The Green New Deal, a scheme cooked up by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, and championed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, imagines a future in which fossil fuel-generated energy has been abolished and the world runs on energy derived from solar, wind, and other renewables. The controversial proposal is estimated to cost some $93 trillion. Proponents, though, insist that the Green New Deal must be implemented to save the Earth from the ravages of climate change.
Carbon capture technology, currently being developed by the private sector, would seem to achieve some of the goals of the Green New Deal without the wholesale destruction of the fossil fuel economy. Nuclear power and even planting trees (lots of trees) have also been proposed as part of a more sensible solution. However, a recent development at MIT has made the Green New Deal obsolete even before it has been enacted.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in partnership with a company called Commonwealth Fusion Systems, has tested a magnet that will enable development of the first practical fusion power plant, slated for 2025. The demonstration plant, dubbed SPARC, will use the new magnet to contain the superheated plasma that the fusion process creates in such a way that it generates more energy than it takes to maintain. A working fusion power plant would contain the power of the sun and would create clean, limitless energy.
Net power output has been the holy grail of fusion research and development for decades. If SPARC works as expected, the demonstration plant will lead to commercially viable fusion power. Fusion will be the key not only to providing the world with abundant energy but also to becoming a means for recharging electric cars and operating desalination plants to bring water to the parched areas of the world, including Southern California.
As a happy side effect, the advent of practical fusion energy would likely prove to be bitter gall and wormwood to Sanders and the rest of the Green New Dealers. Besides this development making the Green New Deal superfluous, Sanders might note the list of people who have invested in Commonwealth Fusion Systems. According to CNBC, the investors include Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Jack Ma, and Michael Bloomberg, billionaires all.
Sanders does not like billionaires, as he recently noted on Twitter: “People understand that at a time of horrific income and wealth inequality, when half our people live paycheck to paycheck, that the wealthiest people must pay their fair share of taxes, and that we should use that new revenue to improve life for middle class and working families.”
Sanders and others have proposed a wealth tax to despoil billionaires of their money and spend it on schemes such as the Green New Deal. The $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” bill contains lots of tax increases that are said to hit corporations and wealthier people.
The MIT/CFS partnership suggests that the private sector has at least one solution to climate change well in hand. If Sanders and others like him were to succeed in hiking taxes, the goal of a carbon-free future would be hurt, not helped. Wealthy entrepreneurs such as Gates and Bezos would have less money to invest in enterprises such as fusion energy. Past experience suggests that the government would only waste the money. The Solyndra scandal comes to mind.
A better idea than enacting a gigantic tax-and-spend scheme such as the Green New Deal or the “human infrastructure” bill would be for the government to get out of the private sector’s way and let it deal with climate change. Washington could enact tax incentives and throw a little money toward research and development. But aside from that indirect approach, the federal government should do nothing.
Bernie Sanders, AOC, and the rest of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party will likely revolt against a private sector approach to climate change. Their entire identity has centered on big government. But, with certain exceptions (the Apollo program comes to mind), that approach only leads to frustration and waste.
Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space and politics, has published a political study of space exploration titled Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? as well as The Moon, Mars and Beyond, and, most recently, Why is America Going Back to the Moon? He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.
