An interesting piece by Mona Charen at the Boston Herald
Democrats have to get serious about climate change
Do you ever wonder why people run for office? I mean, unless you’re a total cynic, you must assume that at least part of the motivation is wanting to do good. Sure, those who run for office want fame and prestige, but they also have strongly held views and want to affect public policy, right? So why in the world would they engage in sabotage of the ideas they hope to advance?
That’s undeniably what Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey have done with their juvenile Green New Deal.
Consider: The caricature of environmentalists is that they are just using climate change as a stalking horse for their true agenda, which is to socialize the entire economy. And lo and behold, what does the Green New Deal resolution call for? Net zero carbon emissions in 10 years, universal health care, guaranteed jobs for all, paid family leave, paid vacations, refurbishing every single building in the country to meet environmental standards, eliminating nuclear power and on and on. In fact, most of the resolution doesn’t even address climate change. Here’s a flavor:
The Green New Deal seeks “To promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (referred to in this resolution as ‘frontline and vulnerable communities’).â€
Okaaaaay. So what Ocasio-Cortez and Markey have achieved, along with all of the Democrats who’ve endorsed this childish wish list, is to make themselves look like dummies and to reinforce the impression that they are totally unserious about combating climate change.
They are unserious about solving the problem they say exists. And the GND shows it. It encapsulates what this whole thing is about, claiming there’s a problem and using it to solve every other Leftist issue. It creates bigger and bigger government, more control over our lives, more control of the economy. Everything. More taxes and fees. Limiting how people move around the country. Trying to force people into big cities.
Ms. Charen goes on to point out that one method for “solving” anthropogenic climate change, mainly in terms of carbon dioxide output, is nuclear power, which the GND is 100% against.
The greatest reductions in greenhouse gas emissions were achieved by France in the 1970s and ’80s when the country made a big switch to nuclear energy. They reduced their carbon emissions by 2 percent per year while still providing their people with affordable energy.
Heck, Hans Blix, who was the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency from 1981 to 1997, and was the head of U.N. inspectors in Iraq from 2000 to 2003, argues that nuclear energy is the way forward. It is cheap, reliable, and pretty safe. There have been very few incidents in all the decades it has been used. There have been three accidents in all this time. And few died. Skeptics might not agree on anthropogenic climate change, but, we could agree on the use of nuclear power to replace coal and oil.
They won’t agree to it, though. They’d rather hold to their guns and want to put up tons of wind turbines which only work when the wind blows and solar panels which do not work without the sun, which provide little energy for the cost and size of their footprint.
I would expect the amazingly stupid Miss Ocasio-Cortez to try this, but Mr Markey has been around for a long time, and understands what is and is not possible.
Thing is, he does understand that what is possible is motivating the liberal base, and that’s all that this is intended to accomplish. If the left can be sufficiently mobilized to get even further left Democrats nominated, and the hatred for President Trump is strong enough in 2020, maybe, just maybe they can get a Senate majority and Democratic president in 2021.
Then, all of a sudden, the socialist impulses can actually be passed into law.
“Then, all of a sudden, the socialist impulses can actually be passed into law.”
And wouldn’t that be special. Having communist fanatics like Elwood making law and enforcing it with SWAT teams. We’ve already seen a preview.
The good news is the best way to get a civil war going is to elect just those types and wait for the inevitable gun grab.
History shows that when the bad guys come for your guns, most people cheerfully comply. That’s why the Left keeps doing it. So far, ZERO instances of regular citizens standing up to police who come to collect guns.
The best we can hope for is tens of millions of people hiding their guns. But even that proves the point. If you won’t use them when the police come to collect them, what are you saving them for? The happy fact is that most (White) people are non-violent, non-sociopathic and not spoiling for a civil war.
You touch on the point that the communist desire wind and solar power. A point needs to be made that those are not clean energy sources. I wonder if the so called green energy is more toxic than nuclear power. Of course, you fall into the trap of arguing the issue and thus acknowledging that even a small part of their view is legitimate, which it is not. Notice how Jeff and z retreated on being presented with the greenhouse experiment which would follow the scientific method but clearly deny the existence of AGW.
Every genocide in history has been preceded by arms confiscation. I’m not sure I agree that it’s a “happy fact” that most white people are not spoiling for a civil war. What exactly would it take? The Founders went to war over a 1/2 cent stamp tax or thereabouts. We are over taxed, over regulated, dictated to by elitists who now control the media, Hollywood, education, sports, religion and more. You don’t think a nation who votes for illegals and 16 year olds to vote but wants to take your guns away need a “correction”? I do.
A small very vocal group of the colonists, who later were called “founders” carried the weight of the revolution and only a small percentage of them cared about that tax. They were never more than 1/3rd of the population. Another 1/3rd were hard Torries. The remainder just wanted to be left alone because they knew that no matter who won, they were still on their own. The founders went to war over a long string of usurpations and we would all still have pictures of the Queen on our money today if George III was not clinically insane at the time. to say they went to war over a 1/2 cent tax is the same as saying the war of 1861 was about slavery.
If, as you claim, there is a seething undercurrent of war among white Americans, where is the evidence? Where are the politicians being publicly egged? Where are the police protection details who look the other way they their charge gets feces flung at them? Other than the annual leftist nutjob, where are the shooting at politicians? Where are the angry mobs carrying pitchforks to the capitals?
Even very vocal people on the internet claiming that guns are needed in private hands to somehow restrain the government have taken zero action to restrain anyone. Just talk.
“Dems need to get serious on climate changeâ€. Because the world is going to end in 12 yrs isn’t serious enough?