Sen. Ed Markey: “We are now in the era of the Green New Deal”

When it comes to the Green New Deal, most media attention has focused on first-term New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who’s leading a leftist insurgency in the Democratic Party. But when she introduced the resolution to Congress last month — a resolution calling for a total, rapid, and equitable decarbonization of the US economy — it was with a co-sponsor by her side: Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey. Markey is no insurgent; he is a consummate Democratic insider. He has been in Congress for more than four decades, first elected to the House in 1976, then to the Senate in 2013. He’s got a long legislative record, famously including the 2008 Waxman-Markey climate bill, which passed the House before dying in the Senate in 2010. That bill was later criticized — most notably by political scientist Theda Skocpol — for relying too heavily on insider, elite consensus and too little on a base of intense public support. So it’s notable that Markey is now backing a very different kind of effort, in the form of the Green New Deal: an outside-in strategy relying on organization and people power. Markey’s involvement doesn’t fit the media’s favored narrative that the GND is unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky socialism, so it doesn’t get discussed much. But I was curious about his take on exactly what’s in the resolution, what people have said about it, and how it might evolve — so I got in touch. The senator says the resolution has sparked a wave of education and interest, drawing in other members of Congress (he cites Ron Wyden, chair of the Appropriations Committee) and shifting poll numbers among Democratic primary voters. He is undaunted by the criticism the resolution has received and believes that “we are now in the era of the Green New Deal.”...MORE