Columnists, Energy, Environment, Mike Rosen, National, U.S. Congress

Rosen: Progressives detach from reality with Green New Deal

Progressives can offer utopian public policy with utmost sincerity and conviction because they live in a fantasy-world unbound by reality and practicality.  It’s what they do.  But rational adults should be more sensible, especially those in the liberal media taking seriously and gushing over a preposterous delusion called the Green New Deal (GND), when it deserves, instead, withering ridicule.

It’s called the Green New Deal to associate it with the original New Deal, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s massive and historic expansion of government powers and programs during the Great Depression, revered by progressives as the gateway to socialism in America.

The GND is the brainchild of the Green Party, a radical fringe of socialists and fanatical environmentalists whose 2016 presidential candidate, Jill Stein, amassed a grand total of one percent of the popular vote.  The GND has already been praised by five left-wing Democrats aspiring to the 2020 presidential nomination, including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris Corey Booker and Amy Klobuchar.  With 61 Democrat sponsors in the House, it’s become a litmus test for leftist credentials in the increasingly radicalized Democratic Party.

Other Democrats who have championed the GND include Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib; two new congresswomen who proudly brandish their membership in the Democratic Socialists of America.

It’s provisions, promises and intrusions would run roughshod over our society, economy and your personal freedoms.  Under the GND, America will have only non-carbon renewable energy in just ten years in a “national mobilization” that will achieve “net zero emissions” and provide “economic security for all people in the United States.”  In a mere ten years, “all existing buildings in the United States will be upgraded” and all new buildings will be environmentally engineered to “achieve maximum energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability, comfort and durability through electrification.”

As Ocasio-Cortez explains, “We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast, but we think we can ramp up renewable manufacturing and power production, retrofit every building in America, build the smart grid, overhaul transportation and agriculture, plant lots of trees and restore our ecosystem to get to net-zero.”

Got that?  In Ocasio-Cortez’s fantasy, the GND will in ten years replace 88 percent of our current energy resources with renewables and do away with all airplanes and cows.  No more hamburgers and milk from Bessie (and no more Bessies) because her farts emit methane gas.  Airplanes will be replaced with fast electric trains.  If you’re planning a trip to Paris in 2030, better get a berth on a four-masted sailing ship now before they’re all booked up.  And Boeing will have to shutter its airplane plants and move those jobs overseas.

Further, the GND will outlaw all motor vehicles powered by internal combustion engines along with all vehicles deemed (by the government) as “unnecessary,” in favor of public transit.  So, if you’re allowed any car at all, you’d have to buy an electric one.  You won’t get much for your Ford F-150 pickup.  Who’s going to buy an illegal vehicle for more than scrap value?  And don’t buy a horse, instead, because they fart, too.

The GND declares “It is the duty of the Federal Government…to promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous communities, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth.”  And it promises the government will provide “a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all the people of the United States.”  Also, free health care and college, too.

Oh, and military spending will be “cut by at least half” and all U.S. troops will be withdrawn from overseas.  The GND blathers on like this for 14 pages.

Democrats have always outbid Republicans in political auctions for fabulous, but impossible, outcomes at someone else’s expense.  But this deal is just nutty.  The GND, at this point, is just a Congressional Resolution, not legislation, so it would have no force of law.  It’s more of a preview of coming attractions; a statement of where the Democratic Party wants to take America in the future and a blueprint for the Democrats’ 2020 campaigns for the presidency, Congress and the states.

We’ll see if any Democrats have the good sense and courage to repudiate it.

Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for CompleteColorado.com. 

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