Headline: Poll: Majorities of both parties support Green New Deal  - Timothy Cama/The Hill; December 17, 2018

Background:

In a recent survey conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, respondents were shown a brief description of what is being called the “Green New Deal”, followed by the question, “How much do you support or oppose this idea?” Here’s the description shown to respondents:

Some members of Congress are proposing a “Green New Deal” for the U.S. They say that a Green New Deal will produce jobs and strengthen America’s economy by accelerating the transition from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy. The Deal would generate 100% of the nation’s electricity from clean, renewable sources within the next 10 years; upgrade the nation’s energy grid, buildings, and transportation infrastructure; increase energy efficiency; invest in green technology research and development; and provide training for jobs in the new green economy (Gustafson et al, 2018).

The survey team indicates they left out information about Green New Deal that might bias respondents, noting that “although our description of the Deal accurately provided details about the proposal, it did not mention that the Green New Deal is championed by Democratic members of Congress such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and John Lewis (D-GA)” (Gustafson et al, 2018).

Problem is, that description is inaccurate. The actual Deal does not say the US will generate 100% of the nation’s electricity from renewables “within the next 10 years”. Who could promise that, given that the problem of “intermittency” has not yet be solved? In other words, we do not yet have the technology to transition to 100% renewable energy, so we cannot promise exactly when it will happen. Another consideration: couldn’t overpromising make it even harder to achieve climate change mitigation goals? Yes! I’ll elaborate in later posts. For the impatient, see Clack, Qvist, et al. (2017), reference below.

As for the rest of the description, these are things that are already happening, Deal or no Deal. The energy grid, buildings, and transportation are being upgraded; energy efficiency improvements are ongoing. (See, for instance, the International Energy Agency’s Energy Efficiency Report, 2018 or the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy’s 2018 State Energy Efficiency Scorecard.) Investments in green R&D are accelerating. (See, for instance, America’s Pledge Initiative on Climate (2018) “Fulfilling America’s Pledge: How States, Cities, and Business Are Leading the United States to a Low-Carbon Future” ). And it’s pretty easy to find training for green jobs - check out, for instance, what’s available in the California Community College system.

If I had been a survey respondent, I would have refused to provide an opinion without additional information, such as how the Green New Deal compares to other approaches to reducing emissions, what are the risks, how much would it cost, and how certain are the benefits. But the Descriptions doesn’t go into those details - that is, the details that matter.

Next: what does the actual Green New Deal say? Excerpts from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Plan for a Green New Deal”

References:

Clack, C. T. M., S. A. Qvist, et al. (2017). "Evaluation of a proposal for reliable low-cost grid power with 100% wind, water, and solar." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114(26): 6722-6727. https://www.pnas.org/content/114/26/6722.full

Gustafson, A., Rosenthal, S., Leiserowitz, A., Maibach, E., Kotcher, J., Ballew, M., & Goldberg, M. (2018). The Green New Deal has Strong Bipartisan Support. Yale University and George Mason University. New Haven, CT: Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/the-green-new-deal-has-strong-bipartisan-support/