How the Green New Deal Lost Political Traction — And a Pragmatic Energy Roadmap for Democrats

How the Green New Deal Lost Political Traction — And a Pragmatic Energy Roadmap for Democrats

Less than a decade ago, a rising generation of U.S. progressives rallied behind the Green New Deal as a sweeping agenda to confront climate change and reshape the economy toward greener, more planned policies. The proposal was ambitious — an accelerated plan to phase out fossil fuels — driven by mounting warnings that unchecked global warming threatens livelihoods and ecosystems.

High-profile moments, like Greta Thunberg’s 2019 U.N. rebuke — "You have stolen my childhood" — and dramatic actions by activists in Washington energized public debate. Environmental groups urged policymakers to keep fossil fuels "in the ground" at a moment when advances in fracking were unlocking abundant shale oil and gas.

In Congress, prominent figures such as then-first-term Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez helped put the Green New Deal on the national stage. President Joe Biden, during his term, labeled climate change "an existential crisis" and backed ambitious public investment in clean energy.

Why Momentum Faded

Despite elite enthusiasm, the movement struggled to win broad support among the non-college majority and working-class voters. For many Americans who live paycheck to paycheck, day-to-day economic and social concerns routinely outweigh long-term environmental risks. That gap in priorities created a political vulnerability the movement could not fully overcome.

Recent elections brought this disconnect into sharp relief: working-class voters helped return a climate-skeptic president to power, and his administration has criticized mainstream climate science and moved to roll back some clean-energy subsidies and policies. Internationally, negotiations have likewise stalled — the 30th U.N. climate summit failed to secure a new global roadmap to phase out fossil fuels, and many countries are not on track to meet existing emission-reduction pledges.

Where Advocates Misstepped

The author argues the Green New Deal faltered not because the science is wrong but because the movement too often framed the transition as a binary moral crusade: fossil fuels must be banned now. That absolutist framing alienated many working people who fear lost manufacturing jobs, higher energy costs, and supply disruptions.

Hydrocarbons have fueled global growth and technological progress for more than a century. They are deeply embedded in modern infrastructure and everyday life, and replacing them rapidly would be disruptive and costly without compelling, practical alternatives in place.

A More Pragmatic, Politically Viable Path

The political retreat of the Green New Deal, the author suggests, frees Democrats to pursue a more realistic, bipartisan-friendly energy strategy that protects working families while steadily reducing emissions. Key elements of that approach include:

• An "All-Of-The-Above" Transition: Reassure voters that natural gas will continue to backstop the grid as renewable generation and storage scale up.
• Targeted Technology Investments: Use market-based funding (for example, a carbon tax) to finance carbon capture, advanced batteries, energy-efficient buildings, geothermal and hydrogen research, and next-generation nuclear power.
• Protect Jobs and Communities: Include retraining, economic development, and support for regions dependent on fossil-fuel industries to prevent disproportionate burdens on working-class Americans.
• Leverage Energy as Foreign Policy: Recognize natural gas exports as a tool to reduce allies’ reliance on adversary energy supplies while advancing U.S. influence.
• Compete With China: Promote full-spectrum innovation in clean technologies to avoid ceding global leadership in critical industries, including those that power data centers and AI.

Framed this way, climate policy becomes a pragmatic economic and national-security agenda rather than an uncompromising moral edict — an approach that may be more likely to win majority support and produce durable progress.

"A politically sustainable path to decarbonization must reassure workers and prioritize technology and innovation over blanket prohibitions."

Will Marshall is founder and president of the Progressive Policy Institute.

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