On Wednesday in front of the Capitol, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) announced his proposal for the “Green Real Deal,” which he called a “common sense rebuttal to the Green New Deal.”
“My name is Matt Gaetz. I represent Florida’s 1st Congressional District while it is above water,” Gaetz said as he began his press conference.
Gaetz first said that yesterday, both the Secretary of the Army, Mark Esper, and the Secretary of the Air Force, Heather Wilson, testified before the House Armed Services Committee about the impact that climate change is having on the military.
“In real-time, climate change is impacting the strategic decisions that our military makes regarding weapons testing, basing decisions, the global movement of humans and high-stakes territorial claims made by our adversaries in the Arctic,” Gaetz said. “Our military does not have the luxury of an academic debate about climate change. They must respond to the reality that we face today and so should the United States Congress.”
Gaetz said he believed in climate change, adding that “history will judge harshly my Republican colleagues who deny the science of climate change.” He also said that “Democrats who would use climate change as a basis to regulate out of existence the American experience will face the harsh reality that their ideas will fail.”
According to Gaetz, the Green Real Deal focuses on promoting innovation and “rejects regulation as the driving force of reform.”
“Do we really believe that if we outlaw cars, cows, planes, and buildings that the rest of the world will follow?” Gaetz asked, criticizing the Green New Deal. “Of course they won’t. They will laugh at us.”
The Green Real Deal establishes four platforms for “American innovators to utilize, exploit, and deploy for their success,” according to Gaetz. The platforms include creating an international market that is fair to American innovators, modernizing the electric grid, unlocking federal lands for innovators to use for renewable energy research and development, and an “inclusive technology doctrine that would underlie an American innovation strategy.”
“The Green Real Deal doesn’t tell Americans what they can and cannot do,” Gaetz said.
Gaetz emphasized that the Green Real Deal does not include a carbon tax because “it would merely report carbon producing jobs, it would not reduce global emissions.”
“There’s no evidence that a carbon tax will be copied by the world, there’s a lot of evidence that American innovation gets copied, not as much evidence that America’s regulations get copied,” he said.
During the press conference, Gaetz said that he was pitched his ideas to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “just a few minutes ago” adding “there are some that I think we agree on, some we don’t.”
“The Green Real Deal is a love letter to the American innovator, and it is a real serious plan to address climate change,” Gaetz said.
The Washington Examiner reported that some centrists are backing the deal.
“If Republicans are willing to start with innovation, and actually fight to significantly increase federal investments, there’s no good reason not to take them up on that,” said Ryan Fitzpatrick, deputy director of the Clean Energy Program at Third Way, a center-left think tank, according to the Washington Examiner.
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