Wednesday night, monthfter enough ice melted off Greenland in a single day to floodlorida with five inches of water, 10 Democratic presidential hopefuls will join CNN to discuss their plans for thelimate crisis.ll haveone on record supporting some version of the Green New Deal, plan for getting every sector of the economy — electricity, transportation, agriculture, infrastructure — off fossil fuels whileuaranteeing Americans health care, housing and jobs.
Massxtinction. Millions moreefugees. The breakdown of the globalood supply.hese are just some of the calamities world leaders hoped to pre-empt in 2015 when they made aact in Pariso try to keep the globalemperaturerom rising this century more than 1.5 degreeselsiusbove pre-industrial levels, and certainly well below the 2-degree threshold beyond which some damage would berreversible. As the journalistavid Wallace-Wellsold the podcast “Longform,” a 2-degree increase risks53 million premature deathsrom
air pollution alone.
But four years after the agreement, temperatures are on track to rise at least 3 degrees by 2100. Last October, anited Nations reportarned that the 1.5-degree target would require effectively eliminating carbon emissions by 2050, possible only through “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.”
Enter the Green New Deal. Seven months ago, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey introduced aonbinding resolutiono eliminate the country’s carbon emissions in one decade, not three, by mobilizing “every aspect of American society at a scale not seen since World WarI,” in a way that would create “economic prosperity for all.”