The writer is the chairman of Brookings India and senior fellow, Brookings Institution.
What lessons can Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez offer Indian leaders who wish to push climate change policies?
The Cortez resolution may eventually end up in the archives like so many other resolutions on the same subject but, today at least, it has to be credited for bringing global warming into the US national conversation.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 29-year-old US Congresswoman representing the New York boroughs of Bronx and Queens, has shot into public prominence in the US for a non-binding resolution that she and her Democrat colleague, Senator Ed Markey from Massachusetts, have tabled in the US Congress.
What is surprising is that there is nothing remarkable about the resolution. It contains a package of oft-discussed ideas on how to decarbonise the US economy. Even the caption — “the Green New Deal” — has been mentioned before. New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, used this phrase in 2007 while writing about clean energy. Yet, Cortez is today the cynosure of her seniors in the US Congress. Her resolution has won the support of several presidential hopefuls and the “old new ideas” on global warming have acquired traction.
What is the reason for her success? Why has this resolution struck a chord? What lessons, if any, does the Cortez phenomenon offer Indian politicians who wish to embed climate change more deeply into our policy fabric?
Victor Hugo said “nothing can hold back an idea whose time has come”. His insight focused on two elements: The idea and the timing. A “good” idea would be no more than just that if introduced at an inopportune time. It could be transformational if supported by context and circumstance. The response to Cortez’s resolution suggests the importance of a third factor. Language and message.
The road to decarbonisation has been well-marked over the years and the milestones are known: Electricity must be decarbonised by basing it on solar and wind; industry furnaces should be powered by solar and heat; the internal combustion engine should be replaced by electric vehicles; residential homes and buildings should be redesigned to make them carbon neutral; clean energy technology should be generously funded etc.
The distance covered so far down this road has not, however, been much. The IPCC “special report on global temperature of 1.5°C”, published in October 2018, made clear that the world has a long way to go in achieving its objective of containing temperatures to below 1.5°C: This objective will only be achieved if it accelerates the implementation of ideas that secure “rapid and far reaching transitions in energy, land, urban and infrastructure and industrial systems” and thereby “deep emission reductions”.
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