Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unveils a new plan to save the planet

Climate change is a massive problem that will require ambitious solutions to fix.

And that’s exactly what the Green New Deal, a 10-year plan to help reverse the devastating impacts of climate change, aims to do.

Two Democratic lawmakers — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts — officially released the plan on Thursday.

The proposal seeks to eliminate carbon emissions in the U.S., and would require major changes to the economy, including setting a goal that would mean 100 percent of power used in the country will eventually come from “clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources,” according to text of the deal published by NPR.

Like former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Green New Deal seeks to train people living in “frontline and vulnerable communities” for new jobs that help make the lofty climate change goals a reality.

Top goals in the proposal, according to NPR’s copy of the bill, include:

• An overhaul of the country’s transportation systems that will grow the number of electric cars and charging stations, as well as create a high-speed rail system with the goal of eliminating the necessity for air travel;
• Upgrading buildings to make them more energy efficient;
• And eliminating greenhouse gas emissions “as much as is technologically feasible” by working with farmers to ensure their economic safety as well as ensuring “universal access to healthy food.”

Ocasio-Cortez admitted to NPR that the goals are ambitious.

“Even the solutions that we have considered big and bold are nowhere near the scale of the actual problem that climate change presents to us,” she said in an interview Thursday morning.

But a problem as big as climate change will require a big effort.

And Ocasio-Cortez urged those who support the proposal to make their voices heard.

“I do think that when there’s a wide spectrum of debate on an issue, that is where the public plays a role,” she told NPR. “That is where the public needs to call their member of Congress and say, ‘This is something that I care about.'”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.