Green New Deal

Green New Deal (GND) proposals call for public policy to address climate change along with achieving other social aims like job creation and reducing economic inequality. The name refers back to the New Deal, a set of social and economic reforms and public works projects undertaken by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in response to the Great Depression.^[1] The Green New Deal combines Roosevelt’s economic approach with modern ideas such as renewable energy and resource efficiency.^[2][3]

A prominent 2019 attempt to get legislation passed for a Green New Deal was sponsored by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) during the 116th United States Congress, though it failed to advance in the Senate.^[4] In the European Union, a 2019 proposal from the European commission for a European Green Deal was supported by the European Council, and in January 2020, by the European Parliament as well.^[5]

Since the early 2000s, and especially since 2018, other proposals for a “Green New Deal” had arisen both in the United States and internationally.^[6][7][8] The first U.S. politician to run on a Green New Deal platform was Howie Hawkins of the Green Party when he ran for governor of New York in 2010.^[9] Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein ran on a Green New Deal platform in 2012 and 2016.^[10]

Throughout the 1970s and 1990s, an economic policy to move the United States economy away from nonrenewable energy was developed by activists in the labor and the environmental movements.^{[11][citation needed]}

An early use of the phrase “Green New Deal” was by journalist Thomas Friedman.^[12] He argued in favor of the idea in The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine.^[13][14] In January 2007, Friedman wrote:

If you have put a windmill in your yard or some solar panels on your roof, bless your heart. But we will only green the world when we change the very nature of the electricity grid – moving it away from dirty coal or oil to clean coal and renewables. And that is a huge industrial project – much bigger than anyone has told you. Finally, like the New Deal, if we undertake the green version, it has the potential to create a whole new clean power industry to spur our economy into the 21st century.^[14]

Friedman expanded upon the idea in his September 2008 book Hot, Flat, and Crowded.^[15] This approach was taken up in Britain by the Green New Deal Group,^[16] which published its eponymous report on July 21, 2008.^[17] The concept was further popularized and put on a wider footing when the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) began to promote it internationally.

In early 2008, author Jeff Biggers launched a series of challenges for a Green New Deal from the perspective of his writings from coal country in Appalachia. Biggers wrote, “(then-presidential candidate) Obama should shatter these artificial racial boundaries by proposing a New ‘Green’ Deal to revamp the region and bridge a growing chasm between bitterly divided Democrats, and call for an end to mountaintop removal policies that have led to impoverishment and ruin in the coal fields.”^[18] Biggers followed up with other Green New Deal proposals over the next four years.^[19]

The Green Party of the United States and Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein proposed a “Green New Deal” beginning in 2012.^[20][21][22] A Green New Deal remains officially part of the platform of the Green Party of the United States.^[23]