Pirate's Cove

It’s wonderful that the Washington Post is giving a platform to a hyper-partisan hyper-Warmist hyper-virulent Trump hater to peddle this type of hyper-leftist Progressive (nice Fascism) stuff on the Green New Disaster, er, Deal. You know, the one which Democrats, including its main sponsor, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, refuse to hold a vote on in the House, and freaked when the Republicans forced a vote on it in the Senate

The Green New Deal isn’t too big. It’s not nearly big enough.

As progressives have coalesced around the Green New Deal, its proponents say that its ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions would, if adopted, protect the Earth from catastrophic global warming. An article in the Nation called the Green New Deal “our best hope for saving the planet,” because it would “confront climate change on the scale that this crisis demands.” Some present averting climate disaster as a kind of national race against a foreign enemy, like a Manhattan Project for the whole economy. “In the 1960s, the U.S. pointed the full power of its military-technological industry at going to the moon,” wrote the Atlantic’s Robinson Meyer. Rep. Alexandria “Ocasio-Cortez wants to do the same thing, except to save the planet.”

So why won’t she demand a vote on it? She has tweet pinned about ‘climate change’ and the GND and she retweeted one on the 3rd about the need to declare a climate emergency. Perhaps an actual reporter, rather than the typical sycophants, can ask her why she won’t demand a vote? Oh, right, because she said it’s more about messaging and never meant to be passed. But, voting is rather the point of elected officials, is it not?

You never would know from these encomiums that the Green New Deal cannot stave off calamity by keeping the planet from warming 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures, the threshold endorsed by most scientists. That’s because, like the 1930s New Deal and the 1960s space program, the Green New Deal is focused on the United States.

Space program? Huh what? Do they still teach history in schools?

Yet the United States is currently responsible for only 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and that share is declining as pollution from the developing world rises. So while radical cuts to U.S. emissions — which are the largest per capita after a few Persian Gulf nations and Australia — are necessary, they’re insufficient. Every other rich country also needs to make similar cuts, immediately. The developed nations with large emissions (Saudi Arabia, Canada, Germany, Japan, Britain and others) can afford their own Green New Deals; perhaps they can be persuaded to do their parts, if we do.

But developing nations — such as India, Pakistan, Ecuador and Malaysia — aren’t going to unilaterally constrain their own economies. If carbon-based energy sources help them compete in the global marketplace, that’s what they’ll use — unless, economists say, they get financial help to develop sustainably, with industrialization powered by renewable energy instead of oil, gas and coal. And there’s only one place they can get that help: from wealthy countries like ours. Giving them cash needs to be part of any Green New Deal.

So, Adler rather admits that the GND will “constrain”, in other words, destroy, the economies of nations, but, hey, we’re rich, we can give away money from our “constrained” economy to other nations, right? You don’t mind ponying up money while you’re cost of living skyrockets, right? If you still have a job, that is.

Conservative critics, pointing to inflated estimates of its possible costs, have said the Green New Deal is too big. But when it comes to saving the planet, it’s not nearly big enough. (snip)

The next president could go further and tell allies such as Germany, Japan and Canada that their status as major trading partners protected by the U.S. security umbrella is now contingent upon their making steep emissions cuts…

Right, right. The same people have thrown snit fits over Trump telling allies to pay more of their fair share for things like NATO, as well as to lower their tariffs. But, hey, we have a planet to save from….well, something that is almost completely natural and has been happening throughout the Holocene, as well as the Earth’s history. Adler keeps going on and on (it is an extremely long piece for the opinion section), but the point is to force the GND internationally, implementing the big tax, big government, big loss of freedom to government ways of the Green New Deal.