So many people I've talked to in DC over the last week have said some version of this: "The 10 year timeline to reverse climate change and create millions of jobs seems like a great organizing tactic. But let's talk about what's actually possible." Let's talk about that.
In 1940, as the threat if World War 2 loomed, FDR delivered a seminal speech on creating the arsenal of democracy. And he set specific production targets: 185,000 planes, 120,000 tanks, 55,000 anti-aircraft guns, 18 million tons of merchant shipping.
These targets were so "impossible", Hitler thought this was just American propaganda. In 1939, America had produced fewer than 3,000 planes.
CEOs, generals, business leaders and of course politicians -- all of them thought this was mere fantasy. Just an "organizing tactic."
Over the next five years, America produced 300,000 planes, blowing well past FDRs targets. This is what we are capable of as a country if we simply try.
If FDR had never set those unrealistic goals, we would have no impetus to hit it. The "free market" certainly wouldn't and neither would our political leaders at the time.
So when @Ocasio2018 talks about going big in the depths of darkness, this is what she means. This is the kind of leadership we need when our way of life is threatened with extinction. That is real leadership: willing to call for what's needed, not just what seems possible.
