74 / ROLLING STONE / APRIL 2020
CLIMATE CRISIS
of the internet’s infrastructure is on the Eastern
Seaboard. Let’s say you have a massive storm —
far larger than Hurricane Sandy — and even if it’s
temporary, due to the storm, you have flooding
of major internet servers and whole portions of
the internet go down at the same time that emer-
gency responders are trying to figure out where
they need to go. Then airports are flooded so
you can’t land with relief materials, and work-
ers can’t get to the airport because mass-transit
systems are shut down. Now people can’t eat for
24 to 48 hours. They can’t have access to clean
water. I mean, my family has lived through a
mass-casualty event: Thousands of people died
in Puerto Rico, and that was on one small island.
What happens when you get a major event that
hits a population far larger? That keeps me up at
night. And Republicans make fun of me for say-
ing I have anxiety around [having] kids. I do.
I was going to ask you about that — how
the climate crisis has changed the way you
envision your life. Where you’ll live, whether
you’ll have kids...
I live in and represent a city that is going to expe-
rience huge changes in its geography in my life-
time. Just the shape of New York City on a map is
going to change dramatically, and that is going to
necessitate a lot of people moving around. I was
reading David Wallace-Wells’ The Uninhabitable
Earth, and it talks about the bell curve of possi-
bilities: from the most conservative [estimates],
if we cut climate emissions immediately, to [an
increase of ] 4 degrees Celsius. Four degrees Cel-
sius means half of the Earth is uninhabitable to
human beings. I worry about that.
The fact of the matter is, Mitch McConnell
is not going to be alive for that. It’s just math.
I’m sorry to say it. I know a lot of people say it’s
crass, but Donald Trump isn’t going to see that
world. His grandchildren will, and it’s stressful.
How do you fight that feeling of futility?
How do you keep from getting nihilistic?
I think I get a lot of that from my family. I don’t
think it’s optimism. I’m not here to say, “Oh,
we’re going to come in and save the day.” But
seeing how my family has adapted to a post-
Maria world — I think what’s happening in Puer-
to Rico is what a lot of people will experience in
10 years. In one way or another. It’s a possibility.
But the way I’ve seen them adapt and move for-
ward has been helpful to me. It’s not fun by any
means, but I do think there’s an aspect where
one way or another communities will endure.
But I don’t want to be irresponsible in saying
that, because I think they’ll be looking back at
us today and thinking about how privileged we
were. At any given moment, we are living at the
hottest it has ever been and the coolest it will be
for a very, very, very long time.
O
PPOSITION to the Green New
Deal is often framed as a
matter of cost. President
Trump’s re-election cam-
paign blasted the “radical” plan,
claiming it would “cost trillions of
dollars, wreck our economy, and
decimate millions of energy jobs.”
But science shows that the costs
of unchecked global temperature
rise are far higher than transition-
ing to clean energy — which will,
in fact, boost the economy. “Ev-
erybody thinks, ‘Oh, you have to
spend a huge amount of money,’ ”
says Mark Jacobson, a civil and
environmental engineering
professor at Stanford University.
“Well, yeah, there’s an upfront
cost, but this is something that
pays itself back.”
The price of not acting on
climate change is staggering.
The Paris climate accord aims
to limit global temperature rise
to 2 C. But a recent study in
Nature shows that settling for
that outcome — rather than a
more ambitious limit of 1.5 C —
will cost the world $36 trillion
in climate damages. Global
warming lowers global GDP,according to a 2019 paper co-au-
thored by Cambridge University
economists, who project that “a
persistent rise in temperature,
changes in precipitation patterns
and... more volatile weather
events” will slow productivity and
investment, as well as damage
human health. Holding warming
to 2 C can limit the negative
impact to one percent of global
GDP per capita by 2100. But
runaway climate change would
crater that GDP figure by seven
percent worldwide, and by 10.5
percent in the United States.
“Climate change is pain,” Michael
Mann, a top climate scientist,
recently testified to Congress.
“Anyone who tells you differently
is selling something — most likely
fossil fuels.”
The heart of the Green New
Deal is a commitment to largely
transition America to renewable
energy by 2030, and wholly by- That will require an upfront
investment of $7.8 trillion, says
Jacobson, who recently pub-
lished a study in the journal One
Earth that modeled the economic
and climate impacts of moving
to 100 percent clean energy in
the U.S. These upfront costs,
however, are a true investment.
“It’s not just a doling out of gov-
ernment money with no return
on it,” Jacobson says. By 2050,
this transition avoids $3.1 trillion
a year in climate damages. The
green energy itself is also cheap-
er — saving $1.3 trillion a year for
consumers over the fossil-fueled
status quo. Ending combustion
would also save 63,000 lives
a year otherwise lost to air
pollution. Most surprising: The
study projects that a carbon-free
economy increases energy
employment. While 2.2 million
fossil-fuel jobs would be lost, they
would be replaced by 5.2 million
permanent clean-energy jobs.
America has the clean-power
technology it needs to transition
to a combustion-free economy.
The only thing that’s missing,
Jacobson says, is political leader-
ship to drive action with the ur-
gency the climate crisis requires.
“You need somebody who really
understands the problem,” he
says, “and knows you can’t have
a half-ass solution.” TIM DICKINSONTHE GREEN NEW DEAL
IS CHEAP, ACTUALLY
Decarbonizing will cost trillions of dollars, but it’s an investment
that will have big returns — for the economy and the environmentOrtley Beach,
New Jersey,
in 2012, after
Hurricane
SandyOCASIO-CORTEZ
TIM LARSEN/NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR’S OFFICE