This headline is woefully inadequate.
But hey, that’s headlines for you. It’s not specifically “Green New Deal”. It’s the political game around it, which has become “IT” because “it” is the present expression of the urgency brewing in the “left” ranks. But many of the people behind the Green New Deal would be the first to tell you that talk (even when it’s about the benefits of the GND) is not enough, nor that it will “grow the economy” in the way that we are accustomed. “Growing the economy” cannot happen when the dying off spreads. ANYTHING is better than that. The “growth” needed is the maturation of our ability to see reality, and to find the ways that we must begin to live to, perhaps, lessen and mitigate SOME of what’s coming. Prevention ALWAYS costs less than recovery. And especially the kinds of things coming , which we have never seen. We’re only beginning to see what the word “unprecedented” actually means. I’ve just begun reading Naomi Klein’s latest “On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal”. She is not exactly sugar-coating things. In her efforts to be as “hopeful” as she can muster, even she will say things that could well be argued on the merits of “reality-facing”, in the opinion of some. I finds myself in that “hard place”.
“The Achilles’ Heel of the Green New Deal is that it deploys the climate crisis as a liberal cause, which ensures conservative opposition.
The climate crisis is a universal cause.”
— from the previously linked post https://buff.ly/2muzDqR
I’m sorry, but this is just awkward. The crisis IS indeed universal and non-partisan. But who is saying it is “being deployed as liberal cause”? Could that be, perhaps, “Liberals” who want their name attached to it? Does that make it a “deployment of a liberal cause”? Because it uses words like economic justice and speaks of a “Crisis”? NO, “Crisis” is also “non-partisan”, even though partisan politics can identify certain issues as crises. And yes, EVERYTHING is indeed POLITICAL. It all has to do with the body public (“pol”) trying to hammer out a way of being that benefits everyone.
But don’t get me wrong. There are certainly “liberal” elements that “sign on” as supporters, but who are unwilling to follow the path of what it will take. We’ve had such liberals the whole time over the past 30 years of inaction. And we’ve had them in the church structures and leadership and media.
“Conservatives need a way to get on board. It’s difficult for them to support a policy that evokes the New Deal. ” https://buff.ly/2kQiMi1 (the same article again)
Again, I’m sorry, but if these particular “conservatives” are more concerned with what action plans “sound like”, then they aren’t “conservatives”. They’re ideological partisans and reactionaries. Deniers in the end. More concerned with their own perceived “political correctness” than with the scientific reality that should be spurring survival instincts and the human trait of collaboration.