by Audrey Conklin
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders introduced a $16.3-trillion plan similar to the Green New Deal on Thursday, which he says will create 20 million jobs.
The plan aims to make 100% of energy for U.S. electricity and transportation renewable by 2030 and have “complete decarbonization” by 2050, according to its outline.
“As President, Bernie Sanders will boldly embrace the moral imperative of climate change and mobilize the political will necessary for a wholesale transformation of our society, with massive investments in sustainable energy, energy efficiency, and a transformation of our transportation system,” his plan reads.
TODAY @BernieSanders has released our plan for a #GreenNewDeal
For far too long, it's been easy for fossil fuel bosses to divide the working class over the environment. Not anymore.
Together, we will avert climate catastrophe and create 20,000,000 jobshttps://t.co/gLpwPeaOhL
— People for Bernie (@People4Bernie) August 22, 2019
His plan also states that it will “pay for itself over 15 years” by increasing taxes on fossil fuel companies, generating revenue from federal renewable energy, and collecting income tax from the 20 million jobs it aims to create.
Sanders’s website says a Green New Deal will “save American families money and generate millions of jobs by transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels to 100% energy efficiency and sustainable energy.”
It will also “protect workers and the communities in which they live to ensure a transition to family-sustaining wage, union jobs.”
Policies listed within the plan itself include moving the U.S. away from the fossil fuel industry, re-entering the Paris climate accord that President Donald Trump said the U.S. will be formally removed from in 2020 and spending trillions of dollars to help workers in the fossil fuel industry, as well as minority communities, transition into a green-energy economy.
Other 2020 Democratic candidates including Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’ Rourke and Cory Booker have also introduced climate change plans as part of their campaign platforms, and others have endorsed the Green New Deal plan introduced by Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
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Audrey Conklin is a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Bernie Sanders” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
