The big problem with climate 'realism'

Political moderates are out of their gourds on climate policy

Nancy Pelosi.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Mark Wilson/Getty Images, JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty Images)

Climate change has vaulted to the top of the political discourse, with the rollout of the Green New Deal policy framework and the subsequent discussion of what policies it should contain. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), for instance, recently announced he is running for president with a platform laser-focused on climate change.

All this has political moderates rolling their eyes. "The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they're for it right?" scoffed Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) scolded a bunch of children who came to her office begging her to support the Green New Deal, saying "I know what I'm doing … it's not a good resolution." New York Times columnist Bret Stephens concludes that if famed lefty Pelosi doesn't support it, the GND must be basically silly: "[I]t's time to move climate policy beyond impractical radicalism and feckless virtue-signaling to something that can achieve a plausible, positive, and bipartisan result."

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.