February 8, 2019

Here Is the Green New Deal in Handy List Form

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

I gather that Matt Whitaker is being quite the asshole in his testimony before Congress today:

Sadly, I didn’t watch the hearing. However, Hannah Levintova has more here.

In the meantime, I thought I would compile a list of everything included in the Green New Deal that was released yesterday. This is just for future reference:

  1. Commit to net zero greenhouse gas emissions within ten years
  2. Provide “millions” of good, high-wage jobs
  3. Repair and upgrade US infrastructure
  4. Provide everyone with access to clean air and clean water
  5. Repair 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
  6. Protect against extreme weather events
  7. Eliminate pollution and greenhouse gases “as much as technologically feasible”
  8. Meet 100 percent of power demand via renewable and zero-emission sources
  9. Upgrade to smart grids
  10. Upgrade all existing buildings for maximum energy efficiency
  11. Invest in public transit and high-speed rail
  12. Mitigate the long-term health effects of pollution and climate change
  13. Restore fragile ecosystems
  14. Clean up hazardous waste sites
  15. Provide higher education to all
  16. Invest in R&D of new energy technologies
  17. Build wealth, community ownership, and good jobs in marginalized communities
  18. Create union jobs that pay prevailing wages
  19. Guarantee living wage to everyone
  20. Guarantee family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to everyone
  21. Improve union bargaining strength
  22. Strengthen labor and workplace safety standards
  23. Enact trade rules that increase jobs but don’t transfer pollution overseas
  24. Reform the use of eminent domain
  25. Ensure that all business are free from unfair competition
  26. Provide all people of the United States with high-quality health care
  27. Provide all people of the United States with good housing
  28. Provide all people of the United States with economic security
  29. Provide all people of the United States with healthy and affordable food
  30. Provide all people of the United States with access to nature

This is really more of a social democratic manifesto than a climate change plan. Perhaps instead of Green New Deal, it should just be called “Finish Up the New Deal”?

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate