Yang commends the Green New Deal for sparking a national conversation around action to fight climate change. When it comes to backlash against the Green New Deal, the self-identified "numbers guy" isn't letting complaints of "wasted dollars" get by him. He writes:

Why do so many people believe moving to a sustainable economy will have such a negative impact on our economy and individual budgets, then? Because of the oil companies. They’ve been making trillions of dollars for generations, externalizing all the costs to the world while burying reports on climate change and lobbying against climate legislation. When you’re pulling in trillions of dollars, a few hundred million on lobbying and false advertisements is a drop in the bucket.

Yang kicks off his plan by promising to end subsidization of oil companies, thus cutting off the influence of oil executives and lobbyists. Without acknowledging this truth, other climate-change plans cannot hope to make much progress.