The Green New Deal Equity Provisions
The International Labor Organization did research that concluded the Green New Deal would cost us 6M present jobs but provide 24M new jobs, for a net gain of 18M jobs.
Here’s the list of equity provisions of the Green New Deal:
- Provide all members of our society, across all regions and all communities, the opportunity, training and education to be a full and equal participant in the transition, including through a job guarantee program to assure every person who wants one, a living wage job;
- Take into account and be responsive to the historical and present-day experiences of low-income communities, communities of color, indigenous communities, rural and urban communities and the front-line communities most affected by climate change, pollution and other environmental harm;
- Mitigate deeply entrenched racial, regional and gender-based inequalities in income and wealth (including, without limitation, ensuring that federal and other investment will be equitably distributed to historically impoverished, low income, deindustrialized or other marginalized communities);
- Include additional measures such as basic income programs, universal health care programs and any others as the select committee may deem appropriate to promote economic security, labor market flexibility and entrepreneurism; and
Deeply involve national and local labor unions to take a leadership role in the process of job training and worker deployment.
As part 4 demonstrates, this is about much more than carbon. It doesn’t separate out the climate problem from society’s other ills, as climate wonks have so often advocated. It sees environmental, economic, and social problems as intertwined, with a common set of solutions.It’s a full-spectrum vision of a sustainable social democracy — a level of progressive ambition that most US citizens have likely never encountered.