As well as calling for the dramatic expansion of the country’s renewable energy resources, the plan proposes:Converting America to a centrally planned economy might lower our emissions just by depressing economic output, although even that isn't certain. China's Communist economy worsened pollution.
*“Upgrading all existing buildings" in the United States to make them energy efficient, and developing a smart grid.
*A radical overhaul of the country’s transport infrastructure to eliminate emissions “as much as technologically feasible.” This would involve expanding electric car manufacturing, installing charging stations “everywhere” and developing high-speed rail links to “a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary.”
*Restoring threatened lands and hazardous waste sites.
*Working with farmers to build a more sustainable food system that “ensures universal access to healthy food” and clean water.
*The plan also includes social justice objectives such as "high-quality health care" for all Americans, a guaranteed job "with a family-sustaining benefit provisions.” Another goal is “to promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, de-industrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth.”
The plan is, however, just as advertised: an attempt to take over the entire American economy, so that close to 100% of what we are doing is directed by the government and paid for by the taxpayers. It is unlimited in its ambition; even if all you wanted to do was 'upgrade all existing buildings,' that would probably be too hard to accomplish in practice. But that's just bullet point one, and we'll throw in all the social justice goals as well.
If you don't support this plan, you must hate puppies.
ReplyDeleteStop being such deplorable cynics. This plan is easily attainable if the bitter clinger dirt people would just get with the program and stop interfering and wrecking the idea. And if they won't, guess what? We don't need them anyway , and we do have a rail network and a lot of empty space to put them in.
ReplyDeleteSo on a serious note, is it necessary to go to college to get this dumb, or is it a genetic trait?
Most people...especially most journalists...seem to have no comprehension of how hard electricity is to store in large quantities. Again and again, I see articles by people who don't even realize that a kilowatt is something different from a kilowatt hour. Measuring battery capacity in kilowatts is like measuring you car's gas tank capacity in horsepower.
ReplyDeleteWhat is likely to happen, even short of an apocalyptic "green new deal", is growth of unreliable "green energy" which will drive both high costs and diminished reliability for electricity users.
I just read a calculation estimating that retrofitting all houses and commercial buildings in America, in ten years, would require retrofitting more than 39,000 per day.
ReplyDeleteUniversal employment and then some!
Paid for by eating the rich, no doubt. And when we run out of rich people? Well, there will always be a new "top 1%" to feed into the mill, comrade.
ReplyDeleteDavid Harsanyi has a nice short critique over at The Federalist:
ReplyDeletehttp://thefederalist.com/2019/02/07/ten-most-insane-requirements-green-new-deal/
What bothers me the most, I think, is that otherwise unacceptably intrusive federal government policies will seem relatively innocuous by comparison.... And the ratchet will continue to move left by yet a few more clicks.
ReplyDeleteUniversal employment is actually easy....just require that all electricity be generated by humans turning cranks geared to generators.
ReplyDeleteSometime around 1900, GE's legendary scientist Charles Steinmetz helped out a young PR man who was desperately seeking a way to get headline coverage on the sale of a new turbine-generator.
Steinmetz picked up a pencil and did a little calculating…and quickly determined that this one rotating machine could do as much physical work as 5.4 million men. The slave population in the US on the eve of the Civil War had been 4.7 million. To the young PR man, Steinmetz said: “I suggest you send out a story that says we are building a single machine that, through the miracle of electricity, will each day do more work than the combined slave population of the nation at the time of the Civil War.”
See my post Of Energy and Slavery:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/42837.html
developing high-speed rail links to “a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary.”
ReplyDeleteCoast to coast bullet trolley cars. Governor Moonbeam has...entered the House. And now identifies as young, photogenic, and female.
Eric Hines
Press release:
ReplyDeletehttps://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5729035/Green-New-Deal-FAQ.pdf
This is what Harsanyi is critiquing. Although I prefer Megan McArdle's comment:
The most bizarre passage in the Green New Deal is the admission that after they've junked every car in America, replaced every power plant, and renovated every single building within the space of a decade, they might not get around to slaughtering all the cows by their deadline.
Actual resolution:
https://www.heartland.org/_template-assets/documents/02-07-19-Green-New-Deal-FINAL.pdf
Call me crazy but I think this is going to be very popular. The press release is flaky as all get-out but the resolution itself just sounds good: lots of work for everyone at good wages and benefits, all while saving the environment. There's even a line in both documents about stopping the transfer of jobs overseas and growing domestic manufacturing in the US. Plus it's thinking big and isn't that what this country is all about? Tackling the big problems boldly and fearlessly and solving them while making life better for everyone? We've been small and self-conscious too long; time to show the world that American still has what it takes to save the world!
The sponsors are calling it another New Deal but what it evokes for me is that period after WW2 when the United States prospered and grew. This looks like an alternate form of populism although it isn't.
More cynically, I'll point out that the resolution insists that:
indigenous communities, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth
should be heavily consulted and heavily involved in designing and implementing this Green New Deal. That's a lot of people who will have cause to think they'll get a piece of this pie. In fact, that's pretty much everybody except financially solvent white suburban and urban men (of, apparently, any sexual preference or gender identity).
"There's even a line in both documents about stopping the transfer of jobs overseas and growing domestic manufacturing in the US."
ReplyDeleteFor many kinds of manufacturing, the economics is quite dependent on the cost of energy, especially electricity. Raise electricity costs by 50% or 100%, you can kiss a big part of American manufacturing goodbye.
The Canadian Christopher Chupik said that when Canada offered $2500 CAN to upgrade private homes, contractors came and caulked around the windows, and replaced the insulation under doors (door sweeps). At most each house got $400 worth of "improvements" and the government [taxpayers] were charged the full $2500.
ReplyDeleteNice work if you can get it...
LittleRed1
Raise electricity costs by 50% or 100%, you can kiss a big part of American manufacturing goodbye.
ReplyDeleteTrue but I'm pretty sure the Green New Deal (GND) supporters will say their plan won't raise electricity costs. (That was Obama and he's so 2012.) The press release specifically says (with regard to a carbon tax but can be taken more broadly):
We cannot simply tax gas and expect workers to figure out another way to get to work unless we’ve first created a better, more affordable option. ...a carbon tax ... would have to be preceded by first creating the solutions necessary so that workers and working class communities are not affected. ... it misses the point and would be off the table unless we create the clean, affordable options first.
Clearly the expectation/claim is that moving to renewable energy sources will not adversely affect the price of energy. Is that realistic? I don't think so. Does it sound good? Oh, yeah. Will people want to believe it's possible? You betcha.
"Clearly the expectation/claim is that moving to renewable energy sources will not adversely affect the price of energy. Is that realistic? I don't think so. Does it sound good? Oh, yeah. Will people want to believe it's possible? You betcha."
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid you may be right...as suggested in my earlier comment on this thread, there are a lot of people with PhDs and other advanced degrees who understand electricity far less-well than electricians and mechanics with a high school education.
Harsanyi: "Markey and Cortez want to “retrofit every building in America” with “state of the art energy efficiency.” I repeat, “every building in America.” That includes every home, factory, and apartment building, which will all need, for starters, to have their entire working heating and cooling systems ripped out and replaced with…well, with whatever technology Democrats are going [to] invent in their committee hearings, I guess."
ReplyDeleteLR, Someone was already kind enough to outline a way that this would be scammed by enterprising folks.
ReplyDeleteNeoneocon is doing some interesting writing about this proposal. Of course, it's possible I think it's interesting because she agrees with my take on it. :+)
ReplyDeletehttps://www.thenewneo.com/2019/02/08/the-green-new-deal-and-the-lefts-grand-plan-part-i/
I agree, neoneocon seems to have their number. Ditto one of her commenters, who points out that the Green Dream is powered by the infinitely renewable and even expanding resource of voter ignorance.
ReplyDeleteI didn't read the comments so I'm glad you did, Tex - that's a great line.
ReplyDelete