Getting Real About a Green New Deal for Rhode Island
There are substantial fits between the Green New Deal with adopted Rhode Island plans. It might even be said that we have been thinking along Green New Deal lines in our state for years without providing a Green New Deal synthesis to our efforts.
The Green New Deal is a shot at making fundamental changes in areas that the current US economic dynamic has failed to address constructively. It is not turning away from classically liberal, rights-based, representative democracy. It is an affirmation of core American values, as was FDR’s New Deal in the 1930s. The Green New Deal is progressive rather than radical.
For the Green New Deal to be effective, it must work close to home, in places where we live. Abstracted into an ideal, the Green New Deal has been called naïve, whacky, childish, jejune. But placed in the context of state and local plans that have been thoughtfully developed and generally accepted, it has an integrating purpose that makes the whole greater than the simple sum of the parts. There is a powerful logic to its networking function.