Socialism may begin with the best of intentions, but it always ends with the Gestapo- Winston Churchill
We’ve been waiting for it, and now that the Green New Deal is here, and there is no doubt this is the Fyre Festival of US Legislation.
Somehow, government-run healthcare, “family sustainable” wages, paid leave, and “affordable” housing
Progressive firebrand Naomi Klein once declared that climate change has given the world “the most powerful argument against unfettered capitalism” ever. She added that progressive values and policies are “currently being vindicated, rather than refuted, by the laws of nature.”
Although it is of course cloaked in the mantle of peer-reviewed natural science, the Green New Deal is clearly a political program, designed to check every box on the progressive wish-list. For example, here is how Naomi Klein makes the case to left-wing activists to support Ocasio-Cortez against the establishment Democrats:
Pulling that [a 45-percent reduction in fossil fuel emissions in 12 years—RPM] off, the [IPCC] report’s summary states in its first sentence, is not possible with singular policies like carbon taxes. Rather, what is needed is “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.” By giving the committee a mandate that connects the dots between energy, transportation, housing and construction, as well as health care, living wages, a jobs guarantee, and the urgent imperative to battle racial and gender injustice, the Green New Deal plan would be mapping precisely that kind of far-reaching change. This is not a piecemeal approach that trains a water gun on a blazing fire, but a comprehensive and holistic plan to actually put the fire out. [Naomi Klein, bold added.]
Just quickly, let’s look at the engineering problem. A team of Stanford engineers led by Mark Jacobson outlined just such a plan back in 2015. Jacobson’s repowering plan would involve installing 335,000 onshore wind turbines; 154,000 offshore wind turbines; 75 million residential photovoltaic systems; 2.75 million commercial photovoltaic systems; 46,000 utility-scale photovoltaic facilities; 3,600 concentrated solar power facilities with onsite heat storage; and an extensive array of underground thermal storage facilities.
Young “progressive” Dems say world will end in 12 yrs, but insist we spend next 10 of those final 12 bankrupting entire economy and living like the Flintstones. Does anyone else see how absolutely stupid that sounds?
Assuming steep declines in the costs of each form of renewable electric power generation, just running the electrical grid using only renewable power would still cost roughly $7 trillion by 2030. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation calculated that the total cost of an earlier version of Jacobson’s scheme would amount to $13 trillion. And based on how fast it has taken to install energy generation infrastructure in the past, Jacobson’s repowering plan would require a sustained installation rate that is more than 14 times the U.S. average over the last 55 years and more than six times the peak rate.
From a design and engineering standpoint, the “Green New Deal” reads like it was some eighth grade group project headed on by some hippie art teacher that’s stoned
Where is the money to pay for this massive transformation going to come from? The headline over at The Week sums it up pretty well: “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to pay for her Green New Deal by essentially printing more money.”
This Frankenstein Monster really isn’t about climate change at all. That is simply the pretext to fundamentally transform every aspect of society and culture the way progressive leftists have wanted to do even before anyone talked about “global warming.”
Even as beltway wonks who still plead with conservatives and libertarians to agree to a “carbon tax deal,” should see Naomi Klein in the quotation above spell it out just like so many of her colleagues before her: They are explicitly saying a carbon tax is not close to being enough to achieve their environmental goals.
The word “nuclear” doesn’t appear once in the entire draft legislation for the Select Committee. Isn’t it odd that Ocasio-Cortez and Naomi Klein think we have 12 years to act before the world ends in a tidal wave of climate catastrophe, yet they have the time to talk about fixing gender imbalances while they don’t talk about a scalable energy source that is nearly carbon-emission-free? (This source currently provides 20% of U.S. electricity.)
But really, i
A “Green New Deal” makes no sense on economic grounds. Even if one endorsed a Keynesian economic framework in which the historical New Deal “worked,” it still would be nonsensical to implement such a program today, with very high (peacetime) debt loads and an economy at officially full employment. Of note, the historical New Deal did not in fact
What we know the Green New Deal will do:
- Create “unprecedented “ government intervention into the private sector.
- Eliminate 99% of cars
- End all air travel
- Cost Americans untold trillions.
What it won’t do: Stop the climate from changing.
Let’s be honest. Whoever authered AOC’s Green New Deal document is a full-scale idiot. There is no way to read that document as a rational person and think otherwise.
The people pushing a Green New Deal are using it as a vehicle to advance the traditional potpourri of the left’s political agenda.
About the Author
Whoever authored Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal document would seem like a full-scale idiot to someone who was not a socialist, and yes, the people pushing a Green New Deal are using it as a vehicle to advance the traditional potpourri of the left’s political agenda, while putting literally every aspect of our lives under the control of the “federal government,” which in turn would be under the control of the Democratic Socialists and the Democrat party.
Consider this from the “Green New Deal: Fact Sheet and FAQ from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Edward Markey” by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on February 8, 2019, as follows:
The Green New Deal resolution a 10-year plan to mobilize every aspect of American society at a scale not seen since World War 2 to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and create economic prosperity for all.
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My focus is drawn to those words “mobilize every aspect of American society at a scale not seen since World War 2.”
Our lives are going to become the property of the “state” under this plan, as I read it.
As to the statement that whoever authored AOC’s Green New Deal document is a full-scale idiot, and there is no way to read that document as a rational person and think otherwise, that point comes across quite vividly in this following exchange in the FAQ section, to wit:
FAQ
Why 100% clean and renewable and not just 100% renewable?
Are you saying we won’t transition off fossil fuels?
Yes, we are calling for a full transition off fossil fuels and zero greenhouse gases.
Anyone who has read the resolution sees that we spell this out through a plan that calls for eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from every sector of the economy.
Simply banning fossil fuels immediately won’t build the new economy to replace it – this is the plan to build that new economy and spells out how to do it technically.
We do this through a huge mobilization to create the renewable energy economy as fast as possible.
We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast, but we think we can ramp up renewable manufacturing and power production, retrofit every building in America, build the smart grid, overhaul transportation and agriculture, plant lots of trees and restore our ecosystem to get to net-zero.
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Are they going to kill all the cows that are now farting to fulfill their goal of environmental and social justice for everyone in America?
Sounds like it to me, anyway.
And here is the real essence of this plan revealed:
Simply banning fossil fuels immediately won’t build the new economy to replace it – this is the plan to build that new economy and spells out how to do it technically.
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That new economy happens to be socialist, not capitalist!
As to the FAQ “How will you pay for it?” the answer is as follows:
The same way we paid for the New Deal, the 2008 bank bailout and extended quantitative easing programs.
The same way we paid for World War II and all our current wars.
The Federal Reserve can extend credit to power these projects and investments and new public banks can be created to extend credit.
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Except the Federal Reserve by law cannot extend credit to power these projects.
And what will these new “public” banks be?
Not a word in the document on that.
So yes, it is a document written by idiots for idiots, which takes us to this:
The Green New Deal has momentum.
* 92 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Republicans support the Green New Deal
* Nearly every major Democratic Presidential contender say they back the Green New deal including: Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Jeff Merkeley, Julian Castro, Kirsten Gillibrand, Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, and Jay Inslee.
* 45 House Reps and 330+ groups backed the original resolution for a select committee
* Over 300 local and state politicians have called for a federal Green New Deal
* New Resolution has 20 co-sponsors, about 30 groups (numbers will change by Thursday).
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So, the future is now, and socialism in America is on the way.
A brave new world revealed.
In the FAQ section of the “Green New Deal: Fact Sheet and FAQ from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Edward Markey” by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on February 8, 2019, which was created in consultation with multiple groups from environmental community, environmental justice community, and labor community, we come across these frequently asked questions, as follows:
* Why do we need a sweeping Green New Deal investment program?
* Why can’t we just rely on regulations and taxes and the private sector to invest alone such as a carbon tax or a ban on fossil fuels?
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The answers given by “Sandy the Bartender” are as follows:
The level of investment required is massive.
Even if every billionaire and company came together and were willing to pour all the resources at their disposal into this investment, the aggregate value of the investments they could make would not be sufficient.
The speed of investment required will be massive.
Even if all the billionaires and companies could make the investments required, they would not be able to pull together a coordinated response in the narrow window of time required to jump-start major new projects and major new economic sectors.
Also, private companies are wary of making massive investments in unproven research and technologies; the government, however, has the time horizon to be able to patiently make investments in new tech and R&D, without necessarily having a commercial outcome or application in mind at the time the investment is made.
Major examples of government investments in “new” tech that subsequently spurred a boom in the private section include DARPA projects, the creation of the internet – and, perhaps most recently, the government’s investment in Tesla.
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And stop the presses right there, people – the government’s investment in Tesla has spurred a boom in the “private section?”
That claim is bull****, actually, as we can see from a Los Angeles Times article entitled “Elon Musk’s growing empire is fueled by $4.9 billion in government subsidies” by Jerry Hirsch on May 30, 2015, to wit:
Los Angeles entrepreneur Elon Musk has built a multibillion-dollar fortune running companies that make electric cars, sell solar panels and launch rockets into space.
And he’s built those companies with the help of billions in government subsidies.
Tesla Motors Inc., SolarCity Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, together have benefited from an estimated $4.9 billion in government support, according to data compiled by The Times.
The figure underscores a common theme running through his emerging empire: a public-private financing model underpinning long-shot start-ups.
“He definitely goes where there is government money,” said Dan Dolev, an analyst at Jefferies Equity Research.
“That’s a great strategy, but the government will cut you off one day.”
A looming question is whether the companies are moving toward self-sufficiency — as Dolev believes — and whether they can slash development costs before the public largesse ends.
Tesla and SolarCity continue to report net losses after a decade in business, but the stocks of both companies have soared on their potential; Musk’s stake in the firms alone is worth about $10 billion. (SpaceX, a private company, does not publicly report financial performance.)
Musk and his companies’ investors enjoy most of the financial upside of the government support, while taxpayers shoulder the cost.
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“While taxpayers shoulder the cost!”
Tesla has not spurred “a boom in the private section” – the boom has been in Elon Musk’s net worth!