So, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has quarterbacked this policy push. AOC and her supporters say we just had to do it because…we’ll all be dead in 12 years or less. The Green New Deal is the plan. It targets farting cows, the internal combustion engine, and America’s economy. It seeks to transition us away from fossil fuels within a decade, upgrade all buildings to energy efficiency standard, whatever those may be, and totally become what progressives lust for: an intrusive government that polices the private lives of the citizenry. This is a blueprint to save the planet, they say. The problem: it does jack to save it. Emily Zanotti broke it down over at the Daily Wire:
.@AOC on millennials and social media: "We’re, like, the world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change" pic.twitter.com/HjhbVyfFN4
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 22, 2019
The AEI report breaks down the GND into bite-sized policy proposals, assessing not simply the cost, but the proposed effectiveness of each legislative item to address the core goal of the GND: reducing American carbon emissions to a "net zero" by 2050.
The researchers' ultimate conclusion? "It is not to be taken seriously."
The "net zero" emissions proposal is particularly nonsensical, AEI warns, given that such an effort would require an estimated $490 billion per year investment in "green energy" and a sharp decrease in land available for agriculture. It also fails to address a very specific problem when it comes to U.S.-specific plans for climate change abatement: it fails to consider that the U.S. is only one of several heavy carbon-emitting nations, and that the vast majority of industrial pollution comes from the developing world and from countries like China and India.
In total, completely enacted, funded, and efficiently meeting goals — things AEI does not anticipate the GND would ever do — the full plan would cut the global increase in temperature by a whopping "0.083 to 0.173 degrees," a number, the report says, is "barely distinguishable from zero."
So, once again, the green warriors have a plan that will just wreck the economy, not save the earth, and create a society in which we can all suffer equally. Do you see a pattern here? Maybe it’s not about saving the planet, just another backdoor policy push to trash America, given that Democrats don’t like this country to begin with. You can debate that among yourselves. It still doesn’t negate the fact that the pattern with these folks is making apocalyptic predictions that never come true. They demand we sacrifice economic growth and prosperity, some of which soars into the trillions of dollars, in order to save the planet, only for them to be totally and utterly wrong. Re-glaciation did not occur. Yeah, that’s when global cooling was a concern in the 1970s and 1980s. They were wrong before and they’re probably wrong now. I, for one, will not think it’s good for society to nuke its economic security and prosperity because…some Berkeley trash liberal the thinks natural climate cycles spell catastrophe. Carry on and prosper, fellow Americans.