AFL-CIO says Green New Deal ‘not realistic,’ predicts ‘immediate harm to millions’

By Tim Pearce

The largest organization of labor unions in the U.S. slammed the Green New Deal Friday for combating climate change by threatening the livelihoods of millions of Americans.

Wikimedia Commons/Senate Democrats

Freshman congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become the face of the proposed Green New Deal.

The AFL-CIO sent a letter on Friday to Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, the two lawmakers leading the Green New Deal push in Congress. The labor group demanded a larger role in crafting future solutions, slamming the current proposal as “not achievable or realistic.”

“We welcome the call for labor rights and dialogue with labor, but the Green New Deal resolution is far too short on specific solutions that speak to the jobs of our members and the critical sections of our economy,” the letter, signed by 10 national labor unions on the AFL-CIO’s energy committee, says.

“We will not accept proposals that could cause immediate harm to millions of our members and their families,” the letter says. “We will not stand by and allow threats to our members’ jobs and their families’ standard of living go unanswered.”

The Green New Deal calls for an end to fossil fuel use and heavy investment in renewable energy technology such as wind and solar. Meeting the resolution’s goals would require a massive restructuring of the American economy.

Electricity production from fossil fuels makes up about 64 percent of the United States’ total energy demand. Nuclear energy, a clean energy left out of the Green New Deal, makes up about 19 percent of the U.S. energy mix. Wind and solar energy make up just over 8 percent, according to 2018 data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

“We should not be haunted by the specter of being automated out of work,” Ocasio-Cortez told a crowd at the South by Southwest festival Saturday in response to a question about the threat of automation to jobs, according to The Verge.

“We should be excited by that. But the reason we’re not excited by it is because we live in a society where if you don’t have a job, you are left to die. And that is, at its core, our problem,” Ocasio-Cortez said, pushing for further automation to free up time for people to be creative and “[enjoy] the world that we live in,” instead.

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Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Paul Anderson and Wikimedia Commons/Senate Democrats

4 thoughts on “AFL-CIO says Green New Deal ‘not realistic,’ predicts ‘immediate harm to millions’

  1. The Green New Deal is the pipe dream of a 29-y old novice, who recently was a bartender, but is now in the US House.
    Only in America is such an oddity even possible..
    http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/partial-capital-cost-of-green-new-deal

    Capital Cost Estimates by Non-Technical Persons:

    Various non-technical persons have been making estimates of the capital cost of the GND.

    They overlook grid-scale storage, which is the 800-lb gorilla regarding cost.

    Wind and solar, at 87% of electricity fed to the grid, could not even exist on the grid without such storage.

    Here is such an estimate. See above URL

    – The GND is estimated to cost $700 billion to $1 trillion per year for each of 12 years (2018 – 2030).
    – The public jobs program would require expenditures of $400 billion.
    – The cost of the transition to clean energy would start at $200 billion a year.

    The GND would be paid for as follows:

    – Military spending would be cut by $500 billion per year, or roughly 50 percent.
    – A carbon tax of $60 per ton would provide $360 billion per year. Households would pay most of the carbon taxes. Part of the carbon taxes would be provided to lower income households as subsidies to convert to clean energy.
    – Higher taxes on income and wealth on the wealthiest Americans. See URL

  2. We should all be pleased that the stupidity of Green New Deal is so obvious that even the deaf, dumb and blind union leaders are opposed to it.

  3. The Union rank and file must stop listening to their paid off leadership and stop backing these left wing nut jobs! Will they have to loose every blue collar job in the Country before they stop idiots like this clueless clown AOC? This isn’t a debate at her bar anymore NOW she can have an affect on everyone with her asinine, ridiculous and childish notions that ARE NOT TRUE!

  4. But AOCrazio’s going to give all the unemployed checks for not working and weed to make you not care about working. Only looser is the Union HigherArchy which gets
    no dues…Maybe Crazio should just create a new Union of Unemployed. Have to see what Saikat say’s.

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