Let's be blunt: Our current economy is predicated on a reliance on fossil fuels. They are our primary energy source. Imagine if we, as humans, stopped eating food as our primary energy source and instead had to eat red algae. How would our lives change? Where would we get the algae from? Who would grow it? How would we ship it? How much would it cost? Would we even need refrigerators any more?!
Transitioning away from fossil fuels is no different. Fossil fuels do not just power our homes and cars. They power everything, from manufacturing clothing to streaming Netflix. That means that transitioning away from fossil fuels will directly affect the livelihoods of workers in the most visible fossil fuel industries—like coal, oil, and gas—and indirectly affect nearly every other sector. Ending our use of fossil fuels will, by its very nature, cause significant economic disruption and transformation—especially now that we have so little time. The question is simply how we will manage it.
The GND (Green New Deal) proposes to manage the inherent economic transition through a large-scale economic mobilization—a coordinated deployment ("mobilization") of a nation's resources (its "economy") in response to a national crisis. Economic mobilizations organize an economy to meet needs that can be met only when all of a country's resources—public and private—are mobilized in line with a central, common strategy and in relentless pursuit of shared goals that supersede all other priorities. To justify an economic mobilization, a crisis must be serious enough—existential enough, really—to demand an all-out "total war effort" from both the public and private sectors.
– Rhiana Gunn-Wright, A Green New Deal for All of Us from All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis