The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in 2018 that we have 11 years to act on climate change to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and people have been calling for drastic reforms.The Green New Deal is arguably the most drastic.

Proposed by Senator Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Green New Deal has hit a wall of criticism, particularly from Republicans and President Donald Trump. The plan has been called unrealistic and verging on socialism.

Substantial reforms are needed for issues like climate change, and the Green New Deal, while it has faults, has started the conversation for sustainable laws.

The Green New Deal isn’t necessarily a proposal, more so a call for proposals. One suggestion is for collaboration with farmers to create power from renewable sources to reduce agricultural pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

The bill also includes other aspects of American life with proposals to guarantee jobs with adequate wages and benefits for citizens that would provide access to health care, housing, clean water and affordable food.

While the task of converting into a zero emission country seems daunting, it is possible. Stanford engineering professor Mark Jacobson and his colleagues mapped out paths for converting to clean energy by closing fossil fuel power stations and investing in wind, solar, hydroelectric, and geothermal facilities.

“We don’t need a technological miracle to solve this problem,” Jacobson said in an interview. “The bottom line is we just need to deploy, deploy, deploy.”

Solar power, with recent advances in systems like solar cells, inverters and transformers, now costs about the same as coal-generated electricity. The Energy Information Association estimates that the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for solar facilities will keep going down. In the future, the LCOE of renewable energy resources will compete with natural gas.

The challenge of using resources like solar and wind energy lies in the changing of seasons and energy storage. Modern energy grids have lessened these issues.

“If you interconnect over a very large area, you smooth out the supply. When the wind is not blowing in one place, it is in another. And solar and other sources, such as hydro and geothermal, complement that, too,” Jacobson said.

According to Jonathan Koomey, the special adviser to the Rocky Mountain Institute’s chief scientist, the problem is reaching 100 percent reliance on renewable energy sources and ridding the economy of carbon emissions as the Green New Deal calls for.

Transitioning to a zero carbon emission economy would require substantial investments, but as John Cassidy from The New Yorker reports, it would be less than half of the annual defense budget. Most of the cost would be covered by private investors and companies.

Now that the Green New Deal has taken the first step, the next move is in the details. With Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s revival of the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, construction will hopefully begin based on the blueprint Ocasio-Cortez put forward.

The director of the federal policy group at the Natural Resources Defense Council, Aliya Haq said, “There won’t be just one piece of legislation, but multiple ones at different times. Which is not unlike the New Deal that President Roosevelt pushed.”

No consensus on the bill has been reached and isn’t expected for a while. Small legislative steps are expected unless Democrats take over the White House in 2020. If that happens, we can expect attempts at stronger legislation, but not in the form of the Green New Deal.

The four leaders of a new democratic climate change panel have said they cannot support the bill as written. Reps. Don Beyer, Sean Casten, Elaine Luria and Susan Wild said they support the attention the Green New Deal has garnered for the issue, but it isn’t realistic.

“We all care about the same issues,” Luria said. But “the Green New Deal is aspirational. What we plan to do is offer tangible, achievable things.”

However, they don’t have any specific solutions. Beyer wants a pricing system on carbon emissions that add to global warming. Casten wants a system that would limit the amount of carbon produced. Luria wants to expand nuclear power.

The Green New Deal may be a work-in-progress, but it is a reform the public has been asking for. The crisis our planet is facing isn’t going to be solved by small changes. To combat the effects of climate change, we need aggressive policies.

Kayla Mayer can be reached at maye8518@stthomas.edu.