The opening part of the Green New Deal taken directly from the Green Party, US web site is below. The document in its entirety can be seen on their website.“The Green New Deal will convert the decaying fossil fuel economy into a new, green economy that is environmentally sustainable, economically secure and socially just. The Green New Deal starts with transitioning to 100% green renewable energy (no nukes or natural gas) by 2030. It would immediately halt any investment in fossil fuels (including natural gas) and related infrastructure…”
The Green New Deal is just plain insane and incredibly naive. First, if we do nothing, according to the Green folks, the Earth will end in 12 years because of greenhouse gases, but Armageddon has been predicted in the past with the end date passing.
For argument’s sake, let’s say we all scrap our internal combustion vehicles, 270 million, home furnaces, barbecue grills, and air travel, planes replaced with high speed rail. Also, for argument’s sake let’s say we build the hundreds of thousands of charging stations they call for; who builds them? Who pays the bill? Where does the electricity come from to charge the electric cars/trucks? If it’s wind and solar electricity, how do we store the electricity for dark calm days? Can we use toxic batteries?
The average government subsidy for electric vehicles now is from $2,500 to $7,500. If we all must replace our current internal combustion engines, and with our current vehicles having zero value, how do we pay for the new vehicles costing from $38,000 to well over $100,000? For new heating and cooling systems that will cost many thousands per home? We have ten years to do this by the way.
Who pays for the vastly expanded electric grid? Where are the millions of toxic storage batteries going to be built? Who pays to replace the new fire trucks? Ambulances? Service vehicles? What is the environmental impact of producing all that metal/plastic/rubber?
Let’s be the adults in the room and look at reality, not the ivory tower academic, Shangri-La, asinine, in a perfect world we could _______(fill in the blank) folks. First, if we replaced our vehicles with electrics, it would not be anywhere near the number of vehicles in most of the world. China has more vehicles than the U.S., and three other nations have a higher rate of vehicle ownership than we do. The number of vehicles with internal combustion engines is expanding disproportionally in other countries, as is the use of coal-fired power plants in the third world. The population of the world will double in 30 years, with the population of the U.S. remaining stable. We are 6% of the world’s population now, and going down rapidly, as is our percent of the world’s energy use.
Whatever we do will be a drop in the environmental bucket today and even less in the years to come. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me; what happened to the hole in the ozone layer that was going to fry us all? Whatever happened to Global Cooling or Global Warming for that matter? What we refer to as climate change is a “heads, I win tails you lose” situation — the climate always changes.Back to the cost of the Green New Deal. If high speed rail worked, we would have it. If electric vehicles were practical, we would have them. If the government spending billions of dollars for green jobs worked, we would have them after President Barack Obama’s green stimulus package spending $831 billion.
Ten years to do what the Green Party wants is totally stupid, and they are backing off the original proposal at better than light speed. The WW II type effort they called for would not be even close enough to do what they proposed. The media should be tearing up this “Green New Deal,” but they just praise its forward, positive, environmental, message.
Are you prepared to purchase electric vehicles and retrofit your home with electric heat? Scrap all your fossil fuel equipment replacing it with electric? In ten years? Got that kind of money? Neither does our government.
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