Sen. Markey: 'The Planet Is Running A Fever'

Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez this week introduced the Green New Deal — a sweeping package of proposals aimed at moving the U.S. away from fossil fuels and making the economy carbon neutral. Markey joined WGBH Morning Edition Host Joe Mathieu to discuss the plan and its goals. The transcript below has been edited for clarity.

Joe Mathieu: We've been talking about the Green New Deal since you introduced it yesterday, it would reshape large portions of our economy to address many of the environmental issues you have been working on and talking about for years. But how do you expect to pass something of this scale, in an age where we can't even seem to pass a budget?

Sen. Ed Markey: Well, we don't have an option. The United Nations has now released their scientific report saying that the consequences are going to be even more catastrophic if we don't act by 2030 in a very, very significant way. Our own U.S. scientists who work in the Trump administration, believe it or not, issued their own report saying that it's ever more dangerous. So from my perspective, we don't have a choice. The price we're going to have to pay is going to be in the tens of trillions in terms of the fires in forest, the oceans that are going to be destroying our coastlines. So what we're talking about is a historic 10-year mobilization that will mitigate climate emissions and build climate resiliency. We've acted on this scale before. We must do it again, and what we're beginning to do is to create an army — an army of people across this country who are going to turn it into a voting issue in 2020.

Mathieu: Senator, it's interesting you point out the cost of natural disasters, because critics of your plan say it would cost trillions in government investments. It sounds like you're going to pay one way or the other.

Markey: Well, exactly, it's an ounce of prevention or a pound of cure. We spent as a nation $300 billion last year, just in dealing with the consequences of the forest fires and the rest of the climate damage. So by the year 2100 it's going to be in the tens of trillions of dollars of damage that will have been inflicted upon our country. The alternative is to engage in prevention, to deploy the wind, the solar, the all-electric vehicles, the battery technologies that can reduce the greenhouse gases going up into the atmosphere. The planet is running a fever — there are no emergency rooms for planets. We have to engage in preventative action.

Mathieu: What would this mean for our city for Boston, for instance, where there are great concerns about rising waters?

Markey: Well, you know, Mayor Walsh has done a fantastic job, we're the most energy efficient city in the United States. But we have to have a larger plan in place so that the United States is leading, the rest of the world is following, because where Boston Harbor is inside of the Gulf of Maine, and that's the second-fastest warming body of water in the world outside of the Arctic. And so what's going to happen if we don't deal with this issue soon, is that the city of Boston is going to be one of the most vulnerable cities in the world. And so we need to put measures in place now that protect us. Otherwise we're going to be seriously considering seawalls in the decades ahead in order to protect us.

Mathieu: Senator Markey, you are the dean of the Massachusetts delegation, and you're working on this with one of the youngest and arguably least influential members of Congress. That would be Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Why tackle something so ambitious with a freshman?

Markey: Well, I was the dean of the congressional delegation, I'm now a senator with Elizabeth Warren. But your point is well-taken. This is an intergenerational campaign that has to be waged. The Koch brothers, the coal companies, they're pouring billions of dollars into the climate denier machine. So we need the leadership, the energy, which is coming from this young generation, to partner with those who have been in the fight to create a political movement that either sees legislation passing on the floor of the House and Senate and signed by President Trump, or if Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump stop it, turning this into one of the two or three most important issues in the 2020 election cycle, because it is an existential threat to our planet. And she is just an incredible advocate, a gifted politician, and I think this combination is going to help to really generate much more interest in the issue than we've ever seen before.