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Green baloney

20 Feb 2019 | OP ED Watch

In the National Post Rex Murphy lowers the boom on the new American left’s “Green New Deal”, crediting Ocasio-Cortez for being “a Greener who says what is on the Green mind, who doesn’t water down the message to avoid scaring off people whose feet occasionally make contact with the ground” before pointing out that she wants to shut down Fed-Ex and Amazon by grounding all airplanes, refit every house, home and shed in America in under a decade with an imaginary workforce, and shut down GM, Ford and their unions while guaranteeing an income from some imaginary source even to those “unwilling to work”. Oddly, she’s not alone.

The “Green New Deal” is so popular the U.S. Congress is going to vote on a non-binding resolution endorsing it from Ocasio-Cortez and, in the Senate, Edward Markey of Massachusetts. And Democrats are in a bind over whether to support it because it’s so popular despite or even because of its ludicrousness and overreach into everything from nationalized health care to housing.

Well, some are. Every Democratic Senator running for President has endorsed it and it has 11 Senate sponsors. Nancy Pelosi on the other hand dismissed it as a “green dream” and Associated Press, a news outlet, warned that Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “wields Green New Deal as bludgeon against Dems” in a cunning ploy to let their own party’s resolution come to a vote so they’ll look radical. They could foil this plot by voting against it, presumably. Except they just can’t look away.

David Leonhardt, a premium New York Times columnist who tries very hard to be reasonable, says “The Green New Deal is not a good piece of policy. But I’m glad it exists…. because climate change and the stagnation of mass living standards are both defining challenges for this country…. The plan doesn’t ask what is politically possible today. It asks what needs to be done and tries to change the definition of politically possible. ‘Climate change is an unprecedented emergency that requires unprecedented action,’ Michael Grunwald writes in Politico, ‘so America needs to try to do seemingly impossible things.’ The Green New Deal rightly rejects the choice between helping American workers and taking on climate change…. By focusing on the terrifying state of the climate, the plan will likely nudge other Democrats toward their own ambitious climate proposals.” Thus “[f]or all its flaws… the Green New Deal is a useful call to action.”

Other Democrats say don’t fixate on the details, there’s lots more where that came from. Including, evidently, Ocasio-Cortez herself, who has been trying hard though unsuccessfully to distance herself from a very embarrassing FAQ about the Green New Deal emitted by, of all outfits, her own office. And an especially troubling critique by Nicolas Loris on The Daily Signal says that if the U.S. did implement the Green New Deal the one thing it would not to is change the global climate; even using the alarmists’ models, a complete cessation of US CO2 emissions by 2030 would reduce the temperature increase by 2100 by 0.137 degrees. (And if every industrialized nation did the same, 0.278 degrees.)

Are there so few left in the Democratic party or among climate alarmists willing to say bluntly, with Rex Murphy, that nonsense is nonsense no matter how totally much you care about the planet?

3 comments on “Green baloney”

  1. Some people see things the way they are, and ask why? Occasional-Cortex imagines the way things couldn't be, and asks why not?

  2. We could ground the planes for everyone but the politicians - they, of course, have to fly to get their job done and make progress.
    Their needs are important - nothing like the situation for the rest of us.
    How did I not see this before ... silly me.

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