Tag Archives: Green New Deal

The Green New Deal will impoverish America, by Joel Kotkin

Any time a government essentially sets itself up to run an economy, its people get poorer. From Joel Kotkin at spiked-online.com:

This corporate-backed plan will come at the cost of people’s jobs and living standards.

‘The interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all… Do you guys think of it as a climate thing? Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.’ So said Saikat Chakrabarti, former chief of staff for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and generally acknowledged author of the Green New Deal.

Sometimes it is wise to find out what ideas’ originators actually think. That is true for documents that have lit up our lives, such as the US Constitution, as well as for those that have darkened them, such as Mein Kampf.

This is true as well for the nascent Green New Deal, which President Joe Biden has essentially adopted as his own. Even if Congress fails to pass it entirely, Biden will seek to impose many of its goals through administrative diktats on gas-powered cars, land use, airplanes, any form of fossil fuel and nuclear power. Green New Dealers will also extend the welfare state, including to those who choose not to work.

As Chakrabarti indicated, the Green New Deal is not another environmental ameliorative, but something far more fundamentally transformative. The Biden administration’s embrace of it is somewhat surprising given that the likely economic fallout of this plan – particularly for the working class – made both Biden and House speaker Nancy Pelosi distance themselves from it during the fall campaign. But now the Green New Deal has resurfaced, having made the metamorphosis from a leftist fantasy into a serious political initiative.

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Why a Green New Deal Is More Expensive Than Joe Biden Realizes, by Charlie Deist

The bottom line: the Green New Deal will destroy the economy, even if it’s only half implemented. From Charlie Deist at mises.org:

One of President Biden’s first executive actions was to declare January 27 “Climate Day.” This ad hoc holiday provided an opportunity for his administration to celebrate the latest rationale for economic central planning. The day’s festivities began with three executive orders on climate change, science, and technology.

In his remarks, Biden bundled his environmental agenda with a jobs program, along with a broader policy to address social inequality and environmental injustice. Among the ambitious goals of Biden’s $2 trillion Green New Deal are 1 million new high-paying union jobs in the automobile industry, half a million electric car charging stations, and a 100 percent carbon pollution–free electric sector by 2035. 

The goal of transitioning the electrical grid to zero carbon emissions in the next fifteen years stands out as a singularly misguided effort. Even granting the nonobvious assumption that we must immediately transition away from fossil fuels, overhauling the American energy infrastructure is a vast and complex calculation problem. To be truly sustainable, individuals and firms would need to act on local knowledge, assessing where and what kinds of renewables might meet their energy needs.

The concept of “net energy” illustrates why replacing fossil fuels with large-scale renewable energy is often counterproductive. In Carbon Shift, a 2009 book discussing peak oil and climate change, David Hughes summarizes it like this:

A two-megawatt windmill contains 260 tonnes of steel requiring 170 tonnes of coking coal and 300 tonnes of iron ore, all mined, transported and produced by hydrocarbons. The question is: how long must a windmill generate energy before it creates more energy than it took to build it? At a good wind site, the energy payback day could be in three years or less; in a poor location, energy payback may be never. That is, a windmill could spin until it falls apart and never generate as much energy as was invested in building it.

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Green New Deal Is Underway, by James Rickards

The Green New Deal is a code phrase for “strangle the global economy.” From James Rickards at dailyreckoning.com:

Green New Deal Is Underway

By now, you’ve heard of the Green New Deal, an ambitious agenda to decarbonize the economy. The overall Green New Deal calls for ending the use of oil and natural gas, moving to electric vehicles, solar, wind and geothermal power, imposing carbon taxes to reduce C02 emissions and providing government subsidies to non-carbon-based energy technologies.

The U.S. would also seek to embed these policies and priorities in new trade treaties and multilateral agreements. President Biden has already begun this process by rejoining the Paris Climate Accord, which actually doesn’t mean much; it’s mostly for show.

The Paris Accord is also a platform for pursuing the Green New Deal.

But it’s difficult to conceive of any other program that would do more harm to the U.S. economy and give more of a boost to the Chinese, Russians and Iranians.

Biden has temporarily halted all new oil and gas drilling leases and permits on federal lands. He’s moving quickly to make the ban permanent. This ban will kill the fracking industry and help to destroy what’s left of the coal industry. Because of reduced supply, it will raise energy prices globally. New carbon emission taxes will raise prices even further.

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Your life under the Green New Deal, by Robert

The Green New Dealers think it’s just a matter of passing the right laws and presto, we’ll be living in an environmental paradise. Like every other liberal pipe dream, this will end in disaster. From Robert at iceagenow.info:

Green New Dealers would bring our country its knees – except that they would get more money, power and control.
Please, please, please, you must read this.

Locking our nation’s abundant coal, oil, natural gas and petroleum liquids in the ground would have far-reaching impacts that have (deliberately?) received little media attention.
The GND would control and pummel the jobs, lives, living standards, savings, personal choices and ecological heritage of rural, poor, minority, elderly and working classes.
_____________

“Joe Biden doesn’t want to tell us whether he supports single-payer nationalized healthcare, packing the Supreme Court or eliminating the Senate filibuster,” writes Paul Driessen. “However, he has been open and consistent about supporting the Green New Deal, which would completely replace America’s fossil fuels with “clean, green” electricity and biofuel energy by 2035.”

“He and other GND proponents want us to believe this can be done quickly, easily, affordably, ecologically, sustainably and painlessly. My article this week presents the facts about what this “total energy and economic transformation” would actually do. It’s all pain for no gain.”

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The Environmentalist’s Dream Came True, by Joakim Book

The desolation, shuttered businesses, and unemployment you see out there is pretty much what the environmentalists hope is a permanent state of affairs. From Joakim Book at aier.org:

forest, light, stars, environmental

Have you recently heard anything about the major existential threat to our lives? I don’t mean the exaggerated virality of the virus currently wreaking havoc with our globalized societies, but the endlessly dangerous impact of climate change? Of rising sea levels and volatile weather leading to crop failures and mass starvation and collapse of precious ecosystems?

You know, the imminent Sixth Mass Extinction? The “ecocide” that the French President Emmanuel Macron called the Amazon fires last year and that the British newspaper The Guardian routinely describes all kinds of things impacting nature?

I didn’t think so.

Nor should you have: as humans, we clearly had more urgent things to worry about than dying polar bears or cleared rainforests or other kinds of climate damages – real or imagined – accumulating centuries down the line. In the economist’s dry language, our time preferences spiked: we suddenly cared a lot more about the present compared to the future than we did until recently.

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Green New Deal Promises Energy-Efficient Gulags In Every Neighborhood, from The Babylon Bee

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The full Green New Deal was revealed by Democratic lawmakers Thursday morning. The sweeping legislative proposal includes ambitious projects like installing high-speed rail across the nation, replacing or upgrading every building in the country, and transitioning the entire country to renewables by tomorrow afternoon.

But perhaps best of all, the Green New Deal promises to build an energy-efficient Gulag in every neighborhood. Anyone who questions the wisdom of the Deal will be assigned to a Gulag for their new, greener job working for the government. The high-tech government buildings will be modeled after their Soviet predecessors but will have solar panels and wind power for a lower environmental impact as the government works you to death.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez personally pushed for the inclusion of the Gulags, claiming they will provide millions of jobs with minimal environmental impact.

“Gulags have been very effective in other countries,” she said. “The United States has lagged behind socialist countries in a number of areas, including healthcare, wages, and forced labor camps. The Green New Deal will change all of that, and we hope the nation can get on board with the program.”

“Because if you don’t, it’s the Gulag for you,” she added.

The Year in Bad Ideas, by Max Gulker

The year almost past saw the ascendence of some uncommonly stupid ideas. From Max Gulker at aier.com:

At first glance 2019 was a rough year for anyone in favor of an economy and society guided from the bottom up by people with the freedom to exchange, cooperate, and think as they choose. The highly visible left flank of the Democratic Party, fully embracing socialism in name and approach, erupted with proposals that would drastically change the country in ways they intend and many more in ways they do not. Meanwhile, the Republican Party’s debt from its Faustian bargain with President Donald Trump began to come due.

What can we learn from bad ideas? Plenty, if we approach them with curiosity rather than assumed intellectual or moral deficiency on the part of those trafficking in them. The truth, that people have a really hard time understanding the benefits of free markets and bottom-up organization, is both difficult and galvanizing. Free-market ideas don’t really have a place in the current incarnation of our two-party system. We’re free agents and that can open a world of new possibilities if we let it.

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Americans Didn’t Need the Original New Deal, by Laurence M. Vance

The original New Deal was a disaster, the Green New Deal will be even more so. From Laurence M. Vance at fff.org:

We have heard much this year about how much the country needs a Green New Deal to reverse the negative effects of climate change, ensure economic security, revamp the nation’s transportation system, restore damaged ecosystems, secure a sustainable environment, and achieve justice and equality. Overlooked in all of the analyses of the Green New Deal is that Americans didn’t need the original New Deal.

The Green New Deal

On February 7, newly elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) introduced in the U.S. House a resolution (H.Res.109) “recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.” On the same day, the veteran Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) introduced a companion resolution (S.Res.59) in the U.S. Senate. According to the U.S. Senate, “A simple resolution addresses matters entirely within the prerogative of one house,” is “also used to express the sentiments of a single house,” or may simply give “advice.” Simple resolutions require neither the approval of the other House of Congress nor the signature of the president, as they do not have the force of law.

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Green Dreams, by John Stossel

The Green New Deal spins fervishly in the minds of people who know next to nothing about energy. From John Stossel at theburningplatform.com:

Green Dreams

The Green New Deal’s goal is to move America to zero carbon emissions in 10 years.

“That’s a goal you could only imagine possible if you have no idea how energy is produced,” James Meigs, former editor of Popular Mechanics magazine, says in my latest video.

“Renewable is so inconsistent,” he adds. “You can’t just put in wind turbines and solar panels. You have to build all this infrastructure to connect them with energy consumers.”

Because wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine, “renewable” energy requires many more transmission lines, and bigger batteries.

Unfortunately, says Meigs: “You have to mine materials for batteries. Those mines are environmentally hazardous. Disposing of batteries is hazardous.”

“Batteries are a lousy way to store energy,” adds physicist Mark Mills, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Also, the ingredients of green energy, like battery packs, are far from green.

“You have to consume 100 barrels of oil in China to make that battery pack,” he explains. “Dig up 1,000 pounds of stuff to process it. Digging is done with oil, by big machines, so we’re consuming energy to ‘save’ energy — not a good path to go.”

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The Left Looks Backward (Again), by Thomas DiLorenzo

The Green New Deal wouldn’t work any better than the original New Deal. From Thomas DiLorenzo at lewrockwell.com:

The so-called Green New Deal that was recently posted as a congressional Resolution and endorsed by many high-profile Democrats is essentially a twenty-first century version of the 1888 utopian novel, Looking Backward, by the Marxist-inspired writer Edward Bellamy.  The main character of the novel, one Julian West, falls asleep for 113 years and awakes in the year 2000 delighting in the fact that America had been turned into a socialist utopia.  A major theme of the novel is that all the evils of society can be eradicated by more-or-less totalitarian government controls, mandates, and regulations.  That is also the theme of the Green New Deal.

In Bellamy’s utopia private property is abolished and all industry is nationalized.  Government guarantees “jobs for everyone,” as does the Green New Deal.  Education is “free” (another Green New Deal promise) and everyone is paid the same by the government, the sole employer.  Special efforts are made to assure that men and women are all paid the same.  This is another key point of the Green New Deal.  Everyone retired at age 45 with a good taxpayer-funded pension.

Numerous Edward Bellamy Societies sprung up, established by socialist intellectuals of the day such as John Dewey, who founded the Edward Bellamy Society of New York. Looking Backward also spawned numerous small socialist communes, all of which collapsed in failure – a warning sign of what would become of twentieth-century socialism everywhere.

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