How Higher Education Incubated The Eco-Socialism Of The Green New Deal

1. Then came the global warming movement, which blazed on the national scene in 1988, when NASA climatologist James Hansen testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that “the greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now. Hansen’s testimony gave urgency and credibility to the increasing numbers of environmental activists, the more radical of whom trumpeted the protection of Mother Earth for her own sake, regardless of human benefit.
2. The Green New Deal opens with a list of social groups it deems of special importance, none of them defined by exposure to environmental pollution: “indigenous communities, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth.” That is, pretty much everyone except old white men.
3. Fast-forward 35 years, and sustainability has become a key organizing principle for higher education, as Peter Wood and I documented in Sustainability: Higher Education’s New Fundamentalism. Colleges and universities have rushed to introduce some 458 degree programs in sustainability including sustainability doctorates and sustainability-themed MBAs.

http://thefederalist.com/2019/02/20/higher-education-incubated-eco-socialism-green-new-deal/