AOC’s ridiculous ‘Green Leap Forward’

On Thursday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts introduced what many news outlets ­described as “legislation” for the Green New Deal, a wildly ambitious plan to eliminate the American fossil-fuel industry within a decade or so. It’s worth noting that it isn’t legislation as people normally understand the term. It’s a resolution titled “Recognizing the Duty of the Federal Government to Create a Green New Deal.” In other words, even if it passed — a considerable if — nothing would really happen.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi isn’t taking it too seriously. She didn’t put Ocasio-Cortez on the new Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, and when asked about the resolution, she was dismissive.

“It will be one of several or maybe many suggestions that we receive,” Pelosi said. “The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it, right?”

I bring this up for the simple reason that a lot of people on the left and right have every incentive to make this thing a much bigger deal than it is.

Still, given that almost every candidate running for the Democratic presidential nomination feels obliged to support the Green New Deal, it’s worth taking somewhat seriously.