Released earlier this month, much to the chagrin of flatulent cows everywhere, was a proposal to commandeer and overhaul the world’s largest economy and the infrastructure supporting it. Congressional progressives’ resolution is a hodgepodge of diagnoses that purportedly all relate back to greenhouse gas emissions. Among the “crises” the resolution identifies that are tied to climate change are a supposed lack of access to clean water, a gender wage gap, and a stagnation of hourly wages since the 1970s, which is made less alarming when confronted with real income per capita average growth rate of 1.57 percent since 1970. All of these, and more, are claimed to be byproducts of climate change.
The solution, congressional progressives profess, lies in initiatives such as retrofitting all existing infrastructure, overhauling transportation methods with a focus on high-speed railways, and a national mobilization of the workforce to enable all this and more. The stated goal is to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Unironically, released along with the plan was a FAQ sheet justifying the net-zero target arguing that it might not be feasible to ground all air travel and exterminate all farting cows in 10 years. Not only that, but it specifies their desire to decommission every nuclear power plant, but is unsure that it can be done in a decade.
Interesting that the self-proclaimed combatants of climate change want to eliminate a form of energy harnessing that emits zero greenhouse gases after its initial construction. The whole plan reeks of former President Woodrow Wilson’s “moral equivalence of war” mentality, which is one that justifies centralization of power and mobilization of the population during times of war, only for issues that are not armed open conflicts. Even the most draconian implementation of the Green New Deal domestically would not affect any country other than ours, which only emits 15 percent of the worldwide production of greenhouse gas. Central planning of this type has been proposed to combat anything ranging from economic depressions, to poverty, and a Cold War.
The Green New Deal’s underlying motivation is no different. If the progressive diagnosis is even partially correct, history has shown their central planning prescriptions fail time and time again. The Great Society created perverse incentives like discouraging marriage for some and hindering self-sufficiency for others. Wilson’s “war socialism” resulted in the jailing of political dissidents and broad censorship of fellow citizens. Former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal put the great in Great Depression.
If not central planning, what, then, can be done to address the problem? Hint: it’s already being done.
There are alternate initiatives being advocated that would address the climate change issue without falling back on central planning. One such organization is the American Conservation Coalition. The ACC is dedicated to the “promotion of free-market and pro-business environmentalism” in all facets of politics today. This mentality runs directly counter to the Green New Deal’s grab bag of solutions. About the Green New Deal, Nick Lindquist, ACC’s National Policy Director, stated, “[it] will drastically increase energy costs, impacting lower and middle-income families as well as small businesses the most.” That cost burden is already being felt by industry and consumers alike, but pales in comparison to that which would accompany the Green New Deal.
Free market innovations are already improving the way in which we harness energy. One such innovation that the ACC’s energy research report features is carbon capture, a process that scrubs carbon from the air and is estimated to pull 14 percent of airborne carbon from the atmosphere by 2050, which is being used by one company to bottle carbon dioxide and then sell it to Coca-Cola for use in its soft-drinks. Another example is the switch from coal to natural gas, that has been spurred by the fracking boom which made it more cost-effective to burn natural gas for energy consumption. Coal not only became outdated as an energy source in terms of burn-cleanliness, but innovation made it more profitable for businesses to make the switch themselves. Change of this kind takes time, but it avoids the drastically negative consequences of enforced central planning. These are the exact innovations Lindquist has in mind when he says, “American enterprise is already leading us to a cleaner, greener future.”
Overcorrections occur often, and this Green New Deal is no different. Central planning is a mindset as old as time, and its track record remains abysmal. Progressive acolytes and bureaucrats alike fancy themselves grandiose innovators, as if they’re not rehashing the same botched theory time after time. The real innovators are already in action, implementing reform that not only can stand on its own two feet, but will stand the test of time. Government hijacking will just get in the way, as it always has.
Brad Johnson is an author in Cincinnati, Ohio.
