The Green New Deal Comes Forth

The Green New Deal Comes Forth

By Alison Har and Nedeen Khashashina

The Green New Deal, the brain child of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) and United Nations Environment Programme Executive Director Achim Steiner,  has a vision to clean our environment after years of massive waste.

The planet’s suffering bodies of water and lands are polluted with garbage, mostly plastic, from people and desperately needs to improve, the GND’s proponents suggest.

This deal’s goal is to propose programs that aim to address climate change and economic inequality. The GND is modeled after President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal package of economic plans to recover from the Great Depression. Although the GND proposal is beneficial, its suggestions of new climate change regulations could amount to $1 trillion.

The GND aims to meet 100 percent of the national power usage through clean and renewable, natural energy sources. These sources should not emit harmful gases into the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases causes the globe to become hotter.

The Green New Deal suggests “upgrading all existing buildings in the United States and building new buildings to achieve maximal energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability, comfort, and durability, including through electrification.” However, upgrading all of the buildings would cause the green building industry to explode. The huge financial costs of turning all buildings in the US “green” is a problem. Tax credits and grants are a few possible options.

“I believe that climate change is a very serious issue and efforts should definitely be taken to ensure our climate will not completely break down. I think the Green New Deal offers great suggestions on how to improve our dying planet,” expressed Junior Melis Yazar.

“Saving the planet is important so we should try to limit what we do that is hurting the planet. This way we would live on earth until the sun just explodes or something,” stated Junior Alex Vallarta. Alex implies that the reason for earth to eventually die out shouldn’t be caused by human activity since it is what we can control. It would be unfair to the next generations, so we must take action to save the planet.