Bernie’s Green New Deal Will Save The Planet
Fact: The Amazon Rainforest, The Earth’s Largest Carbon Filtration System, Is On Fire
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This year alone, over 7,000 square miles of the Amazon Rainforest have been burned. The Amazon keeps over 400 billion tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
It’s also the largest cooling agent we have to combat rising global temperatures. As water evaporates from the massive amount of trees in the rainforest, it absorbs energy, cooling the Earth.
On August 1, 2019, Iceland lost a record 12.5 billion tons of ice. The amount of melting from this one day is enough to cover the entire landmass of Florida in five inches of water. Why is this important? Because melting ice means rising sea levels and warmer ocean waters. When sea levels rise, it doesn’t just affect the coastal regions. It affects circulation patterns in the ocean and atmosphere. This means weather all over the world would be disrupted.
The temperature on our planet has risen an entire degree since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution but most of the change occurred within the last 35 years. Global temperatures work differently than the temperatures we experience every day. The weather outside is dependent upon seasons and wind and precipitation patterns.
Our planet’s GLOBAL temperature, however, is dependent upon how much energy the Earth receives from the sun and reflects back into space. One degree may not seem like a big number, but bear in mind it only took one degree to drop us into The Little Ice Age in the past. Five degrees of a drop and most of North America would be under 20,000 feet of solid ice!
Bernie’s New Green Deal is a comprehensive 10-year plan which will not only put the US back on board with the rest of the world but also set us up as a leader in environmental
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progress. The plan is progressive, ambitious, and bold and that’s EXACTLY what we need right now.
Scientists have told us over and over again that we have less than a decade to fix our environment before irreparable damage is left for our children and grandchildren to contend with. The time to act is NOW. We’ve been placing a bandaid on the problem long enough and the only thing this has brought us is an influx in natural disasters.
But How Would This Plan Change Things?
Here are a few of the plan’s major points:
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The U.S. will be 100% reliant on renewable energy sources (solar, wind, geothermal) by 2030 for electricity and transportation
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Create 20 million new jobs
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Hold fossil fuel companies responsible for the damage they have caused communities
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Guarantee incomes, training, and transitions for effected employees of the fossil fuel industry
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Declare climate change a national emergency
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Provide grants and trade-in programs for families and small businesses to purchase high-efficiency electric vehicles
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Support local farms through empowerment and incentivization
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Create a $40 billion Justice Climate Resiliency Fund for fenceline and frontline communities
- Work internationally with other countries to reduce carbon emissions globally
It’s A $16.3 Trillion Investment, How Can The US Afford It?
Bernie says the plan will pay for itself in 15 years. Here is how he says we will pay for it:
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Eliminating federal fossil fuel subsidies
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Generating revenue from the wholesale of energy from 2023-2035, after which all energy will be free aside from maintenance and operation costs
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Scaling back military spending on maintaining global oil dependence
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Collecting new income tax from the 20 million new jobs
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Reduce federal and safety net spending due to unionized job creation
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Establish a progressive estate tax on multi-millionaire and billionaire inheritances
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Eliminate off-shore tax scams
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Scrap the income tax cap on social security so that millionaires and billionaire pay the same proportion as the rest of us
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End special tax breaks on capital gains
- Close the tax loopholes which benefit large corporations
