It turns out we get so much healthier when we convert to a green energy economy that our health savings alone are enough to pay for the cost of the energy transition.
We call for a green New Deal, like the New Deal that got us out of the Great Depression, but in this case focusing on green jobs to create 100% clean renewable energy by 2030, which is exactly what the science calls for.
There are potentially hundreds of billion dollars, potentially more, that could be saved by moving to a clean energy system. Studies [on healthier diet] show those savings, in fact, are enough to pay the costs of creating 100% clean renewable energy.
While we've doubled renewable energy, it was only a tiny portion of the energy portfolio to start with. But what we did was totally take the lid off fossil fuel extractions in every way imaginable. On the day following [Barack] Obama's trip to the Louisiana floods, you know, we had, I think, another 25 million acres that went on sale in the Gulf for further extraction.
When Cuba lost their fossil fuel pipeline when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990. Overnight they had no choice, they had to transition to clean energy, they didn't have any fuel to burn, and they also had to transition to a healthy food system, an organic system - their economy is crashing, this was not a planned transition. This was a crisis, but a crisis nonetheless, in which pollution went away. And it's very instructive to see what happened to their health.
Bernie Sanders talked about except he focused mainly on infrastructure. We are talking about energy and food as part of that and public transportation as part of that infrastructure.
If ever there was a mobilizing energy, it is the millennial generation. So we have the power to turn out and even to win this race. Not to split the vote but to flip the vote.
