THE GREEN NEW DEAL IS ABOUT ENERGY, NOT COWS
Democrats have introduced a bold new environmental proposal called the Green New Deal. The plan, in part, calls for the launch of a “10-year mobilization” — something of a moonshot, if you will — to reduce carbon emissions in the United States.
Most Democratic leaders acknowledge that it is, in part, aspirational. But so was a mid-20th century plan to put a man on the moon. So was ramping up steel production to win World War II. When did America give up on being aspirational, especially when several energy experts and economists have said this plan is within the realm of technological possibility — maybe not all in 10 years, but perhaps 15 or 20?
Republicans are mocking it — especially President Donald Trump.
“They want to take away your car, reduce the value of your home and put millions of Americans out of work,” Trump said at a recent MAGA rally, deriding the plan as a “high school term paper that got a low mark.”
No, they don’t want to take your car. They want to make your future car run on something besides gasoline and diesel fuel — something like electricity, powered by the sun, the wind, water or nuclear energy. And, by the way, already at least 37 percent of electricity in the United States comes from zero-carbon sources, including 20 percent from nuclear power. In the Tennessee Valley, 54 percent of power already is generated carbon-free.
In a nutshell, the Green New Deal — it’s really an outline, right now — would aim to slow climate change and catapult many industries into cutting-edge, low-carbon technologies. Specifically, it calls for supplying 100 percent of the country’s electricity from renewable and zero-emissions sources, digitizing the nation’s power grid, upgrading every building to be more energy efficient, and overhauling factories and transportation “as much as is technologically feasible” to remove greenhouse emissions.
Nothing in the plan is really new, except the urgency given to it by a new United Nations report that says Earth is on track to experience food shortages, fatal heat waves and mass die-offs of coral reefs by 2040 — 21 years from now.
But Republicans want us to think the plan is too “socialist,’ too expensive and too extreme.”
Pray tell: What’s more extreme than spending trillions on rebuilding after catastrophic floods and fires, crop die-offs and lack of clean water?
A recent report from 13 U.S. federal agencies — a Congress mandated report that the Trump administration released on Thanksgiving weekend hoping to keep it as out of sight as possible — warns that the American economy could lose 10 percent of GDP by 2100 without major action to rein in global warning.
Climate change is real, and it is within our power to do something about it.
It won’t be easy or cheap — or as fast as 10 years. If it were easy and cheap, you can bet Congress members would already own stock in it.
Mark Z. Jacobson, a Stanford professor of civil and environmental engineering, told The New York Times that 80 percent of the Green New Deal’s target of net-zero greenhouse emissions across the economy could be achieved by 2030, and 100 percent could be achieved between 2040 and 2050.
His research influenced a California law last year requiring the state to use 100 percent carbon-free energy by 2045, and he said the only economic sector that can’t be electrified with existing power technology are long-distance airplanes and ships.
“You don’t need any miracle technologies,” Jacobson added. The Green New Deal “is technically and economically feasible. Socially and politically, it’s a different question.”
On the heels of the national and United Nations climate reports, and the Democrats’ proposal, Trump’s staff has drafted an executive order to create a 12-member committee to examine whether climate change affects national security. (Never mind existing reports from his own government that already say it is.)
One of the committee members would be White House adviser William Happer, a climate change denier. The draft order did not name other officials to be appointed to the panel.
In 2015, Happer was called to testify before a Senate committee after the environmental group Greenpeace revealed that he had agreed to write a scientific paper without disclosing its funding at the request of representatives of an unnamed oil company in the Middle East, who were actually Greenpeace employees conducting a sting operation, according to the Times. In emails with Greenpeace, Happer wrote: “More CO2 will benefit the world. The only way to limit CO2 would be to stop using fossil fuels, which I think would be a profoundly immoral and irrational policy.” He also suggested to the purported funders that he not be paid directly. “My activities to push back against climate extremism are a labor of love,” he wrote.
This would be funny, were it not so tragically frightening. Our president ignores the U.S. intelligence community about threats posed by Russia election interference, North Korean nuclear plans, the Saudi murder of a U.S. resident and journalist, and now the danger posed by climate change. When that’s not enough, he pokes his finger in America’s eyes with fake summits, blind reports and now a sham climate panel.