As the 50th anniversary of Earth Day was celebrated globally on April 22nd, the festivities were much different than anyone ever imagined they would be. Parties, strikes, and parades alike were all canceled while citizens remained under social distancing, safe from others and COVID-19 inside their own homes. However, our homes cannot keep us protected from the effects of climate change.
During December of last year, the first cases of a novel coronavirus appeared in the city of Wuhan, China. Quickly the virus spread from person to person and, by the beginning of February, twenty-three countries had confirmed cases, including the United States. While China struggled with the virus, it gave other countries a warning about what could happen if the proper precautions were not taken. The month of January was a gift, a chance to prevent the spread of the virus and prepare for the worst. The United States, along with other countries, failed to take preventative action steps against the outbreak; a mistake that has cost us trillions of dollars and thousands of lives.
While the current pandemic is at the forefront of the media and the public’s mind, society cannot forget that the world was already dealing with a crisis before the coronavirus spread across the globe. This crisis is climate change, and it is not going away. Through the coronavirus, governments have seen the repercussions of inaction; they face the same choice involving our growing fossil fuel emissions. If governments do not take action now, the effects will impact every sector of society, costing us countless lives and dollars. We must take swift and decisive action immediately if we want to prevent the worst effects of climate change.
The Green New Deal is the solution our nation requires to learn from our past mistakes and take the proper steps needed to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis. Introduced into Congress in 2019, the fourteen-page resolution proposed a sweeping ten-year plan which would mobilize every aspect of American society to combat climate change while protecting the rights of all people and promoting justice for frontline communities. The plan will transition the nation off of dirty fossil fuels and onto one-hundred percent renewable, zero-emission energy sources. It will achieve this ambitious task by investing in clean energy industries, such as solar and wind, and enlarging and improving existing renewable power sources. The resolution will also include many other projects which are necessary to fully reduce the nation’s carbon footprint. These projects include retrofitting buildings to become as environmentally friendly as possible and overhauling the transportation system to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions.
These massive, nationwide projects will create millions of good jobs across the country with secure wages. With unemployment rates rising by the day and our reliance on fossil fuels an ever-pressing issue, the moment has never been clearer for a Green New Deal. While setting this far-reaching plan into motion would be costly, the current pandemic has taught us that preventive action is more cost-effective than delayed-action. The United States government alone has already spent billions of dollars over the past few decades responding to the effects of climate change. As the crisis continues to escalate, the more natural disasters, coastal damage, and droughts will occur. It is clear that without swift action, will we end up paying the same amount of money just reacting to the climate crisis. Beyond the economy, without climate action, millions of lives will be lost and the survival of our entire population will be in great jeopardy.
In this unprecedented moment of a double crisis, the Green New Deal will set our society on the right pathway towards a flourishing economy and a clean, livable future. Let us not make the same mistake as we did for the pandemic. We have the ability to stop the climate crisis threatening all of us before it is too late.
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