AOC defends Green New Deal, says narrative being ‘manipulated’ by Trump, other critics

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., appeared on a late-night comedy talk show Thursday night but was stone-cold serious in her defense of the Green New Deal, the cornerstone of her progressive agenda.

When asked by “Late Night” host Seth Meyers if President Trump’s claims that “cows farting” and “hamburgers” would be outlawed were true, Ocasio-Cortez firmly answered “No.”

“I think it’s good to see how these narratives are manipulated,” Ocasio-Cortez said, “because they’re trying to say that the Green New Deal is about what we have to give up, what we have to cut back on, when in fact the Green New Deal itself is resolution to be more expansive.

“They’re trying to say that the Green New Deal is about what we have to give up, what we have to cut back on, when in fact the Green New Deal itself is resolution to be more expansive.”

— U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

“It is to be able to generate more,” she continued, “and to make sure that we’re investing in working-class Americans so that we all can afford to have more in life, so that an affordable apartment isn’t a dream but a norm and that health care is a right and not a privilege.”

The self-described Democratic socialist stressed that the Green New Deal she introduced in February “is not a bill,” but a “resolution” that doesn’t require the president’s signature.

“If we passed a resolution in the House, it doesn’t go into the Senate and it doesn’t go to the president,” she explained. “It is a House resolution. It is a declaration. It is an intentional, vision document. … Listen, if we’re going to make progress, we need to declare our North Star, and our North Star is 100 percent renewable energy, it’s Medicare For All, it’s tuition-free public colleges, it’s investing in technology and renewable resources and electric vehicles. … The resolution of the Green New Deal is the vision of what we need to accomplish in the next ten years.” MORE

EXACTLY WHAT IS “THE GREEN NEW DEAL?”

A closer look at the Democrats’ latest scheme to advance socialism.

In an October 2018 campaign appearance, Democratic darling Ocasio-Cortez – on the premise that the greenhouse gas emissions associated with human industrial activity are responsible for potentially catastrophic “climate change” – made reference to a “Green New Deal” which aims to make the U.S. 100 percent reliant on renewable energy sources (wind, water, solar) by 2035. “There’s no debate as to whether we should continue producing fossil fuels,” she said. “There’s no debate. We should not. Every single scientific consensus points to that.”

“So we talk about existential threats, the last time we had a really major existential threat to this country was around World War II…. We had a direct existential threat with another nation, this time it was Nazi Germany, and the Axis, who explicitly made the United States as an enemy, as an enemy. And what we did was that we chose to mobilize our entire economy and industrialized our entire economy and we put hundreds if not millions of people to work in defending our shores and defending this country. We have to do the same thing in order to get us to 100 percent renewable energy, and that’s just the truth of it.”

“The Green New Deal we are proposing will be similar in scale to the mobilization efforts seen in World War II or the Marshall Plan,” Ocasio-Cortez said on yet another occasion. “It will require the investment of trillions of dollars and the creation of millions of high-wage jobs. We must again invest in the development, manufacturing, deployment, and distribution of energy but this time green energy.” MORE

The Green New Deal Rises Again

It was a good idea that didn’t catch on in 2007. Now we’re running out of time.

A technician monitoring turbines at a wind farm in Glenrock, Wy.CreditCreditDamon Winter/The New York Times

There is no agreed-upon policy road map for a Green New Deal. But as one of the leading climate bloggers, Joe Romm, recently pointed out, “Since the midterms, dozens of U.S. representatives and at least four Democratic senators have pledged support to create a Select Committee to create legislation for a Green New Deal.

The goal is a ‘detailed national, industrial, economic mobilization plan’ to rapidly transition the country away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy, such as a solar, wind, and electric cars.”

The Green New Deal that Ocasio-Cortez has laid out aspires to power the U.S. economy with 100 percent renewable energy within 12 years and calls for “a job guarantee program to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one,” “basic income programs” and “universal health care,” financed, at least in part, by higher taxes on the wealthy. MORE