Eliminating cows, and 4 more bold promises in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's (D-N.Y.) highly anticipated Green New Deal is here, and it's packed with some very lofty goals.

The freshman congresswoman, along with Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass), unveiled a plan to revamp the U.S. economy and eliminate carbon emissions on Thursday, suggesting in an NPR interview that deficit spending might be the best way to pay for it. Here are 5 bold moves the Green New Deal and its accompanying FAQ calls for.

1. "Upgrading all existing buildings in the United States." Yep, that's all 5.6 million commercial buildings in America, not to mention millions of residential buildings on top of that.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

2. "Build[ing] out high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary." That's in the FAQ. The actual resolution just calls for "overhauling transportation systems ... to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions," including by building railways.

3. "Guaranteeing a job with a family-sustaining wage ... to all people of the United States." Which is only a small chunk of the biggest promise...

4. "Providing all members of society with high-quality health care, affordable, safe and adequate housing, economic security, and access to clean water, air, healthy and affordable food, and nature." That means accounting for the census-projected 360 million people anticipated to make up the U.S. in 2030.

5. Eliminating cows. The FAQ document very reasonably acknowledges that "we aren't sure that we'll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes" in the next ten years. But that insinuates that bovines may be eliminated eventually, seeing as livestock account for a solid sliver of America's carbon emissions.

Despite a slew of Democratic backers, NPR says the bill is unlikely to pass. Read the whole proposal here, and more about it at The Week.