“Protect my future, address climate change,” (April 21), gets it right. We have only a decade left to cut our greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 percent if we are to prevent catastrophic global warming (National Academy of Sciences).

The Green New Deal energy plan aims for at least a 50 percent cut and closer to 100 percent by 2050. Fortunately, the rapid national transition to clean energy will also have massive economic benefits. By scaling up solar and wind, the GND’s energy plan would make clean energy “essentially free” by 2030 (Financial Times, UBS, Aug. 2018). It would cost about $5 trillion (N.Y. Times, April 18) but, mainly because of all that “essentially free” energy, it would add $6.5 trillion to the U.S. economy (IPCC).

It would create 10-15 million good-paying, local, permanent (40-year) jobs with good benefits. The kind of jobs our country has been losing for decades.

Making emissions cuts on the scale the GND proposes would prevent over $160 trillion in future economic damage from climate disasters we’d otherwise suffer (Forbes, April 2019). Just a half-degree increase in global temperatures will cost the U.S. economy $13 trillion (IPCC). We’d be fools not to support the Green New Deal’s energy plan.

Lynn Goldfarb

Lancaster, Pennsylvania