I have spent my life trying to rewrite systems of power, and policy is nothing if not a system for creating and distributing power. That is why, cont… - Rhiana Gunn-Wright

Critics who doubt our nation's capacity to achieve a transition of the scale and speed the Green New Deal proposes should heed the lessons of the World War II mobilization: set the production targets you need to win, even if they seem impossible at the outset, and then hustle to meet those targets through massive, coordinated, strategic public investment and collaborations with private industry.

The details will keep changing as we learn how best to decarbonize equitably and mobilize the American people-our hands, our creativity, our resources-to remake our economy, while caring for one another every step of the way. But no matter what we encounter in the weeds of policy blueprints and implementation, the vision of the Green New Deal provides the compass we'll need.

The ability to burn fossil fuels with no limit and no legal repercussions requires two things. First, fossil fuel industries and those who control them (or profit deeply from them) can concentrate enough wealth and political power to override the will of the people-who, by and large, want to stop climate change. Second, there are people and places that can be hurt, even killed, with little consequence.