The Green Leap Forward, but unironically

If the right wants to argue that the Green New Deal is destined to fail, they shouldn’t invite comparisons with China

When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez released an outline of her proposal for a Green New Deal earlier this year, it became the subject of widespread derision from the right. A chorus of pundits dubbed her plan to address global warming the “Green Leap Forward,” likening it to the disastrous Maoist program that caused a deadly famine by redirecting farmers to smelt useless pig-iron in backyard furnaces. It’s curious that conservatives go all the way back to the late 1950s to find a comparison for what Ocasio-Cortez and others hope to achieve when there is a more analogous example of a government-led initiative in China’s recent history.

For more than a decade now, China has pursued its own version of the Green New Deal, and the results have been impressive. The country did an about-face after years of prioritizing the economy over the environment. From the mid-2000s onward, each of China’s economic policy documents known as “five-year plans” has set and met increasingly ambitious targets for emissions reductions.

The country plows vast amounts of funding into renewable energy, outspending the United States by a ratio of 3-to-1. In 2017…