Samantha Bee Broke Down Why The Green New Deal's Price Tag Shouldn’t Scare You

After freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez released her outline of a Green New Deal, the media actively discussed both the scope of the plan and the cost that the government would have to pay up front in order to actualize it. As she stated in her segment on the Green New Deal, Samantha Bee doesn't have a problem with the price — because unlike some extravagant expenses, she says, the Green New Deal is worth the money.

"It's too expensive and too hard isn't a reason not to save the world," Bee said on her Wednesday night episode of Full Frontal. "It's a reason not to have a destination wedding. If I wanted to see someone's uncle get drunk and lose his swim trunks in a DoubleTree hot tub, I would have gone to my sister's wedding."

Last Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez's newly released Green New Deal plans made quite a splash — not only for her bold proposals, but also for the massive price tag that would inevitably come as a result of actually putting the Green New Deal into action. As Ocasio-Cortez's bill is only a non-binding resolution so far, she hasn't released a price figure herself, and neither has any other congressional committee or member of Congress. By at least one estimate, though, the Green New Deal could cost $6.6 trillion dollars a year to implement.

In her discussion of the plan, Bee played several clips of conservative pundits objecting to that admittedly substantial price tag. She maintained, however, that saving the world is worth it.

"An overwhelming number of experts agree that we only have about 12 years to stop climate change from devastating our planet. 12 years!" she said, citing a U.N. warning issued in October 2018. Bee also pointed out that a grand majority of Americans — including 69 percent of Republicans — are in favor of doing something to limit carbon emissions, which the Green New Deal would do with grand strokes.

"Yes, the Green New Deal is ambitious, and yes, a lot of it will never pass, but the plan's aggressive, even radical goals are bringing much-needed attention to climate change," Bee said.

"It's not crazy to use the government to do something big," Bee continued. "As daunting as it may seem, the Green New Deal wouldn't be the first impossible-sounding project that our government has pursued."

Bee then used the example of the lunar landing as another task that looked impossible when John F. Kennedy declared in 1961 that the United States would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. The Soviets had just launched the first man into space, as Space.com noted, and no one had anything near the technology needed to get humans to the moon and back. With focus and a lot of federal resources, though, the U.S. government made it happen. And similar to the issue of climate change, conquering the journey to the moon also relied on science.

"If we don't act soon to keep our planet livable," Bee concluded, "We'll have to figure out a way to send all 8 billion of us to the actual moon."