As momentum for the Green New Deal grows, so do its detractors. The ambitious plan to fight climate change introduced by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey last week has been called everything from “brainless” to “delusional” by conservatives. President Donald Trump said it sounded like “a high school term paper that got a low mark.” Some Democrats have criticized the Green New Deal, too, saying that its goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2030 is unachievable. Others believe the plan doesn’t go far enough.

What, then, do these critics propose instead? What should America do to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow catastrophic global warming?

Most Republicans don’t have an answer to that question because they deny that anything needs to be done at all. But as New Yorker staff writer Osita Nwanevu noted on Twitter, those who accept the dire reality of climate change aren’t helping by offering empty critiques.

No one criticizing the Green New Deal -- not a single person -- has an alternative plan for transitioning the American energy economy in the timeframe climatologists say we must. Nobody. If you don't think it's realistic, put out something else. What should be done instead? — Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) February 8, 2019

Some conservatives are getting frustrated with the lack of alternative proposals from the Republican Party, too. “The ‘Green New Deal’ is a bad idea,” Eddie Scarry wrote recently for the Washington Examiner. “But it’s an idea, nonetheless. And the country has shown it’s willing to try new things if it might make lives better. Republicans should learn that quickly, or lose.” Mike Cernovich, the male supremacist and conspiracy theorist, made a similar argument on Twitter.

Utopian ideas, however unrealistic, beat no ideas.



The Green New Deal is more persuasive than anything the GOP has.



Cry and scream that it won't work.



The Green New Deal is the *most persuasive* idea on the table.



Find a better idea or lose. https://t.co/V8rAMtSI5s — Mike Cernovich | 📽 (@Cernovich) February 8, 2019

It’s a strange day when an alt-right troll admits that climate change denial is a losing strategy. But Cernovich is right. Americans increasingly recognize that the world needs to decarbonize quickly. To prevent the planet from warming by 2 degrees Celsius, which many scientists consider the tipping point, the world must become carbon neutral by 2070. How can it meet that goal without the kind of massive government intervention that the Green New Deal proposes? I put that question to the plan’s critics.