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The Green New Deal has a recognizable young politician, one who often rankles President Trump, attached to its launch.
Even so, the environmental and job-growth legislation — introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the freshman Democrat of New York, and her co-signer veteran Massachusetts Sen. Edward Markey — hasn’t yet landed with many Americans, according to a poll.
In a nationwide public opinion query by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation conducted over the summer, more than 3 in 4 Americans had heard little or nothing about the Green New Deal, they said.
Among those polled who said they had heard at least “a good amount” about the Green New Deal, nearly 6 in 10 opposed it. They could appreciate its goals, including job creation and efforts to open up affordable housing, they said, but bristled at the proposed price tag of the early draft, measuring in the trillions.
Among all adults, 20% supported it, while 20% were opposed and the rest said they did not know enough to have an opinion, the Post and KFF said.
The plan calls for the U.S. to generate 100% of its electricity from zero-emission sources in 10 years. The wide-ranging measure also backs investment in “smart” power grids and zero-emission vehicles, along with the elimination of greenhouse gases and the cleanup of hazardous-waste sites.
At a conference of conservative activists in March, President Trump mocked what he called the “New Green Deal,” sarcastically encouraging Democrats to support it because it would help the GOP come election time. Trump has begun the process to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord, citing noncompliance by other emitters, including China. His administration has also rolled back auto emissions rules and other, decades-old in some cases, environmental regulations.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Republican of Kentucky, rallied the GOP-controlled chamber to vote down the Green New Deal in current form earlier this year.
Age makes a difference in the view held by those surveyed. Among adults who have heard at least a little about the Green New Deal, 53% said it is not realistic while 40% said it is achievable. Teenagers (at 57%) and adults under age 30 (at 54%) who have heard about it were more likely than older adults to think the Green New Deal is realistic, the poll found.
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Republicans were about twice as likely as Democrats to have heard a good amount about the plan. One self-declared Republican that the Post interviewed said he worked in private financing for solar projects and that the federal proposal was too much, too fast.
A different poll has shown that the age of the Republicans queried impacts how alarmed at climate-change risks a would-be GOP voter is, with younger self-declared conservatives caring more about climate-change effects than their older counterparts.
As for the other side, two-thirds of the 2020 Democratic presidential field, including former vice president Joe Biden and Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, have endorsed the idea of a Green New Deal.
Climate-change advocates suggest the Democrats aren’t giving the issue enough attention. The New York Times has tracked the total time given to issues across the 2020 debates. Climate change, earning a total of 32.6 minutes of debate air time so far, is nestled somewhere in the middle of the list.
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The survey on the Green New Deal is of course a few months old by now and predates what has been an intensifying effort by the United Nations to get greater cooperation to slow the climate crisis.
A report by the U.N. Environment Program, released just ahead of next week’s climate conference in Madrid, revealed that the amount of planet-heating gases being pumped into the atmosphere hit a new high last year. Countries must make steeper cuts to their greenhouse gas emissions, making up for lost time, or risk missing their Paris pledges to limit global warming, officials said Tuesday.
