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Senator Ed Markey hosted a town hall to discuss the Green New Deal, a resolution with the aim of addressing climate change. — Photo by Shira Laucharoen
By Shira Laucharoen
Over 700 people filled the Centennial Auditorium at Somerville High School on Thursday, February 13, as Senator Ed Markey led a town hall meeting on the subject of the Green New Deal. The proposal was launched last year by Markey and New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to address the crisis of climate change. But the piece of legislation is more than a resolution, said Markey.
“The Green New Deal isn’t just a resolution. The Green New Deal is a revolution that is being unleashed in our country,” said Markey. “When 10,000 climate strikers, mostly young people, show up on Boston City Hall Plaza, that’s a revolution. That wouldn’t have happened a few years ago.”
The Green New Deal mandates that the globe reach zero greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050 and demands that the United States take a leading role in that process. It explains that addressing climate change goes hand in hand with ending other forms of social oppression, such as poverty, income inequality, and racial discrimination. To this end, the resolution aims to create millions of jobs in the clean air industry and support frontline and vulnerable communities, said Markey.
Markey emphasized that the growth of the Green New Deal has largely been driven by the activism of young people. Groups such as the Sunrise Movement have garnered support for the resolution by taking steps such as staging a sit-in at Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s office. Youth organizing at the high school and college level have catapulted climate change into one of the top three issues in the presidential race, said Markey. While the aspirations of the Green New Deal may sound ambitious, there is a generation of people ready to take action, he said.
Residents voiced their questions, with topics ranging from the implementation of nuclear energy to the role one man’s ten-year-old daughter could play in climate change activism. Somerville resident Amanda Lewis asked whether progress had been made in garnering support for the Green New Deal from Republican leaders. Somerville High School graduate Kenia Arbaiza asked how individuals of immigrant backgrounds could be seen and heard through the passage of the bill. “What are you doing to create a space that guarantees justice for my community, and what are you doing to amplify those voices, rather than giving us empty promises?” she asked
Mayor Joseph Curtatone affirmed that the globe is facing an existential threat and that critical steps must be taken to address the state of the earth. He said that locally, he hopes to see a shift away from an automobile culture and toward different modes of mobility, such as biking, walking, and public transportation. Somerville has made its own efforts to combat climate change, said Curtatone, with a goal of being carbon neutral by 2050 and a commitment to using renewable energy by 2045.
“The time of incremental, small action steps on climate change is over. We need bold, systemic change in leadership,” said Curtatone. “Addressing and mitigating climate change is going to require big changes and sacrifice.”
Markey stated that this is a pivotal moment in history to be taking action and making a change. If the problem is not confronted now, it may be too late, he said.
“This is the national security, economic, environmental, health care, and moral issue of our time,” said Markey. “We have this incredible moment as a country, and it is to stand up and to fight. This is perhaps our last moment to really make a difference. The least that we should be able to say is that we tried.”
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The numbskulls that are behind this are the same folks who think you can curb development and cap rents, and somehow end up with more housing.
They don’t understand basic math or physics.
There is a single solution to carbon emissions: tax them. A simple tax on carbon content at the point of fossil fuel extraction (or import), refunded to all taxpayers as a credit at the end of the year, would completely solve the problem in a few years.
Paying for what you get works because it happens to be the way physics works. We should give it a try someday.
You call them numbskulls. What a moron. You have to be a Bernie Bro. The answer to every problem is tax them. Them meaning the middle class. Thanks pal. With friends like you who needs enemies.
Spoken like a gentleman. 😀
“Mr. Bosco” reads like your basic Russian troll. No, it’s the parasitical, greedy wealth hoarders who need to be taxed more, not the middle class, as everyone knows. They’ve pulled off the biggest con job in history by suckering tens of millions of the middle and lower classes to believe they are being victimized by the left. The exact opposite is the case, as “Mr. Bosco” well knows.
Bosco, I am proposing a *market-based solution* to a market failure. Fossil fuels produce a waste that is *costing dollars* to people not getting the benefits of that fuel. That is: people burning fossil fuel are getting something for nothing. In a market system, that is called stealing.
Ideally the market would automatically price waste, but unfortunately it cannot. Similar to how people used to just throw their trash and feces in the road until we taxed them and forced them to use city services to clear the waste, a carbon tax is a market mechanism to insure that people pay for the waste they create.
The refund at the end of the year insures that the government doesn’t keep the money but that it goes back to the taxpayer.
PS would a Bernie Bro be AGAINST rent control? Think before you post.
So we levy a carbon tax on the energy companies. They pay the tax and increase the price of our energy accordingly. We pay that tax, and then get it refunded at the end of the year. Sounds like a shell game, or at least a zero sum game. How exactly is this going to incentivize anything? At least put our tax money to good use and do something green with it.