Trump Is Onto Something About the Green New Deal

“They’ve spent trillions of dollars on things having to do with the Green New Scam. It’s a scam,” said Donald Trump in his recent convention speech. His running mate J.D. Vance echoed the sentiment, saying in his speech that the country needs “a leader who rejects Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s Green New Scam.”

To get the reference, you would have had to understand that they were talking about the Green New Deal — which most Americans probably recall dimly, if at all — and have some sense of both what was in it and why you shouldn’t like it. Neither Trump nor Vance explained or elaborated; it was one of many attacks at the Republican convention that brought cheers from the delegates but were likely all but incomprehensible to voters who aren’t deeply versed in conservative memes and boogeymen.

But here’s the irony. The Green New Deal never made the transition from a general statement of goals to a concrete and comprehensive policy plan. It wasn’t enacted through Congress. And today, most Democrats, even those who supported it in the past, seldom mention it by name. Yet without too many people noticing, the Green New Deal has been enormously successful.

From the beginning, it was envisioned as both a set of policy objectives and a public relations campaign, starting with the name. By invoking Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, its advocates intended to communicate three essential messages. First, climate change is an urgent crisis on the scale of the Great Depression, one that demands a government response without delay. Second, the plan itself is hugely ambitious, seeking to marshal vast resources across multiple federal agencies to confront the problem. And third, the programs it envisions would be as transformative and lasting in their effects as those of the New Deal, putting millions to work, creating economic security, and providing direct benefits to Americans’ lives.

But the plan itself was not really a plan at all. The legislation filed in 2019 by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey is a mere 14 pages long. It articulates five goals:

1. Achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions
2. Creating millions of high-wage jobs
3. Investing in sustainable infrastructure
4. Securing clean air and water, climate and community resiliency, healthy food, access to nature, and a sustainable environment
5. Promoting environmental justice

The rest of the document name-checks a variety of areas where future programs will be targeted (manufacturing, housing, transportation, agriculture, etc.) and principles those programs should embody (support for unions, community involvement, opposition to corporate monopolies). In the years since, Ocasio-Cortez and Markey, along with other advocates, have attached the Green New Deal name to other, more detailed proposals (e.g. the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act).

So not only does the Green New Deal remain somewhat abstract and hypothetical, most Democrats don’t even bring it up anymore. Which is why it sounds so absurd when Republicans attack it as though it were an enacted law; every time the crumbling Texas energy grid fails, foes of the clean energy transition rush to Fox News to say the Green New Deal is the culprit.

If you wanted to be generous, you could say the Republican critics are not lying, just using the phrase “Green New Deal” — or in Trump and Vance’s formulation, “Green New Scam” — as a shorthand to refer to any and all efforts to address climate change. In that sense, they might actually be on to something.

To understand why, we should go back to the Green New Deal’s high point as a topic of political debate: the 2020 Democratic presidential primary campaign. Most of the two dozen Democrats running for the nomination supported it, and many — including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Kamala Harris — were cosponsors of the legislation. When Joe Biden released his first campaign climate plan in 2019, it read, “Biden believes the Green New Deal is a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face.” A year later he put out an updated plan that backed away from the Green New Deal moniker but won praise from climate advocates for its ambition, including pledges to spend $2 trillion and reduce carbon emissions from power plants to zero by 2035.

That change foreshadowed where most elected officials in the Democratic Party would move: Most of them wound up setting aside the Green New Deal name, but they adopted its policy goals. What was originally thought by many to be a pie-in-the-sky idea advanced by those on the left edge of the party became something almost any Democrat with serious ambitions has to be on board with, however they might describe it. Democratic senators and governors may not all agree on every particular, but they have come around to the Green New Deal’s fundamental approach: aggressive, ambitious government action on climate, with the emphasis on carrots rather than sticks to produce tangible benefits the public will support.

And just as Green New Deal advocates hoped, Democrats have not allowed Republicans to sucker them into endless arguments about cost. When Republicans make preposterous claims (for instance, that it will cost $100 trillion to implement all the plan’s profligate schemes), Democrats tend to dismiss it and move on, accepting that climate action entails investing money up front, and that it’s worth it.

As for Biden, as he heads toward the end of his presidency he’s gotten lots of deserved praise for his commitment and achievements in addressing climate. While this might not be the way he would describe it, there’s no question that between the Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the efforts of agencies including the EPA and Department of Energy, he has made progress on all five of the Green New Deal’s goals.

Net-zero emission targets? Check. Focus on well-paid green jobs? Check. Sustainable infrastructure? Check. Clean air and water? Check. Environmental justice? Check. One might question whether the steps his administration has taken in these areas have been effective or sufficient, but no one can say Biden hasn’t pursued the Green New Deal’s objectives.

The Green New Deal may not have been signed into law in its pure form, but it did what its advocates hoped: It captured the conversation around climate and was adopted to a great extent by an entire political party. And much of what it sought has found its way into law and policy. So while Trump may call it a scam, it looks a lot like a triumph.