Let’s Not Make a Deal

Imagine an economy running completely on clean energy. Imagine free healthcare, free education and high-paying jobs with guaranteed income for all.

What’s not to like? Pretty much everything except world peace and an end to poverty is included in the Green New Deal (GND), a “non-binding” manifesto introduced by U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), aka AOC, and U.S. Senator Edward Markey (D-MA).

We’d all like to achieve many of the Green New Deal’s goals. Who doesn’t want a pollution-free environment and the other assorted benefits in the deal? But the Green New Deal is never, ever going to be implemented. Just a few of the reasons why include:

  • The technology needed to eliminate the use of fossil fuel doesn’t exist.
  • The cost to even try to fulfill the deal’s promises would bankrupt the country.
  • American consumers would revolt at the restrictions it requires.
  • Some of its goals, such as providing a guaranteed income for anyone “unwilling to work,” will not be shared by a majority of Americans.
  • The “green” technologies it relies on are not so green.

Like the Paris Accord, the Green New Deal would be “non-binding,” so why bother approving it? The countries that signed the Paris Accord have done less to reduce carbon emissions than the United State has – and the U.S., you may recall, is no longer among the countries signed on to it.

A Christmas List for the Green Santa

While the Green New Deal was presented by two members of the Democratic Party, many Democrats, including House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, are distancing themselves from the embarrassingly naive initiative, which “reads like a teenager’s ‘Dear Diary’ entry for a perfect world, where everyone is entitled to all the ice cream they want, and a pony to boot,” according to Jonathan Lesser and Robert Bryce of the Manhattan Institute.

However, nine senators and 60 representatives have backed the GND, including presidential candidates Cory Booker (D-NJ), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), as well as likely candidate Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

It’s as if, after hearing about the craziness of a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, AOC and Sen. Markey got together and said, “We can top that!”

No price tag is attached to this wish-upon-a-star Christmas list for the Green Santa, but consider some of what’s included:

  • No more airplanes. Air travel would be replaced by building trains across the oceans. For an idea of how unrealistic this is, consider that California’s attempt to build a train from San Francisco to Los Angeles now has a projected price of $77 billion and is expected to take until 2033 to build, according to CNBC. San Francisco and Los Angeles are 383 miles apart. The distance across the Atlantic Ocean is almost 10 times that – 3,716 miles. The average depth of the Atlantic Ocean is 10,955 feet, although it can be as deep at 28,232 feet. Even if we succeeded in crisscrossing bullet train lines across the oceans to join every continent, based on today’s technology, airplanes are three times as fast as bullet trains. Would anyone be willing to spend 18 hours or longer on a bullet train to Europe? What happens when a train derails in the middle of the ocean? And how much more environmentally friendly would a train be than a plane?
  • No more fossil fuels. The GND calls for completely eliminating the use of coal, oil and natural gas within 10 years. Thanks to generous government subsidies, renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and hydroelectric power now produce 18% of the electricity consumed in the U.S., according to Fortune. Hydroelectric power, though, accounts for a majority of that percentage. It’s not clear whether it will even be allowed under the GND, but many environmentalists oppose hydro power.
  • No more nuclear energy. Nuclear power is clean. It produces no emissions that would result in climate change. In spite of opposition to nuclear power by environmentalists and others concerned about its safety, it still provides 20% of America’s energy. Eliminating nuclear power would make it even more difficult to meet the GND’s requirement of eliminating fossil fuel use within a decade.
  • No energy-inefficient buildings. All buildings – that’s “all,” as in every building in the U.S. – will be required to generate all of their electricity using renewable “zero-emission” energy by 2030.
  • No gas-driven vehicles. Electric transportation would replace fossil fuel transportation. Note that electricity is a far greater source of pollution than gasoline, even if you can’t see it spewing out of your tailpipe. Coal, petroleum, and natural gas generate about 65% of the electricity in the United States. So we will need to eliminate the majority of our electric power plants, while at the same time increasing demand for electricity that would be used for transportation.
  • No more fertilizer. We’ll be supporting family farms and “building a more sustainable food system that ensures universal access to healthy food.” We wonder what that will do to the price of food.
  • No non-union jobs. The GND would ensure “that all GND jobs are union jobs that pay prevailing wages and hire local.” So if you need an engineer with specialized skills and can’t find one locally, what do you do? And will GND employees be able to opt out from union membership, per the Supreme Court’s Janus ruling, if they’d rather not join?
  • No breathing. OK, that’s not included in the GND, but it may as well be.

It’s assumed by the GND drafters that solar and wind power are environmentally benign, but that’s not accurate. Consider, for example, that both require the use of a great deal of land for collecting power. Meeting America’s current electricity needs with wind would require 164,000 square miles of land, which is more than twice the size of California.

And you thought the Affordable Care Act was ambitious!

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