[link:https://www.bostonglobe.com/2019/11/25/opinion/realism-bernie-sanders-climate-policy/|

Sanders believes that as our economy rapidly shifts to renewable energy, power companies should be publicly owned and controlled, and the biggest polluters should help underwrite the costs.

By Naomi Klein and Sivan Kartha, Updated November 25, 2019, 12:00 a.m.


As Bernie Sanders brings his plans for a Green New Deal to Iowa, one part is proving most resonant: the idea that, as our economy rapidly shifts to renewable energy, power companies should be publicly owned and controlled, and the biggest polluters should help underwrite the costs.

Interestingly, this is the part of the Sanders plan, which builds on the resolution introduced by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, that has received the most pushback from media commentators — who have been quick to dismiss public ownership over renewables as impractical and radical.

Yet for many Iowans, it is precisely these parts of the Sanders plan that make it most exciting.

Plenty of Iowans support renewable power and feel a tremendous sense of urgency about the climate crisis — after all, their communities are facing historic flooding, and their crops are dying as a result of both record-setting heat and cold. But like most of us, Iowans also have a keen sense of fairness. And they know from hard experience that when for-profit companies own the wind farms that dot their rolling hills, consumers and working people get a raw deal.

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