| | | 69,194 viewsSep 22, 2019, 12:00am
No One Seemed To Notice Greta Thunberg’s Critique Of The Green New Deal
Jeff McMahonContributor
Green Tech
From Chicago, I write about climate change, green technology, energy.
WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 17: Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old climate change activist from Sweden, casts a wary eye on Sen. Edward Markey during a Senate Climate Change Task Force meeting on Capitol Hill. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
GETTY IMAGESGreta Thunberg’s rebuke of Congress last week took no prisoners and showed no favor to heroes of the left who have styled themselves friends of the environment.
Though Thunberg did not utter the words “Green New Deal,” she characterized partisan efforts that envision an idealized future as unhelpful dreams, and her criticism culminated in these words:
“No matter how political the background to this crisis may be, we must not allow this to continue to be a partisan political question. The climate and ecological crisis is beyond party politics. And our main enemy right now is not our political opponents. Our main enemy now is physics. And we can not make ‘deals’ with physics.”
The Achilles’ Heel of the Green New Deal is that it deploys the climate crisis as a liberal cause, which ensures conservative opposition.
The climate crisis is a universal cause.
Conservatives need a way to get on board. It’s difficult for them to support a policy that evokes the New Deal. And conservative opposition will relegate the Green New Deal to the realm of fantasy at least until a cataclysm arrives like the one that inspired the original New Deal.
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We need a climate policy sooner than that.
To explain Greta’s sudden, global impact, people have begun speaking of her superpowers. One might be that at 16 she understands political reality better than some who have spent their lives in politics. |
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