The disastrous Green New Deal

Democrats: The 1930s called and they want their policies back.

The darling of the Democratic Party, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Senator Ed Markey introduced a resolution for a “Green New Deal” in the House and Senate, respectively. Although this resolution is not binding if passed, it would serve as a guide for Congress to follow in passing other legislation. So let’s break this resolution down into its two components.

The “Green” part of this resolution focuses on climate change. While I diverge from most conservatives in the fact that I see climate change as an issue, I don’t think this resolution approaches it in the proper manner. The majority of the document focuses on finding solutions to unspecified pollution sources. This outline is surprisingly something I agree with since it calls for carbon neutrality, clean water, and clean air. However, this document assumes that it’s the government’s job to force the private sector to reach this goal. The private sector is constantly taking the environment into consideration when developing new products and is becoming “greener” by the day. Civil engineers are switching to a higher standard of sustainability to ensure their work is environmentally-friendly from the start of construction through the life of a structure. Even the manufacturing industry takes the life cycle of products into consideration before production even begins. In addition, scientists and entrepreneurs are looking for solutions to these problems on a daily basis, and are consistently producing results.

The idea that we can overhaul the entire infrastructure of this country in the roughly 10-year outline this plan gives is ludicrous. Not only would we need to destroy the fossil fuel industry, which provides almost 63% of the energy in this country, but also the nuclear industry (20%), according to the Green New Deal FAQ document published by Ocasio-Cortez. So the goal is to replace a whopping 83% of the energy sector in 10 years. Not only that, but the deal also proposes repairing $4.6 trillion dollars in infrastructure (and that’s before any upgrades). The document then moves on to attempt to eliminate air travel and replace it all with high speed rail. Now, as a civil engineer, I would love job security like this. But there simply aren’t enough civil engineers to go around and do this. Hell would freeze over before any of that happened.

Not only that, but, there is no explanation for how to actually pay for it. It’s assumed that the money will come out of thin air in a manner similar to that of the 2008 bailouts. But what this document’s authors failed to realize is that the bailouts were given in the form of loans that were supposed to be repaid, unlike this proposal which just throws money at the problem for no potential return. And, during the Obama era, government-backed clean energy companies went bankrupt even after being subsidized by the federal government. This is an extremely risky investment to make in companies.

Now to the “New Deal” portion of this resolution, a.k.a. the ‘how we plan to turn the U.S. into a socialist country’ portion of the document. From unionizing just about any job you can think of to promises of universal health care, this document details exactly what socialists want to see in the U.S. The part that proves this is a socialist document is without a doubt where it states, “Economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work.” In other words, we all get the same paycheck even though a disproportionate amount of people will have to work harder for less. They might as well have copied and pasted portions of the communist manifesto into that resolution — it wouldn’t read much different.

Now for a brief history lesson on the New Deal: it didn’t work, and it actually prolonged the Great Depression according to numerous economists. To propose something that actually failed the people of the United States, and continues to fail today (i.e. the Social Security system), it’s probably not best to brand using the New Deal.

Overall, I have to say the concept of going carbon neutral is great, but it is the proposed method for how to get there that I find ridiculous and short-sighted. Let the private market do its thing and you will see how green the U.S. can really be. After all, the U.S. is not the main problem here. If you want to really make a difference by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, start in China, where they produce roughly 1/4 of all greenhouse gas emissions every year. You might be able to make a larger and more effective impact by addressing the problem in the only major country where greenhouse gases are projected to continue to rise.