Green New Danger

The so-called "Green New Deal" is a Green new danger for America.

It is the ultimate in "watermelon" policy; Green on the outside while red within.

We posted extensive coverage at CFACT.org and CFACT's Climate Depot.

While the "GND" remains somewhat nebulous when it comes to specifics, we can learn quite a bit from a proposed rule change newly sworn in Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez submitted to the House. We posted the entire document to CFACT.org for you to examine.

The Ocasio-Cortez proposal would create a new congressional subcommittee tasked with drafting legislation to basically end America's free economy and substitute left-wing central management. Here's an excerpt stating that the GND shall:

(vi) mitigate deeply entrenched racial, regional and gender-based inequalities in income and wealth (including, without limitation, ensuring that federal and other investment will be equitably distributed to historically impoverished, low income, deindustrialized or other marginalized communities in such a way that builds wealth and ownership at the community level);
(vii) include additional measures such as basic income programs, universal health care programs and any others as the select committee may deem appropriate to promote economic security, labor market flexibility and entrepreneurism;

Adjust Earth's thermostat through redistribution of wealth? We're hearing this foolishness far too often for comfort.

David Wojick digs deeper at CFACT.org, delving into a 36 page proposal put forth by a group called "Data for Progress." He notes the proposal's "green job guarantee" which it defines as "a legal right that obligates the federal government to provide a job for anyone who asks for one and to pay them a livable wage."

It quickly becomes obvious that this "Green New Deal" is nothing more than a ruse designed to give the radical Left the redistribution and control it has always craved.

Bonner Cohen posted an extensive analysis to CFACT.org which explains that "a government-mandated transition to 100% renewable energy would completely destroy the U.S. industrial base and cause lights to go out in millions of households across the country."

As Bonner concludes, "the Green New Deal is folly on an epic scale."

The Green New Deal: It’s worse than you think

By Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.|January 16th, 2019

The New Year is off to a rollicking start with a partial government shutdown in Washington affecting 800,000 federal workers, riots all across France, the continuing disintegration of Venezuela, and – for good measure — calls for a Green New Deal by hundreds of environmental and other left-wing groups, as well as by Democrats in Congress.

While the dispute over the security of the U.S. border with Mexico, the outrage over a proposed (and since withdrawn) tax increase on transportation fuel in France, and the collapse of the Venezuelan economy are all about matters in the here and now, the Green New Deal postulates a glorious vision of the future.

And what a future it is!

In the name of combating climate change (formerly known as global warming), the Green New Deal seeks nothing less than the complete decarbonization of the U.S. economy and the transition to 100% renewable energy – all to be accomplished with a couple of decades. No fewer than 626 organizations signed a Jan. 10 letter to Congress demanding that Members act “aggressively and quickly” to avert the pending climate disaster. At a minimum, these steps should include:

Ending all leasing of fossil fuel extraction on federal land; ceasing the permitting of all fossil-fuel power plants; banning the export of American coal, oil, and natural gas – all “in pursuit of a managed decline of fossil fuel production;”

Excluding fossil fuels, nuclear power, biomass energy, large-scale hydro power, and waste to energy combustion from America’s energy future in order to shift to 100% renewable energy by 2035 or sooner;
Striving for 100% decarbonization by phasing out the sale of automobiles and trucks with internal combustion engines; promoting “investment’ in renewable energy-powered public transportation; and expanding government subsidies for electric vehicles;
Harnessing the “full power of the Clean Air Act” to ensure that climate targets are met, including implementing reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions from cars, trucks, aircraft, ships, smokestacks, and other sources;
Ensuring a “just transition” by prioritizing “support for communities who (sic) historically have been harmed first and most by the dirty energy economy and workers in the energy sector and related industries;” building new transportation, energy, waste, and housing infrastructure designed to serve “climate resilience and other human needs;” retrofitting millions of buildings to conserve energy and other resources; and “actively restoring ecosystems to protect communities from climate change;” and
Upholding the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by recognizing their right to give or withhold “free, prior, and informed consent” to legislation of other developments affecting their lands, territories, natural and cultural resources.

How much all of this will cost, and how that enormous sum – whatever it is – is to be raised, is left unsaid. Newly elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) recently suggested in a TV interview that one way to finance the Green New Deal would be to raise the marginal tax rate for people making $10 million a year or more to 70%. But her proposal received a cool reception from many of her Democratic colleagues, who are concerned that their high-end donors from Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street wouldn’t relish forking over that much money to the IRS, even if it would save the planet.

While steering clear of Ocasio-Cortez’s 70% marginal tax rate, Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) embraces the Green New Deal and would pay for it with a carbon tax – a levy on oil, natural gas, and coal. If anything, a carbon tax is an even bigger folly.

Pure Folly

”A carbon tax is a tax on existence, because all aspects of living require energy, and hydrocarbons provide 80% of America’s energy, more for the rest of the world,” Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal. As for replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy, Mills points out that wind and solar power currently account for a mere 3% of U.S. energy – and this after decades of federal subsidies and state laws manding the use of renewable energy.

If all it took to stir up the “yellow vests” in France was a rise in the diesel tax, just think of the outrage in the U.S. when, to finance the Green New Deal, a carbon tax is imposed on, as Mills puts it, our very “existence.“

Even the appeal to indigenous peoples ignores the fact that some tribes in the U.S. have oil, gas, and coal on their lands, and that the Green New Deal would deliver a crippling blow to those tribes’ efforts to escape poverty by taking advantage of their natural resources.

A government-mandated transition to 100% renewable energy would completely destroy the U.S. industrial base and cause lights to go out in millions of households across the country. The Green New Deal is folly on an epic scale.

cfact.org

The Wacky "Green New Deal"

David Wojick
http://www.cfact.org/2019/01/10/the-wacky-green-new-deal/?mc_cid=56bf820dd5&mc_eid=09def93ac3

Most of what has been said about the proposed Green New Deal (GND) has been pretty vague and very hyperbolic, but there are some specifics available. One of the holy texts at this point is a 36 page proposal from the Dataforprogress.org think tank. This report provides hundreds of specific goals, tasks and needs that might make up a potential GND.

The proposed GND has two basic components. First is a great wish list of green goals for America, none of which is surprising. This is the Green part. Then comes the idea that the huge amount of work to be done will be with new federal jobs. This is the New Deal part.

Mind you the real New Deal was done when a great number of people were out of work, which is not the case today, but that issue is not addressed. The GND would be more like mobilization for war, with many existing jobs being abandoned to do the new green stuff.

In addition to this vast mobilization, there would be great array of federal payments and tax incentives, so the cost of the GND is probably staggering. Not surprisingly, no cost estimate is given. They just say it is all worth it.

Decarbonization is one of the central green goals, although there are many others. The list is familiar. For example it includes attainment with all national air quality standards and replacing all lead water pipes, plus a lot of other stuff.

To take one example, consider electric cars. The impossible goal is “100% Zero Emission Passenger Vehicles by 2030.” So in just eleven years we would have everyone driving electrics, with all of the existing gas burners either off the road or converted to electric.

The tasks and costs are stupendous. These start with building and installing the national system of vehicle charging stations, on the highways, in the homes, at work, etc. Not mentioned, but also necessary, are building the factories and plants to make all these cars and light trucks. (Heavy trucks, trains, busses, ships and planes are a separate case.)

Then there are massive tax incentives to get people to buy this electric iron, plus a big program to buy up all the gas burners. These are apparently either converted to electric or scrapped. The plan is vague here, but the internal combustion engine is no more.

There is no doubt that all of this will require a huge amount of labor, which certainly translates into a lot of new jobs. Apparently they are all government jobs, this being a New Deal model.

But the GND actually goes farther than mandating laborious effort and hiring the workers needed to do it. One of the great goals is that everybody who wants to work for the government will get a good job, needed or not. I am not making this up.

It is called the “Green Job Guarantee.” Here is the specification:

“A job guarantee is more than just the direct hiring of workers by the federal or state governments, and more than an entitlement program like unemployment insurance. A job guarantee is a legal right that obligates the federal government to provide a job for anyone who asks for one and to pay them a livable wage. The more states and communities that participate in a federal job guarantee the more public works projects can be completed across the country. A Green New Deal requires a massive workforce for the construction, operations, and administration of projects, and a federal job guarantee program can ensure there are enough workers to meet that need.” (Emphasis in original.)

Who is going to do the real work that America depends on is unclear. If the GND sucked up enough workers the economy would collapse. Or they might just nationalize everything and put the now Feds back in their old jobs. This is one of the socialist features.

In any case we have here a relatively clear explanation of what a proposed Green New Deal looks like. All things considered it is ridiculous, but that does not make it harmless, quite the contrary. It remains to be seen how seriously the Democrats take this nonsense.