Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat, has released her Green New Deal plan to the nation — and to great applause from the Democratic Party.
This multi-trillion dollar manifesto isn’t just about saving the planet from climate change — though that is the centerpiece — but includes a whole “social justice” agenda that includes everything from Medicare for All, to a guaranteed job for all Americans, a $15-an-hour minimum wage, and even regulations on how often you will be able to drive your car and fly in an airplane.
The centerpiece of the plan is to move to 100 percent renewable energy (wind and solar power) within 10 years.
No one with any knowledge of energy use and production believes this is even remotely possible given that we are today at about 8 percent renewable — even after $150 billion of taxpayer handouts to green energy producers.
But even to get anywhere close to 100 percent renewable energy over the next 10 or 30 years would be economically crippling with taxpayer costs that would exceed $2 trillion while displacing some 10 million Americans in high-paying oil and gas industries from their jobs.
Energy costs for home heating and electric power would likely double or triple, as a Heritage Foundation study shows — and that’s simply to get to 50 percent renewable.
Without U.S. mass production of shale oil, gas prices at the pump could easily reach $5 a gallon. Price hikes like these are what incited the riots in Paris last month.
Initially, the Green New Deal planned to abolish nuclear and natural gas from the energy mix — which is absurd given that shale gas has contributed to a major reduction in carbon emissions and nuclear plants emit no greenhouse gases whatsoever. Along with hydropower, these are the cleanest forms of energy today.
A recent GND fact sheet published by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s offices has been disavowed by Democratic Senate backer Ed Markey over the dogmatic anti-nuclear stance.
This is why the GND frothy rhetoric about this “national, industrial, economic mobilization” being a “historic opportunity to eliminate poverty and make prosperity, wealth and economic security available to everyone participating in the transformation,” is disoriented from reality.
How does eliminating the industry — fossil fuels — that has produced the fastest growth of new jobs over the past decade, eliminate poverty? Are we really going to convert oil workers into wind farmers?
There are other utopian ideas to advance this green agenda, including a job-guarantee program, universal health care, and tens of billions of dollars for new mass transit and electric cars.
In one of the original versions of the Green New Deal, the plan requires “replacing non-essential individual means of transport with high-quality and modern mass transit.” No more driving the kids to soccer practice. Everybody on the bus.
Miss Ocasio-Cortez says that to replace the millions of jobs the GND would destroy, the new guaranteed-jobs program would work like the original New Deal.
But despite the fake history of the Great Depression, FDR’s make-work programs, such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA), failed miserably in their quest to end joblessness and poverty.
During the eight years of the WPA, the unemployment rate averaged above 12 percent, some three times higher than today.
The architects of the GND are to be commended for acknowledging that this “transformation” of the U.S. economy won’t come cheap. They place the price tag at roughly $1 trillion a year.
These costs will be absorbed by Federal Reserve Bank borrowing (i.e., running up the budget deficit), and “various taxation tools including taxes on carbon and other emissions and progressive wealth taxes.” Say hello to those 70 percent tax rates liberals have been touting.
We will need these to pay for this deindustrialization of America.
Conservatives have tended to laugh and sneer at the GND (me included), but these frontal assaults on free-market capitalism are quickly becoming Democratic orthodoxy.
Green is the new red, as the saying goes, and unless conservatives defeat and discredit these dingbat ideas, Donald Trump will be proven wrong. America will be on its way to becoming a socialist nation.
Read more at Washington Times
The article mentions double or triple the cost of power to get to 50 percent renewable power according to a Heritage Foundation study. This is an under estimate. Germany tripled its power cost by going to 30 percent renewable power.
Most often if one industry is on the up swing and another in a decline the displaced workers don’t find jobs is the other industry. How many coal miners who lost their jobs due to Obama’s policies found green jobs? The jobs in the fossil fuel industry would be only part of the loss. There would be severe job loss throughout the economy due to the high price of energy.
Replacing private autos with public transportation has undesirable impacts and in some cases isn’t possible. I might be different in big cities but using public transportation where I live doubles to triples the commute time. Driving the kids to soccer wouldn’t be an issue because no one would have the time. For awhile my daughter drove 15 miles to a park and ride and then took the bus to the University Of Washington. This doubled her commute time so she started driving the entire distance.
This same daughter is now a free lance music teacher driving to her student’s homes. She has a full schedule so doubling or tripling her commute time would require cutting the number of students by the same amount. Many of these live on dirt roads that would never be serviced by public transportation. Public transit also isn’t feasible in the rural area we live in so how would the rest of family get to work, or how would we buy groceries?
My daughter’s job is one that would be eliminated by the Green New Deal. How likely is it that a music teacher who speaks Finnish would get one of the Green jobs.
Not only is the Green New Deal not needed because anthropological climate change isn’t happening, but its designers haven’t a clue what the real world is like.
Saying that taxes would go up for tax payers would be to assume that there would be people employed who could pay taxes. The total idiocy of such a program that the idiotic AOC is proposing would see unemployment rates that would make the government-induced Great Depression to look like full employment.