Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Speaker Nancy Pelosi invited her to serve on a select committee studying climate change solutions, but she opted against it because she's already on an Oversight and Reform subcommittee on the environment.
Ocasio-Cortez and Markey say the plan will achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in 10 years, setting a high bar for Democrats who plan to make climate change a central issue in the 2020 presidential race. "The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they're for it right?"
The proposal's release came as Pelosi announced her list of Democrat members named to the select committee on climate change, which - most notably - did not include Ocasio-Cortez.
Her website "promotes off-shore drilling under Energy issues-the very thing she wants to eliminate with her "Green New Deal" that dropped today", tweeted the RSC.
She and fellow Democrat, Rep. Ed Markey of MA, will introduce their proposal later Thursday.
Climate change is a passionate cause for Ocasio-Cortez.
"It's no exaggeration to say that if implemented, the Green New Deal would upend our way of life and destroy the liberty and prosperity that Americans, of all backgrounds, now enjoy", Jarrett Stepman writes at The Daily Signal.
Read the full report at Fox News.
In an interview with NPR, Ocasio-Cortez justified the massive scope of the plan by saying: "Even the solutions that we have considered big and bold are nowhere near the scale of the actual problem that climate change presents to us".
The Green New Deal resolution unveiled Thursday would provide guidance on the drafting of legislation.
"I guess I can understand if someone who has not had a lot of life experience and they're proposing something that's extremely unrealistic", GOP Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado said at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing Wednesday.
Pelosi said Reps. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon, Joe Neguse of Colorado, Donald McEachin of Virginia and Sean Casten of IL will serve on the panel, along with three Californians: Julia Brownley, Jared Huffman and Mike Levin. "Seemingly missed by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and other environmentally focused Democrats is that economic growth itself is the greatest friend of all to the green movement".
And Ocasio-Cortez has suggested the nation's wealthiest may have to pay 70 percent in taxes to fund such an energy overhaul, an unpopular message for many.
"We. need to be sure that workers now employed in fossil fuel industries have higher-wage and better jobs available to them to be able to make this transition, and a federal jobs guarantee ensures that no worker is left behind", according to a summary of the plan. Its ultimate goal is "meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources", and a complete transition away from fossil fuels and nuclear energy sources.
