that is our plan.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: You're not allowed to make noise inside of the halls of Congress.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we're going to be out singing, chanting, making sure our voice is heard.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: And the police will eventually have to come and decide whether or not they're going to let us continue sharing our stories.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Or if they're going to stop us and Mitch McConnell's going to abide and allow them to arrest us.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: This is how the sausage gets made.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Sunrise activists, they choreograph these arrests like a music video.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: Now I have a few roles that I'd like some help with that we need to plug this team into.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I need someone who is going to be my handheld delivery person.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: All the handhelds that are going to go in the office are going to be in one person's backpack.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Two door holders. They will be at the front of the A-Team group.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: Six banner holders.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm going to need a banner backpack person.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: And maybe like five R-Transporters.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I need someone who has a good camera.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: Doing like Instagram, maybe other phones in the audience.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Can I do Instagram?
--:-- Varshini Prakash: Yeah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Did I have any song leads in the audience?
--:-- Varshini Prakash: Yes, I was such a fast hand in overall.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let's just go for it. Yeah, let's do four song leads. Cool, wow. This is so fun.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: There are charts. There are maps. There are rules.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: First one is physical. So no physical violence.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: Second rule, no property destruction. If they see you breaking something, if they see you kicking in a window, flipping over a desk, they will view that as violent.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Third, watch your gosh darn mouth.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: So we don't want to be personed up a storm, saying F you to the police as we're getting arrested.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then the dress rehearsal.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: These two chairs are where the desk is.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're gonna try and replicate this diagram.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: There's a doorway here and a doorway there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Cool, so let's just do the thing.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: It's Sunday night, 11 o'clock.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm in a church in D.C., watching 50 of the most earnest people I've ever met rehearsing their arrests.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: And practice makes perfect.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I want it!
--:-- Varshini Prakash: Now!
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What do we want?
--:-- Varshini Prakash: A green new deal!
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When do we want it?
--:-- Varshini Prakash: Now!
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What do we want?
--:-- Varshini Prakash: A green new deal!
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The next day, Sunrise meets up outside the Russell building, where McConnell's office is.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: They make a bunch of noise outside, calm it down for security, follow their maps down hallways, through tunnels, upstairs.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they finally make it to McConnell's office where they do what they do best.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: The police show up, Sunrise activists get arrested, but somehow it's not for singing off-key.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's how you green New Deal. At least for now.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: Rehearse, perform, arrest, repeat.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's almost like the cops are part of the Sunrise show.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: But you can't argue with results.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The only reason we are here is because of the activists across the country that created the energy to get us here.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: This is AOC at the unveiling of the Green New Deal resolution in February.
--:-- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: If Sunrise was not here, and if all of those young people were not sleeping in a church 20 minutes out to come here during orientation, who knows if we would be here right now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She introduced the resolution with Senator Ed Markey.
--:-- Ed Markey: In 2009, Markey had an ambitious climate bill die in the Senate. But this time? We now have the troops. We're ready to fight.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so the difference between 2009 and 2010 and today is we now have our army as well.
--:-- Varshini Prakash: Alright, so you've got your army, your politicians, your catchy name. What do you do next with your green new deal?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You figure out what those three words really mean.
--:-- Noam Hassenfeld: After the break, Noam gets into the green new weeds.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I can't fall asleep or wake up in the morning in peace anymore because the first thing that enters my consciousness now is Rating and arruviing Ra n't' arruviing You, don't know what you listen Rating up some stitcher rap, bump, I canes, draw, wherever it listens Rating up some stitcher rap, bump, I canes,êm, empties, yeah
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What are you doing?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Five stars.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What are you doing?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Love this show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You don't know what you're missing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Five stars.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Five stars.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Crazy married. Five stars.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today. Today Explained. It's Today Explained. The Green New Deal. What's in it?
--:-- Noam Hassenfeld: Noam asked Dave Roberts. He is Vox's climate wonk.
--:-- Dave Roberts: He said before we get into the what of the Green New Deal, we need to talk about the why.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That became clear last October when the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published a bombshell.
--:-- Dave Roberts: And the whole report was about the difference between if temperatures rise 1.5 degrees versus 2 degrees Celsius.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it turns out what's going to happen if the temperature rises 2 degrees is really bad.
--:-- Dave Roberts: Turn on the news and read about the flooding that's coming to the U.S. this spring.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And just imagine that being regularly two to three times per season.
--:-- Dave Roberts: Imagine the wildfires in California that were so disruptive and crazy last season.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Imagine five times that much wildfire in California every year.
--:-- Dave Roberts: That's just a microcosm of what's going to be happening in the southwest with drought on the coasts with sea level rise, storms in the Gulf Coast, on and on and on.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And here's the kicker.
--:-- Dave Roberts: Two degrees is not worst case scenario anymore.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It will be a miracle to limit temperature rise to merely the disaster that the IPCC describes in this report rather than some much worse disaster.
--:-- Dave Roberts: That means eliminating U.S. emissions by mid-century or sooner.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Everything else follows from that.
--:-- Dave Roberts: The only way to achieve that goal is radical, rapid emission reductions across the entire U.S. economy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Which brings us to the what? The substance of the Green New Deal.
--:-- Dave Roberts: There have been some leaked proposals, but as of today, the only official document we have is that resolution put forward in February by Markey and AOC.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's just not much.
--:-- Dave Roberts: It literally does not contain any policies or exclude any policies because it's not a policy document.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's very broad goals.
--:-- Dave Roberts: Again, goal number one. Decarbonize the entire U.S. economy, which is itself a gargantuan task.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're talking about something that could involve retrofitting most of the buildings in the country, changing how most homes get their power, and switching the entire auto industry over to electric vehicles.
--:-- Dave Roberts: To put it lightly, it's going to be disruptive.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: People will lose jobs. They'll need to be retrained.
--:-- Dave Roberts: It would just be an enormous amount of churn.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the architects of this plan say, we need that second goal.
--:-- Dave Roberts: Let's also make sure that U.S. workers are protected through this transition.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How do you do that? Create millions of high-wage jobs and even a jobs guarantee.
--:-- Dave Roberts: The question of what policy tools will be appropriate for meeting those goals remains to come.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's what the next two years are for.
--:-- Dave Roberts: They're basically thinking this. Nothing's going to pass in the next two years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So let's use the next two years to develop policy that actually addresses the need as described by the IPCC reports and then run on it in 2020.
--:-- Dave Roberts: Now, developing these policies takes a special kind of deep thinker.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think about a lot of things, and it's hard sometimes to make them small.
--:-- Rihanna Gunn-Wright: This is Rihanna Gunn-Wright. Policy lead for the Green New Deal at New Consensus.
--:-- Dave Roberts: New Consensus is a progressive think tank working on actually creating the Green New Deal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Before that, she worked on Abdul El-Sayed's 2016 campaign for Michigan governor.
--:-- Rihanna Gunn-Wright: I kind of, I guess, got a bit of a reputation for if you have a big idea and you need someone dumb enough to try to figure it out, you should call Rihanna.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Rihanna had been working on anti-poverty policy, reading studies about how high levels of income inequality, especially in rich countries, worsens emissions.
--:-- Rihanna Gunn-Wright: So when she looks back to the Green New Deal namesake, I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Rihanna sees something incomplete.
--:-- Rihanna Gunn-Wright: The New Deal did not make the economy more just and fair for everyone, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like, I'm Black. My family still lives with the repercussions of being kept out of Social Security for 15 years.
--:-- Rihanna Gunn-Wright: That is 15 years of wealth that we could have built, that could have been passed on, that was gone.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Rihanna wants to make sure the Green New Deal doesn't fall into the same trap.
--:-- Rihanna Gunn-Wright: So she's taking a fundamentally different approach.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We do not believe policy is best done from a closed room and then announced from on high.
--:-- Rihanna Gunn-Wright: Get out of the office and figure out what this looks like for people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This approach makes things way more complicated.
--:-- Rihanna Gunn-Wright: A good example is like upgrading homes right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so This is Rihanna process
--:-- Rihanna Gunn-Wright: So we said all buildings. What types of buildings are there?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Job quality for residential upgrades is much worse.
--:-- Rihanna Gunn-Wright: They can be good jobs if you raise the wages, if you make sure people have benefits.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So how do you want to break up who does that work?
--:-- Rihanna Gunn-Wright: If we want to advance equity, mandating that you need a certain percentage of minority or women-owned businesses.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Other places have structured it as a fine.
--:-- Rihanna Gunn-Wright: In this case, maybe we want to structure it as an incentive.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But usually what we find is that big local contractors will just build in that fine into their proposal.
--:-- Rihanna Gunn-Wright: It could mean that they can hire fewer people or they can do less work.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Another way you could deal with that is actually a jobs guarantee does not mean that the federal government necessarily runs that program.
--:-- Rihanna Gunn-Wright: But it makes the funding much more stable in order to like have people do the residential work.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The way that the Green New Deal is being put together, I'm sort of skeptical that it's headed in the right direction.
--:-- Joseph Mikit: This is Joseph Mikit. Director of climate policy at the Niskanen Center.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's a think tank in D.C.
--:-- Joseph Mikit: It's taking something that's already quite challenging to do from a policy perspective and adding on a lot of other things that are also hard to do.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's fully behind lowering carbon emissions, but he's not sure why goal two, economic justice, needs to be part of the Green New Deal.
--:-- Joseph Mikit: I have no problem with social justice. Social justice should be accomplished.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But social and economic justice issues and climate change in some huge package, I think, limits our ability to treat things incrementally and one at a time.
--:-- Joseph Mikit: Dave Roberts isn't so sure.
--:-- Dave Roberts: The idea that we're just going to transform every sector of the U.S. economy in a way that is sort of like not going to bother the average U.S. worker to me just seems like fantasy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Plus, even if we're able to solve climate change. If we solve it on the backs of some people, their descendants are going to live with the effects for generations.
--:-- Dave Roberts: So this idea that another transformative moment will come later and we will want to deal with equity then when we have not addressed it in all of these mobilizations, that's unacceptable.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we've seen the effects.
--:-- Dave Roberts: But this issue of economic justice is just one sticking point.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's an even more fundamental question. How ambitious should this plan really be?
--:-- Joseph Mikit: I think that there's a real risk of overselling the cost of the transition.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's going to be really hard, in my opinion, to pass anything.
--:-- Joseph Mikit: Joseph is interested in something pragmatic, something that could conceivably pass with the Republicans he works with.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: ExxonMobil, BP, a lot of these companies are willing to talk about things like carbon taxes.
--:-- Joseph Mikit: They can suddenly put all their really smart engineers on ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but they don't see a march to the guillotine necessarily.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Things like a carbon tax give companies time to plan.
--:-- Joseph Mikit: Pragmatism. You could really start dealing with the problem in a big fundamental way without sort of putting a deadline at which these folks are going to be out of business.
--:-- Dave Roberts: I just feel like the time we had in which that smooth glide path was possible, we blew that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's just a little more worried about everything.
--:-- Dave Roberts: Obviously the climate crisis. And? The crisis of growing income inequality.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And overlaying that crisis is a third crisis, which is the crisis of U.S. politics being utterly broken.
--:-- Dave Roberts: Look at the past 10 years of history.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's not like incremental advancing is a serious live option here.
--:-- Dave Roberts: We're not doing that either.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Which side are you on now?
--:-- Dave Roberts: Which side are you on?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is why groups like Sunrise are singing songs at the bottom while things are stuck at the top.
--:-- Dave Roberts: The whole point of this from the Green New Deal activist perspective is pushing the Overton window, the sense of what's on the table.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Already you see discussion where people are saying the sort of moderate compromise options being thrown around are way more strong and powerful than the most powerful proposals of five to ten years ago.
--:-- Dave Roberts: So it's already working.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Maybe I was wrong.
--:-- Dave Roberts: This has gone from never going to happen to probably never going to happen to just maybe starting to happen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Maybe.
--:-- Dave Roberts: The overwhelming likelihood is that the U.S. political system is going to produce more gridlock and crap.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the default position will be to sort of back into the future like we always do.
--:-- Dave Roberts: Things will get worse and worse, but there will never be a sharp break, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we'll feel better about it.
--:-- Dave Roberts: So we're probably gonna blow this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it's possible not to.
--:-- Dave Roberts: We have a road out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Dave Roberts writes about climate change for Vox.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Noam Hassenfeld reports for Today Explained from Vox.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained is a co-production with Stitcher.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Ramasperum, Irene Noguchi, Bridget McCarthy, and Afim Shapiro make the show too.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sayona Petros is our intrepid intern.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hannah Bolaños helped out this week.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder is with us in spirit always.
