Is David Wallace-Wells' "portrait of our best understanding of where the planet is heading absent aggressive action" -- in the realm of POSSIBLE?
Will Wells' apocalyptic scenarios be "our schedule", IF WE WAIT for "the devastation along the way (to) shake our complacency"?
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html?gtm=bottom>m=top
Tom Cotton and Mitch McConnell are too far removed from objective reasoning to serve us as prognosticators. So, just stop pulling that thread.
We should address those Wells' questions "yes" and "yes", until they move comfortably OUT-of-the-range of possible.
In theory, an idea like the Green Deal does that. We might get our heads out of "the sand", so how about some optimism?
The hierarchy? How about: (1) avoiding a spendthrift failure; (2) tracking into the right efforts; and (3) doing enough. Certainly the prerequisite TO EMBARK on "Everyone's Odyssey" is accepting a transformation.
To steady our collective resolve, TRY, for example:
"Form follows function" - Louis Sullivan
"God is in the details." - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
1
Second comment; I'd like to know the breakdown of the age of today's commentators. I'd say more were over fifty than under fifty. If you are over fifty you don't have feed this mule. Under fifty and you better be proactive; it's one unhappy, stubborn mule.
Gail - On the plus side for Trump there is no record of him ever driving off on vacation with a German Shepherd strapped to the roof of his car.
5
Let us attack all the new ideas on the Left while just throwing metaphorical spitballs against Trump.
1
"I hear the message well, but I lack the faith" (Goethe, "Faust"), particularly when the message is spread by leftist radical Democrats, led by a militant socialist, wet behind her ears.
1
Most Americans are seriously underestimating the impact global warming is going to have on the USA, the planet, and the human race by 2030. In the meantime, please continue ripping apart public figures who want to do something about it.
I hate to be a nay Sayer But! those darn windmills seem to be killing a lot of flying creatures, Bats, eagles etc
1
This article is disrespectful to the President of the United States. Thank you.
1
The Republicans get what they want because they ask for the moon and then pull the Dems further and further right. To combat that, you have to do the same - ask for more then you would ever expect and then negotiate to the position you want. It's negotiation 101. But when you start with the reasonable position, their unreason just pulls us to the right - and they win - yet again. Let's learn this time.
2
The answer is probably small modular factory built nuclear reactors. Another possible answer is the traveling wave reactor. Why? Numerous reasons one being safety believe it or not. Nuclear reactors are safer than Wind Trubines. Just like Trump, Ocasio-Cortez is allowed to have her opinions but she is not allowed to have her own facts. The new nuclear reactors are "walk-away" safe and do not require any outside power or human effort to safely shut down. Nuclear power is constant, it does not depend on the wind or the sun. Worried about waste? The traveling wave reactor will burn nuclear waste, depleted uranium, natural uranium, mixed oxide fuels from obsolete nuclear weapons, etc.
The major problem with wind is that the available power is proportional to the cube or third power of wind speed. At half the design wind speed of 27 mph, the available power is 1/8. At 9 mph or 1/3 the design speed, the available power is 1/27 which might not overcome the friction. Assumming, you could store power, it would take an area that is twice the size of Wyoming with wind turbines at optimal spaces.
3
This is the first house resolution I've ever seen that was purported by its critics to be a final bill that would avoid all debate and become instantaneous law and destroy the solar system.
2
You missed the biggest and, arguably, best carbon free energy source: enhanced geothermal extraction. It runs all day, all year; it's relatively simple to respond to variations in load; it's spread over enough states to get pressure on the Senate and in the largest two states for pressure in the House. Plus, these plants are mostly invisible to people, so complaints will be minimal and they don't have the ecological risks of wind turbines. As a bonus, drilling and production engineers can move from drilling for oil to drilling for hot rocks. Total winner if you ask me.
2
This commentary misses so many basic facts. Perhaps the author should have consulted with an engineer or physicist, or two.
First, 20 years is about all we have before some very drastic things begin to happen. Second, pretty substantial infrastructure change is essential if we are to have any hope of s solution. That's where liberal solutions come in, since how else are we to get buy in? Third, there is no mention of stranded assets. 30 trillion dollars of fossil fuel futures, when only 2 trillion can be burned if we are to limit temperature rise to 2C. You can bet that the oligarchs will not give this up lightly. Fourth, the Princeton wedges make it clear that wind can only supply about 1/10th of our carbon free energy.
We need technological solutions to our energy and infrastructure demands. And demands they are. Even primative humans needed an energy source. Civilizations need even more. Do not look to the private sector for this. They haven't this will or the wit.
Fortunately, significant progress has been made at research crnters. Anyone who is serious about climate change solutions, needs to familiarize themselves with the progress and where we need to go with these technologies, i.e. solar, storage, batteries, hydrogen splitting, thermoelectrics, laser hydrogen-boron fusion, advanced lightweight materials, advanced insulators, etc. These all need to be worked into our civilization's infrastructure and conciousness.
Anything else is the real fantasy.
8
The Green New Deal is a grab bag of progressive wants that isn't really focused on Green. It's a plan to have a plan. It's a way for new Democrats in the House to say, "We're here, and we can make resolutions now!". Check our H.R. 763 - much more practical, focused and not politically impossible.
1
Wind power is intermittent. Sometimes the wind doesn't blow. Every single watt of wind power has to be backed up a conventional source (coal, nuclear, natural gas). Near my small crossroads community, a German company relocated from Germany, in part because of a much more reliable electric grid, which is increasingly rare in renewable energy crazed Germany. Wind power is expensive, unreliable and not green. If our environmentalist friends want wind power, why don't they volunteer to put a 652 foot tall turbine in their backyard?
3
Can we add as an addendum to the in-need of editing new Green Deal a science literacy test all GOP candidates have to pass. Failure once bans them from ever being able to run for office but commits them to one year of mandatory volunteer work to any community that suffers from the yearly catastrophic effects of climate change.
1
The canary in the coal mine might end up being Trump. For once couldn't he admit being dead wrong on a policy issue? Answer no.
This stupid resolution typifies the Democrats: great on the issues, terrible on messaging. What idiot advised the dems to go ahead with this?
3
The Green New Deal is far more ambitious than any piece of legislation in these times is ever likely to be, but it has a number of excellent ideas and ideals in it.
Let McConnell and Trump belittle it. Smart voters will understand that they don't care about water, air and other pollution nor do they have any solutions for the climate change they claim isn't happening.
Today, I am more concerned with Trump's plan to declare a national emergency at the same time or soon after he signs the new spending bill. That declaration is itself a national emergency.
1
I get the impression, the Green Queen has forgotten or has not heard of, The Industrial Revolution. As awful as the living conditions are today, here in America and every where in the world, they surpass the conditions 100 years ago. Today, the poorest person in America has a smart phone, a method of electronic payment, access to central heat and air conditioning, the ability to travel by car or plane and access to modern medicine. The key word is access.
Compared to the richest person alive 200 or more years ago, today's poor aren't doing too bad.
It's wonderful that all of the greenocity will produce so many "good" jobs. Because the aviation professionals will need to transition quickly, to maintain their standard of living. I presume all of the new rail passengers will see a lot more track laid, to facilitate their travel. And, the real bug-a-boo with public transportation today, is trying to get somewhere in less time than it takes to walk. She's smart, she'll get that sussed out.
You ask and you shall receive.
1) Open up Yucca Mountain immediately for letting all 57 states get rid of their nuclear waste/depots.
2) Radically transform the nuclear regulatory agency so that construction of new nuke plants doesn't take 25 years and 50,000 pages of paperwork..and $5 billion each.
We have a nuke reactor sitting on the MIT campus and nobody seems to be overly worried an AlQueda or ISIS surprise attack.
Continue to expand fracking for generation of natural gas.
Continue to convert coal plants to natural gas fired plants over the next 32 years.
Continue to build solar gardens/farms without mandates that every house have a solar array on their rooftop.
Look at new technology such as the SheerWind tech with some federal subsidies that make rooftop renewable energy practical even in urban environments (they just filed for Chapter 7). This tech doesn't kill eagles/birds and it's 5x more efficient and 1000 times less ugly than the huge GE windmills.
Push for dedicated bus lanes in major cities where possible.
And stop subsidizing Elon Musk's Tesla's. They have a larger carbon footprint than my gasoline fueled car.
1
Gail, I feel bad that you have bought the wind industry's lies without looking more deeply into the wind energy question. No way is wind energy "clean," given the materials required to build a wind turbine. Nor is it exactly "clean" to cause suffering in wind-installation neighbors. Nor is it "clean" to site wind turbines with their huge footprints, in unsuitable places, such as Vermont where I live. Here, the immense disruption of mountain tops required for turbine installation creates ideal conditions for catastrophic flooding, as well as destroying wildlife habitat. And yet, you appear to be calling for massive and thoughtless build-out of a problematic technology, the deployment of which requires a kind of care and caution that profit seekers notoriously lack. Please inform yourself before you become a wind cheerleader.
1
Most states in our country have renewable energy targets and many (red and blue) are making good progress. Electric cars will within a decade be cleaning our air, but also distributing power storage all around the grid, increasing the ability to capture, for example, excess wind power at night when demand is low but the breezes still move.
So lots of states have renewable targets. And a group of them have done nothing in that regard (I'm looking at you, Mitch).
No ambition. No future vision. Conscious decision to leave their state out of the changeover in global energy and transportation systems.
Here's a map. Look at the dingy grey states.
http://www.ncsl.org/research/energy/renewable-portfolio-standards.aspx
I'm saddened by this piece. Is there ever a time when idealism might win? Is there ever a time when people might actually there will be no nay-saying: we are going to get this done. An olympian wins with a broken leg - yay! Some gets through college against all odds - yay! But God forbid a nation can come together and accomplish something great in a time when we have a final opportunity to do this great thing before New York is known as Atlantis. Let's see how much we hate idealism then.
1
@Brian "idealism" by itself NEVER wins! You need to have a feasible plan, and you need some determination and work and often you need to get other people to buy into it enough that they will cooperate.
Just yelling "I'm idealistic!" solves nothing.
3
By opposing HR 1 and Green concepts , McConnell is exhibiting the death rattle of the GOP. To quote Victor Hugo, "Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come".
You can't "start" unless you start somewhere; you can't "get" somewhere unless you have a place to get to.
2
Wind generation of electricity, and solar generation by photolysis are nice ideas. But there are minimum criteria required to make them feasible. For example, to make wind viable, the minimum average wind speed at the site must be 20 km/h. Not every place has that so other options must be found.
1
America is made of ideals, some of which reach their full potential and some of which don't. The Monroe Doctrine was an ideal at a time when the United States could not enforce it. Wilson' Fourteen Points was an ideal that could have led to a League of Nations strong enough to prevent the Second World War. Roosevelt's New Deal didn't end the Depression but it kept a lot of people going until the Depression was ended by World War II. The Green New Deal seems unlikely to reach its goals. But we'll never know until we try.
global carbon tax with proceeds invested in renewable energy projects will transition to carbon free world on timeline proportional to amount of tax
1
Mitch McConnell snickering at the GND at his Q&A was too much.
Is he in need of entertainment while on his RBG death watch?
The only thing Mitch is good at is manipulation for GOP power and money. He got the tax reduction and 2 judges. Has he nothing else to offer?
The GND is kind of all over the place. Why not start imagining what could be done? Obviously, not all at once. The GOP horror of having to even think about something/anything David or Charles Koch do not want is too much for Mitch. Let him laugh.
Some of the ideas in the GND may grow into very popular and doable green energy initiatives with jobs.
1
This immature hyperbole and caricature making is all that republicans know how to do or want to do. The GOP is a lobbying and trolling firm only and not a political party at all, because political parties are made for actually governing something, and they don't really do that stuff. In fact, republican opposition to green new deal kinda policies, or really any democratic proposal, is an opposition to new jobs, infrastructure investments, new technologies, new products, increased economic development, even apple pie, at least if its organic apples. Conservatives are so afraid of the future and the new that they would risk the interests of the commonwealth just to escape any kind of imagination or work they'd have to do to make anything happen. I mean lets face it, if you've been as busy and working as hard at not doing a darn thing about much of any issue, as long as republicans have been, and still have been rewarded, why would you wanna have to really "work" at anything?! Republican voters should be in mint, really, because at some point down the road, in a future where it takes actual effort to make even decent living possible, those voters will be seen as quite rare and vintage.
1
Just put a wind farm in the Potomac right next to DC, the hot air winds generated by the politicians could power the country for a long, long time, and it is a never ending source of energy!
2
@bill d - don't forget a digester to extract methane from the political and lobbying manure.
1
The beauty of the "green new deal" is that someone is actually putting real ideas out there, as a cohesive outline for a plan..and sure the GOP is making fun of it, because they have nothing to offer, not one little thing, to look at the future and say "let's make it better". All they offer is more of the same, let's increase the use of fossil fuels, let's make sure to use Coal when market forces have killed it, let's give huge tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations, who in turn glommed the money and created little to nothing for the future (outside the money their families will inherit, of course,from the windall), worse the GOP looks back to the 1950's, surprised they aren't proposing we make cars like back then, big, bloated, fuel inefficient cars that got 6 mpg, spewed out thousands of times the pollution, had no safety equipment (yes, folks, seatbelts weren't required until the communist 1960's), bring back DDT so we can kill off all those pesky Eagles and Hawks, get rid of civil rights laws protecting women and minorities, so white men can rule once again......
This might be a bold, audacious set of ideas, but at least they are ideas that can be talked about, debated, other ideas put in their place, compare that to the insipid stupidity of "Make America Great Again" that is nothing more than an empty slogan; the Green New Deal is an attempt to make America great again, the way that the New Deal created a new day for a lot of people .
3
I am proud of AOC for taking on climate change and disappointed that Nancy Pelosi dismissed her plan seemingly the second it came out.
As one of the generation that will face tremendous challenges dealing with a warmer, less predictable, and new climate, AOC is right in laying out a plan. As a progressive, she is right to bring up social issues that could be exasperated by bad implementation of climate policy.
The excuses not to embrace clean energy are often wildly out of date. Wind and solar are cheaper than oil and gas and coal, especially if you consider environmental issues, including the creation of new Superfund sites, hideous ideas like mountaintop clearing, the relentless pursuit of fossil fuels creeping into national lands and being done despite earthquakes and pollution in the case of fracking. Electric vehicles represent a huge system level battery to even out production issues. Some wind locations have constant wind. The southwest has relentless sun and lots of badlands. Grid improvements can be made and spreading out energy production should actually help not hurt the grid.
And the Green New Deal is the first real push for anti-climate-change in a long time.
3
The only wind you should worry about is the one coming out of your mouth.
There's nuclear fusion reactors going into prototype soon. Musk's hyper loop appears to be feasible. Goods can soon be 3D printed on demand, instead of made in bulk and shipped and distributed around the world.
Pay attention, because once you do, you'll see that it's not hard to make the future a green one with a little work.
1
@RS - there have been fusion reactors in prototype since the 1970s when they were telling us "just another couple decades". Hyperloop might be feasible but that doesn't mean practical or effective at scale. And 3D printers are great for low-volume or non-standardized things - absolutely not a replacement for bulk manufacture for most of the things created in quantity.
We have things that can be, and are being, deployed today that do reduce emissions. All the wonder stuff will be great when and if they come to fruition, but time's a-wasting.
@b fagan I'm sorry, but you have no idea what you're talking about.
Tokamaks are improving quickly now, and projections for efficiency crossing 1:1 is 2021 I think. From there it's game on for Fusion. As for hyperloop, nothing in R&D is guaranteed to be practical or effective at scale, that's why it's still in R&D. Doesn't mean we should stop R&D. And they already have 3D printers that are working with robots and AI to build small steel walkway bridges, all without a single human interaction. Real, actual, functioning bridges. Technology grows exponentially, and we're still a long ways off from 2030.
You're in for a helluva ride.
@RS - I'm not saying stop R&D, I'm pointing out that we have functioning technologies that start us on our way to electrified transportation and fossil-free electricity. And I'm expecting that we'll be benefiting from being better and better able to observe and design chemical processes and novel materials to help us along.
If fusion's putting commercial power on the grid in 2030 I'll be delighted. The school paper I wrote in the late 1970s (including then-current advances in tokomak design) will have finally come true.
Mr. President - If coal were "indestructible" it wouldn't burn, would it? Other things coal isn't - 1) clean 2) beautiful
5
Climate change is real and it's accelerating. In a few short years, these Congress persons will be struggling to explain how they voted against an outline that might have saved lives. Might have saved the planet.
We can hope that that struggle leads them to support further measures--measures that will be needed.
AOC played them and played them good. If we survive this mess, she will deserve a lot of the credit. If we don't, it won't matter.
2
Are we sure he's never had a pet? Maybe he's never had a pet that lived.
3
The tweeter-in-chief is a master at bringing up and talking about things totally off the point. Along with his lying he makes the perfect trickster.
Your right that nobody in their sane mind cares about Mar-a-Lago or anything else he owns. He has continued to blatantly run his businesses while supposedly running the country. To observe the types of near criminals and indicted criminals he surrounds himself with, and in important positions, it doesn't bode well for us.
Isn't it great that under the regime of the tweeter-in-chief we elected people who still have ideas and speak out on them. The Green New Deal is an ideas. From ideas come invention and then progress. McConnell and Cotton are dinosaurs that probably never had an inventive idea. If either one did or their minions we would have had affordable health care by now.
I'm glad The Tweeter doesn't have a dog or cat or goldfish. People with pets need a heart.
1
Dear Gail Collins,
This column is one of your best!
Thanks!
"Donald Trump does not love dogs, has never had a dog, and in fact has apparently never had any pet, even a goldfish, his entire life"
Well, except maybe the members of his cabinet..
3
You attempts at comedy do not work well at all here.
An existential problem cannot be solved with incremental changes and we are really, really running out of time on the climate disaster that is upon us. You obviously do not understand that. The Repubs understand it thoroughly and you have fallen for their propaganda.
Just consider the immense climate wreckage that will result from agricultural changes; changes in the soil will interrupt our food chain causing not only immense economic damage but of course shortages of food, and unavailability of basic food commodities. Think about the meaning of that and then add in the effects on real estate wreckage at the sea coast, the water shortages and one can go on and on with details that you have apparently missed. Yet, you criticize something you apparently know nothing about.
You join the corporate/Republican world with wanting incremental changes to problems of huge consequence. You do not understand and have done a large disservice here.
Most unfortunate
3
We are going green for one reason. It is getting cheaper all the time and already is cheaper than coal or nuclear. Plain old economics will decide this. Fortunately it will be good for the planet and our health too.
2
The individual or libertarian answer to global warming is to get rich enough to afford a place in whichever part of the planet is most habitable (Alaska, Siberia, Greenland, or, if things get really bad, an underground city). Other answers, being communal, are socialist.
2
By 2030, even with a full push for alternative energy, not much will happen. We just use too much energy and, with most of it fossil based, it can't be changed over quickly. Fossil fuels are too easy to harness and heavy infrastructure just is not that easy modify--it took 100 years to build it all over the planet when the population was much less.
A real plan would have a timeline of 50 to 100 years with reasonable goals along the way. And we are not smart enough to do such. (The ultimate irony is that the changeover needs to be accomplished completely independent of climate change)
@glennmr That's an irony alright, but the ultimate irony is that we don't have time for that. If we were to stop emitting carbon tomorrow, global temperatures would continue to rise because of carbon already in the air. And yet our carbon emissions continue to increase.
That carbon is not going anywhere fast. And carbon sinks are disappearing. The ocean, becoming acidified, is declining as a carbon sink. And forests are shrinking.
So global temperature change is accelerating. We haven't even slowed down the increase yet.
1
There is one clean energy source that Green fails to mention. Nuclear power has a long and safe history in the USA. It must be part of any effort to save the planet before the tipping point is reached. A good start would be to begin storing the long-lived waste in Yucca Mountain now that Harry Reid hasn't the power to stop it.
In time, technology will evolve to eliminate the contents. Fusion incinerators, perhaps?
1
Two words: Carbon Tax.
2
With all the poodle talk, I was surprised not to find references to Mitt tying his dog to the roof of the family car. Be that as it may, as others have pointed out, The Green New Deal is an idea, a proposal, a work in progress. We have to start somewhere. Either you believe in climate change or you don't. If you are an unbeliever, you think the whole thing is utterly ridiculous, and you can't be bothered, despite the fact that the flood waters are already up to your ankles If you live in the real world, and do believe in climate change, surely you must agree that we are not blessed with an abundance of time to solve this problem. If the Green New Deal does not meet your standards as a good starting point for addressing climate change, by all means, improve on it. If you don't like the Green New Deal, by all means, come up with something better. But to keep poking fun at it, and treating it like a cynical branding campaign is deeply irresponsible. Democrats who disparage the Green New Deal by mocking it or calling it the "green dream", are just as much of a problem as the climate change deniers on the right. If you seriously believe in climate change, this shouldn't be about pointing fingers or playing politics. We are talking about the survival of our species, which I hope we can all agree is kind of important, and might be a matter of some urgency.
2
“A tremendous form of energy in the sense that in a military way — think of it — coal is indestructible,” he babbled last year, as he announced an end to President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan.
Indestructible in what way?
Burn enough of it and there’s none left, unlike solar or wind.
The coal fired power plants could certainly be targeted and destroyed.
The pollution it produces is destructive in various ways, both environmentally and biologically, especially to the miners.
How much longer America? How much longer must we deal with this ignorant fraud.
2
Wind mills are noisy and kill a lot of birds.
Actually the best solution is safe nuclear fusion energy and that is what will happen.
By 2030 (if there is enough investment) fusion energy will become a reality and AOC 's Green dream will come true.
1
@David Gold
Cats kill way more birds than windmills. And cats can be noisy too.
Fusion will not be on the grid for a long time if it is feasible. The ITER has a lot of milestones to prove, which won't be done for at least another 20 years...and that is based on the current schedule.
1
@glennmr Actually I meant cold fusion not ITER. There are serious companies working on it right now (https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/compact-fusion.html), but it needs more funding . MIT managed to set humanity back by 30 years in 1989 by 'debunking' cold fusion, but it is back.
@David Gold
Cold fusion is an absolute myth...unless coulomb's law of electrostatic force is "repealed." And that will not happen. Hence the lack of any theory or any repeatable experiments.
Physics always bats last.
2
We could undertake all of the options discussed by the author, but I think we would only just be tilting at windmills.
1
This column reminds me of Hamilton Jordan's reflection on the Carter presidency. He said in retrospect, they tried to do too much instead of picking just a few issues at a time to focus on. All the same a nice first effort for a rookie member of Congress.
“While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him”
I don’t imagine that Bob Dylan is nearly as nihilistic as most journalists seem to be.
A friendly reminder to all Republicans: St. Ronnie Reagan started his public career condemning Medicare as socialism. He ended up defending it as president.
You know what they say about karma...
3
I hope to see DEMs write and pass clear, clean legislation, not the world’s biggest ball of legal spliced twine. Oh and no more GOP trick legislation: bills with titles that say one thing and the contents doing the exact opposite. A “green” bill had better be about protecting the environment. A bill about addressing historical wrongs should be labeled as such.
1
Just as McConnell and Ryan suffered through and also benefited from the Freedom Fries Caucus, so do Schumer and Pelosi from the Green Wing of their party. An aggressive incrementalist approach is probably best.
1
Let us not forget that as recently as December 2017, the Kennedy clan (along with the Koch family) successfully opposed a wind farm planned for off the coast of Cape Cod.
A particularly galling example of NIMSOV (Not In My Scenic Ocean View).
3
Love the idea of a wall of German Shepherds! As long as they don't chase the wildlife away -- the wildlife that would be critically endangered by a real wall, from butterflies to jaguars.
1
and speaking of wind power : wouldn't be nice if the US study how other countries harnessed the wind for economic/ commercial goals ? or other, efficient ways of producing Energy for development. wouldn't that be a giant step to REALLY making America great again!? when one follolws Gail Collins' writings one realizes how, with her lively, witty writing, she pokes COMMON SENSE into the political vernaqcula in DC. and elesewhere. but do they get it ?!
thanks Gail !
Although Senator Cotton’s statement was hysterical overstatement and we do need to do a great deal more regarding climate change and environmental degradation, he does have a point that increased governmental regulation does lead to a loss of personal freedom and discretion. It is an inevitable conflict for which to much of the Democratic left has become unconcerned or oblivious. While we must move on these issues we must do so with care and a dispassionate attention to the science. The single greatest promise of America is the journey towards individual freedom. While there are situations in which freedom must be curtailed, it should always be a major consideration in public policy.
1
How does governmental regulations lead to a loss of personal freedom? The freedom to buy leaded gasoline and paint? The freedom to breathe polluted air and drink polluted water? The freedom to fish the very last fish out of the sea?
You probably mean the freedom to drive SUVs, and use incandescent lightbulbs. Perhaps you’re unaware that the very existence of SUVs is the direct product of a 25% tariff on imported trucks. I making cars that are legally trucks, American car manufacturers took advantage of price protection provided by the federal government.
I fail to see how regulation per se curtails my freedom. I certainly see many ways in which the laws and the economy force me do use more energy and create more trash than I would prefer.
2
Increased government regulation leads to less freedom for certain businessmen, but provides greater freedom for the rest of us!
It can give us economic security, clean air and water, an end to lead pollution and environmental racism, it can give us decent health care at affordable prices so we can have the freedom to enjoy life, it can ensure our freedom of association, of assembly, of speech, and the press, it can ensure our right to vote and the freedom to exercise our democratic rights...
Stop trafficking in shibboleths of the Right and the corporate elite. Government regulation can enhance our lives and increase our freedoms, not curtail them!
Regulations are essential to a civil society — without them life would be chaos — and they are, especially, key to a socially just, free society.
3
“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”
Harriet Tubman
We’ve got to start somewhere.
5
The reasonable man conforms to society’s expectations. The unreasonable man expects society to conform to his expectations. Therefore, all progress is due to the unreasonable man.
Oscar Wilde
2
Now that the Democrats are in control of the House and have a mallet to swing, please pick winnable battles first, not a bunch of scattershot ideas that the average person can’t easily understand or get behind. Focus, Dems, focus. Remember, the Knucklehead-in-Chief got elected because his people could recite three- or four-word cheers, like “Lock Her Up.” Dems shouldn’t confuse voters with big words and lengthy explanations if they want to win over the misguided. “Good Jobs Now” is an easy slogan to start with. Too many people have to work two low-paying jobs to make ends meet. Not good enough.
7
I love Gail, but Jedidiah Britton-Purdy's editorial today (no comments allowed) is far more educated about the realities of how we must deal with climate change. It will take a revolution in how we live: grow food, eat, build homes, travel. You can laugh at it as unrealistic, and it probably is, given the world we live in, but seeing as the world we live in is swiftly hurtling toward the abyss, take a moment to enjoy your comforts now--your V day chocolates and roses, well-stocked supermarkets, vacation plans, hope for the kids and grandkids— because they will disappear.
4
@Margaret
Jedidiah Britton-Purdy's editorial seems to match Gail's well and both point to AOC's New Green Deal as being reasonable. While incremental change will help (contrary to the woe is me, it is too late tripe that seems GOP-driven), the rate of change needs to be fast, not slow. Changes such as those listed at
https://drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank
can be made at a faster pace with political and government backing. New energy sources and C02 capture (As well as more damaging greenhouse gases) need tax incentives and federally funded research and support. The grid is an essential part of infrastructure. All this will create jobs and create new winners/losers.
Also since the GOP seems to swing the pendulum as far into environmental destruction as imaginable, some swing to the left is necessary. Beyond Obama's tepid embrace of alternate energy. Beyond what folks are comfortable with.
The GND is laughable. Outlaw the internal combustion engine? Get rid of commercial air travel?
How could anyone seriously float such an absurd proposal?
5
You’ll be pleased to know it’s not a proposal. Not yet, anyway. And you’ll be pleased to know that eliminating the internal combustion engine and air travel were not serious intended. Certainly the comment existed to point out the difficulty of reaching the goal of zero carbon emissions.
1
Your comment is off. It refers to how to mitigate the waste of air travel. It’s an idea not the solution. That follows but this is typical rhetoric from many to discredit the Dems.
The answer, my friends, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind
1
Dinosaurs lived for 165 million years and became extinct 65 million years ago. Perhaps they emitted too much gas. Prevailing theories, however, point to a massive climate-altering asteroid or excessive volcanic activity. Earth has experienced several Ice Ages. We are apparently living in one currently. This is serious climate change—before the advent of homo sapiens.
Two decades ago, I watched an MIT meteorologist sarcastically query an eco-warrior, “What science?” Today, there is significant—irrefutable—evidence that polar ice caps are melting and global temperatures rising. Animal and plant species are struggling.
Grandstanding, no. But there is something to be said for grand ideas. Historical precedent teaches, but it can also limit. One hundred years ago, did anyone imagine that man could rocket to the moon, send satellites into space, develop the Internet, communicate wirelessly throughout the globe? It happened. The United States enjoyed its first black President and we are relishing the distinct possibility of experiencing life with the nation’s first female President.
Historical precedents suggest alternative sources of energy—wind, water, solar power. Just ask the Dutch. But it will be up to our scientists and industrialists—as well as our politicians—to produce viable non-polluting sources of energy.
We can also encourage and reward traditionally agrarian or pre-industrial lifestyles. Some people call them communes or kibbutzim. We can all become kibbutzniks.
Your opinions are always so cute, even playful like when you and Bret do a duo, almost like nothing is critical, and you know why others are have got it wrong. Bret is never cute since as a conservative he sees the future in the past, while hoping some enlightened billionaire will find the words to keep the rabble back.
"Let them eat cake" if advance now would possibly have the same result. We'll need a bigger basket.
Do you ever touch the ground? Do your elevated income and status keep you on the side of know everything but do nothing? Do you have children or grand children? What world do you want for them?
If the NGD were just a goals document, the Democrats shouldn't have introduced it as a resolution. They should have adopted it as a policy whitepaper and begun the hard work that would have translated it into a series of actual bills later on.
Instead they scored an own goal and everyone's mad at Mitch McConnell for letting it roll in.
Gail, you usually feast on irony. But "people who want to re-engineer the entire country by fiat can't handle a PDF' doesn't interest you at all?
Democrats goof? The headline is "Republicans pounce."
Democrats reveal their true agenda and are shocked to find people don't like it? The headline is "Republicans pounce."
Democrats ask for a do-over in a process they're supposed to master? "Republicans pounce."
You need to give more people more credit for paying more attention than your take assumes they do.
3
So let's review. For the last 40 years Republican policies have consistently benefited the few at the expense of the many, when given power they have demonstrated they have contempt for government and governing, used shutting down the government as a fund raising stunts, continue to enable the current administration that has proven to be one of the most corrupt, incompetent and shameful...ever..
Yet, the Green Deal is gift to the GOP???
4
@wise brain. You seem to,have forgotten the 8 years of Obama. Remember whe he shut down the government? Remember Solyndra?
“So far offshore you wouldn’t be able to see them from Mar-a-Lago,”
I believe that would be a reference to Trump's constructive eviction tactics in Aberdeen Scotland where he built resort condominiums that the entire community loathed. Trump then tried to block wind turbines that went up off the coast of Aberdeen and claimed no one was buying his condos because the wind turbines spoiled the view.
No, Trump, no one wanted to buy your condos BEFORE the wind turbines went up.
Creep.
3
What short memories we have! Remember back in the halcyon days of the early teens, when there was all these dire warnings about ACA? "It was Socialism! It was going to destroy the economy! Death panels are going to kill your grandmother!" And look at it now. It still has problems but overall it has worked and it's popular and the same people who railed against it are now supporting it. But they are still the same Chicken Littles who scream about taking away cows and planes. This is too important to be distracted by sophomoric antics because it affects life on Earth. No kidding-we're playing with the future of our children and children's children. Even though a confederacy of dunces are lining up against you, keep pushin' AOC, keep pushin'.
4
Establishing new economic opportunities on the basis of "green" energy - win-win - was a pillar of Hillary Clinton's campaign.
@Jonathan. Remember when Van Jones was the green jobs czar?
Gail, you failed to mention Robert "black lung" Murray's $300,000 gift to Trump's inauguration committee. What a joke. It kinda makes one question the value of our sacred constitution and democracy in general. Go Federalist Society!
2
Remember when Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican Party’s conservative presidential candidate in 1964, famously prescribed that “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice”? Interesting how the wheel turns. The present day question for the Party of Fossil Fuels is how can “extremism in defense of” the continued existence of our very planet be a “vice”?
"We are mentioning this in order to point out that Donald Trump does not love dogs, has never had a dog, and in fact has apparently never had any pet, even a goldfish, his entire life."
What can a dog -Do for a man who already treats most of his staff and workers as dogs?
Maybe if he knew dogs had feelings he actually WOULD own a pack just for something else to abuse?
So let's all be grateful there's no loving pooches getting kicked around daily by the reptile-in-chief.
Hi, Gail. People looking for more ways to work on reducing our industrial fossil mess can look at Drawdown.org.
Here's a ranked list the present of what they call their "Plausible Scenario"
https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank
Here's an interview with the head of the organization.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/opinion/a-smorgasbord-of-solutions-for-global-warming.html
Lots of approaches from personal (eat more plants, less meat) to the industrial (wind farms, nuclear, efficiency) to the social/global (educate women and provide access to birth control)
Many more in the list - showing estimate cost, payback and CO2 reduction
Those unwilling to work should be given economic security. How pathetic.
2
Gail reminded me of something. Where is Hitler in our day to day political discourse? For Republican politicians, it used to be anyone we didn't like, was Hitler. This was Republican orthodoxy! Sadaam was a Hitler; Quadiffi was Hitler, and so on. Assad was spared because Obama figured Americans knew something about Hitler.
Well, just a suggestion. But socialism is a risky one. What if people discover that in some socialist coutnries, life is pretty good?
I find it extraordinary that nobody except the scientists that measure, weigh and count are willing to say that we have at most 12 years to turn this world around and if we don't all we can do is bend over and kiss our derrieres goodbye.
While Europe realizes it must reduce its cattle and reduces meat and dairy production America's 18th century constitution gives us idiots in the White House and Blair House and a kook as Senate Majority Leader. Even as your founders understood that God is confined by the laws of the universe and is forbidden the miracles that might save us from ourselves God is invoked to disobey his own laws that forbid miracles and magic.
The GOP and its so called conservatism may be great as an ideology but for the past forty years it is a fail proof recipe for our extinction and little else.
I find it insane that America is debating the wisdom of debt over the long term when unless real problems are addressed there is no long term. I am seventy and wondering if this is our Human Comedy or Human Tragedy.
5
Gail, you do realize that you've just laid the groundwork for your next reader suggestion column. What kind of pet should America buy him to help the Donald assuage his loneliness? A more cautious journalist would of course stipulate that venomous reptiles are off limits, but we all know you're above that sort of squeamishness. Nonetheless, I do suggest you keep intestinal roundworms out of consideration. They're kind of a mess to take care of.
1
Gail Collins is right about the bad decision by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Edward Markey to throw everything but the kitchen sink into the 15-point House Resolution they planned for showing support for things like clean air, clean water and reducing dependency on fossil fuels.
Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell will have their schoolboy fun with the Resolution, as will Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who fouls the air every time he opens his mouth to rail against Hitler or Stalin.
I like the Collins idea about countering with a charge against Trump of dog abuse. Maybe she can enlist the help of Mitt Romney, who can demonstrate his enlightenment by tying Tom Cotton to the roof of the family station wagon and heading to Canada.
3
I wonder why the vaunted Pelosi allowed this to go forward. Never in real life has a freshman anything been allowed to grandstand in my experience. Experience. The dems are handing trump the election with this and other dumb stuff. You must give people more credit for paying attention as another commentor said.
1
@Mary Travers
You're right. I have to note your famous name and the fact that the late, great Mary Travers was famous for singing "Blowin' in the Wind." Any relation?
As always, the Republicans are the Can't Do party: they Can't Do healthcare, they Can't Do Immigration, they Can't Do Infrastructure, they Can't Do the Environment, they Can't Do Civil Rights. The things they can do: shovel money to their owners, the Koch Brothers, and other assorted plutocrats, bankers and corporations; trash the planet by gutting any environmental regulations, demonize and vilify Democrats and anyone else with some ideas about how to save our country and the planet, insult minorities and immigrants, and figure out new and inventive ways to deprive people of the right to vote. Oh, and they are pretty good at treason; they do that pretty well, at the presidential level, and in Congress, with Russian money laundered through their terrorist arm, the NRA.
Basically, the Republican Party is a criminal mafia impersonating a political party. They need to be removed from every office they hold, from President to dogcatcher, and then investigated, indicted, tried and jailed for their 40 years of criminal assault on our democracy. They need to be in jail, not running a government they profess to hate, on behalf of neo-fascist plutocrats with only contempt for the people they pretend to represent.
2
We need action. It’s not that funny, I know. Give us action, dear miserable “leaders.”
1
Of course Gail, your column brings to mind that 'iconic' windmill lover, Don Quixote. Better that Don then the one in the White House.
1
It will be typical for cynical GOP leaders to make fun of the Green New Deal. The joke will be on them, though, as they will come across as backward, boring, stupid, unimaginative. While the GOP flips through a Sears and Roebuck catalog looking for archaic solutions, innovators like AOC are moving upward and onward.
2
"Donald Trump does not love dogs, has never had a dog, and in fact has apparently never had any pet, even a goldfish, his entire life."
I believe this says everything about the man. Owning a pet requires capability to care for a creature other than yourself.
The lack of compassion and empathy exhibited by the bully in chief renders him incapable of pet stewardship... no wonder he is such a crummy president.
1
Best face upon the most miserably inept roll-out since the ACA. I am sure AOC appreciates it Gail.
1
>"Socialism may begin with the best of intentions, but it always ends with the Gestapo,” tweeted Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas.
Tom would certainly know. Two people I knew made the mistake of going to Sweden, and were never heard from again. Presumably they are rotting in a dungeon, being tortured or worse.
Gail, when you mention "neurotic states" moaning over the prospect of a Green New Deal, what immediately occurred to me was that almost the entire country seems to be in a "neurotic state" at this point. Most of us are just hunkering down and waiting for Mr. Mueller's shoe to drop! And one more thing - Ocasio-Cortez represents part of The Bronx as well as Queens. I should know - she's mine.
2
Good idea putting a wind turbine across from Trump's gold course in Scotland - that monstrous windbag should keep it spinning 24/7.
Oy Vey! With "friends" like Markley and Ocasio-Cortez ... who needs enemies?
These two are basically Yippies, doing street theater. When you are far out of power it's fun, reasonably harmless, and the leftie version of Palin's "splodey heads splode."
But when you are members of the US House of Representatives, engaging in this kind of thing puts you in the league of Michele Bachmann, Steve Stockman, Allen West ... and the perpetual Louie Gohmert.
Note that only Louie hangs on ... being a loopy provocateur doesn't have legs; your constituency usually figures out that theater isn't getting anywhere.
There are a raft of problems with this "GND" but the worst is obvious: it's not a "plan" in any sense at all. It's an aspirational laundry list of wants. For those of you who know the joke, it's "In the future comrade, we will all eat peaches and cream!"
It's also an obvious power play, in large part precisely because it is such an inchoate mess. There is nothing actually legislatable in it. In case AOC reads this, the job of representatives is to legislate. That means drafting something with details that pass muster.
You cannot legislate kumbayah. You cannot legislate "MAGA" either. Empty sloganeering and bloviation is unlegislatable.
AOC must grow up quickly, if she hopes to be anything other than a Michele Bachmann. She also needs to find some staff who actually know what they are talking about, and listen to them.
4
This is not harmless. I have to defend my values against a few of my children who like trumps values. Well actually only one child since trump and stuff like AOC is off the discussion table with anyone who has trump and republican values. We all pay attention but to different values. You should hear them on the Pope.
Who knew that Tom Cotton was such an expert on the warning signs of socialism and Hitler? I am eagerly awaiting his assessment on such actions as Muslim bans, declarations of the press being an enemy of the people and finding good people among neo Nazis.
He should also advise Trump that wanting more Norwegians to emigrate to the United States warrants reconsideration. Those Scandinavians who have been citizens of socialist countries for decades could be real fomenters in disguise.
1
Cotton's Churchill quote is fake.
1
Here we have the leaders of a political party that wouldn't recognize an authentic idea if one of them walked up and kick them in the shins. At least the Green New Deal is a discussion-starter for actually doing something, anything to save the planet.
But with worthy public servants like Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump shaping the narrative, all discussion revolves about ripping good ideas to shreds. This is all that the GOP knows how to do.
2
Top left of the Times front page should be where the Times tracks the earth's environment degradation. Not Trumps latest bad smell.
Below that report on Trumps latest destruction to our way of life.
And below that place the bad smells if you must. But leave out the weasel words, the ambiguity, the soft peddling, and worst of all is the New York Times describing an established fact as alleged.
Ps: Why take the ability to comment away from subscribers. Probably the best feature of the paper. And what kind of strategy is it to take away what the Post offers for every article, column, and more.
3
Agree wholeheartedly with iconoclast. Also, wholeheartedly and resentfully the twitter connection to these opinion pieces
The tell is this wholly disingenuous aside, "...increasingly famous Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez." And who, pray tell, has engineered this fame? Welcome to the land of self-fulfilling prophesy.
If Ms. OC was, representing, say, a district in Minnesota, it would probably require her to utter some sort of trope to get the attention of the eastern media.
The real story, never to be read in the New York Times or any of the other eastern media in its orbit, is the astonishing fascination, tinged with a weird eroticism, in this person who, in point of fact, has done nothing substantive.
I wonder if the Congressperson has yet to open a district office--last I read she had not done this essential part of her job: the messy, non-headline-grabbing business of serving her constituents with issues far removed from saving the planet.
Here's a challenge to NYT journos--actually leave Manhattan, go to the Bronx, and see what Ms. OC is actually DOING for the benefit of her constituents in a district that could use tons of help negotiating with the blank wall of the federal bureaucracy.
The readers await...
2
AOC just got a head start, Amazon is pulling the plug on the Queen's project, no dirty pollution, no dirty jobs, hurrah, hurrah. They better change their approach to the "green" thing or they'll hand the 2020 election to Trump, if he's not in jail.
1
The young care about climate change because they'd like to have a livable planet. We are miles past mitigation. We need a moon-shot like focus on reducing our collective carbon footprint. We need to relegate the nay saying Republican party to the dust bin of history. Bigly!
2
....'Yes n how many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see.'
Former president Carter was a advocate, forty years ago, and then St Ronny ascended. Since then, some incremental gains, and now with DJT...... he just doesn't see.
AOC is a over correction, and eventually will be too easy to ignore.
2
Leitmotiv for future columns, Gail: the absent dog on the roof.
2
Mitch McConnell is such a cynical old coot, as well as a master politician and ultimately terrible for our country. The Green New Deal is a starting point, throwing out ideas for study and debate. But in order to humiliate the Democrats, he, smirking all the way, decides to bring the whole thing to floor for a vote.
1
Please, for once, let's be serious.
We are facing extinction.
Check Guy McPherson on Utube.
Climate change is science. To say it's not believable would be like saying that you "believe" that 2×2=4.37.
Facts do not belong to planet Believe.
BTW, check the facts.
3
My thought goes to WDC potential wind power followed by NYT. Surely there is mega potential for power from these two entities. Windy all the time, never stops, viola you’ve got your wind power.
The dirty water dirty air crowd really here AOC. That’s how You know she’s great
1
Ms. Collins' remarks are a species of climate change denialism indulged in by outfits like the Center for American Progress. Where Tom Cotton is today's Hamilton Fish (II), a rabid isolationist (denialist) who insisted Hitler was not a threat; Ms. Collins is of the type who argued that Lend-Lease and a German embargo were sufficient to defeat him.
Would that climate change be just another in the grab bag of liberal issues demanding a tax incentive or an "innovative public-private-partnership." Wind power credits are fine but not a "solution" to the "problem." That's because climate change isn't a problem, it's an existential threat to our civilization and the survival of our species.
I hope Sen. McConnell does have a Senate debate over the Green New Deal. It's a debate that should have happened with the Paris Accord had President Obama an ounce of intestinal fortitude and presented it. Will it pass? No. But the public needs to at least hear the truth even if most will still prefer the siren song of denialism and incrementalism.
Hamilton Fish was wrong about the Nazi's; they really were a threat to our civilization and they had to be destroyed. After two decades in the House, he was defeated in 1944 by an electorate finally forced to accept by grim necessity that reality. Regrettably, by the time Americans wake up to the fact that climate change is the only thing that really matters, voting out the Cotton's and Pelosi's won't make much of difference.
2
I assume, Gail, that you remember the debacle known as Solyndra when Obama tried to pick a winner.
There's a big bag of wind at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue right now. Too bad we can't convert it into usable power.
3
The Green New Deal is a tasty meal giving us real choices to chew on.
Consider ending poverty! The late Louis Kelso, inventor of the Employee Stock Ownership Plan - ESOP - used by 11,000 companies, recognized the need for an answer to automation and in the process outlined an approach to economics that can sharply reduce inequality, and provide every individual with the income and purchasing power needed for a healthy economy.
Wise implementation would include a Universal Basic Income which otherwise has no chance of becoming law. This would be temporary, as Second Incomes supersede it. The combined program would have no net cost to the Treasury, as rising incomes would repay loans that launch The Second Income Plan.
Eliminate worry about the stock market with Nassim Taleb's suggestion in his book The BLACK SWAN for 85-90% of individual investment to be in ultra safe Treasury Bills and the rest in a wide assortment of high risk ventures.
BLACK SWANS are highly improbable events with enormous implications. Positive BLACK SWAN technologies can replace fossil fuels fast. They include cheap and easy conversion of vehicles to running on water instead of gas, diesel or jet fuel as well as engines needing no fuel; self-powered air conditioners requiring no refrigerants and room temperature superconductors.
Revolutionary science is routinely vigorously attacked as impossible.
Learn more about hard to believe breakthrough technologies and SECOND INCOMES at aesopinstitute.org
No dog would have Trump..
1
"Socialism may begin with the best of intentions, but it always ends with the Gestapo." So sayeth the superbly-educated Senator from Arkansas, Tom Cotton. Might he be indulging in a tad too much hyperbole?
Pose that question to the typical Dane, Canadian, Finn, German, Norwegian, Swede, or citizen of France, Holland or -- for the love of Larry -- Andorra or Luxembourg. Then follow that up with a visit to any of these countries and look hard for evidence of their local Gestapo. Discuss and report honestly.
After that, ask conservative Brits how Brexit is working out for them or almost any American how well they like the Trump Administration.
2
Trump will become interested in climate change when faced with the prospect that his golf clubs will be submerged by a rising ocean. Of course, he will want taxpayers to pay for a wall.
1
If Trump got a pet for himself, I think it would be a skunk or else a porcupine.
2
@D Morris -- I favor the "vaseline-covered serpent."
Oh, give me a break.
That Green New Deal isnt 'new", its not even "GREEN".
The Dang thing reads like the UnaBomber Manifesto.
Completely confined to good ole 1968 era Enviromental Terrorist nonsense, basicly performing stunts like burning down Ski Resorts and blowing up Power Line Towers.
This is retro.....and pretends like the 21st Century isnt happening.
Cmon now.
1
Gail, in this my 2d submission, I regret having to point out that as much as we all enjoy your efforts to write about serious subjects - all forms of renewable energy - that nobody else will touch, the Times should be giving us a columnist that examines these subjects in the depth and as often as Elisabeth Rosenthal did long ago when she published "Europe Finds Clean Energy in Trash, but U.S. Lags NYT 2010-04-12-"
That is the ONLY article the Times has published on waste to energy from 2010 to 2019. My first comment @ http://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/opinion/ocasio-green-new-deal.html?comments#permid=30610165 is no substitute for an article.
American Environmental groups then and now give their full support to continued use of landfills. Rosenthal: "...distant landfills remain the end point for most of the nation’s trash. New York City alone sends 10,500 tons of residential waste each day to landfills in places like Ohio and South Carolina."
Each day those 10,500 tons could be producing electricity and hot water. But no, as Rosenthal reported: "... powerful environmental groups have fought the concept passionately" as my 1st comment notes.
Thanks Gail, for giving us a basis for commenting on renewable energy. Now please tell your Editors you need help from a new Rosenthal.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
@Larry Lundgren -- Again I remind you that burning trash produces CO2. It's not an efficient source of power in terms of CO2 emitted per kWh ... it's actually worse than coal.
Let me know when these European paragons start sequestering the CO2 from their trash-burning.
1
In 15 years, Trump, Mitch and their aging base of racist deplorables will all be dead. The rest of us will still be here and we need to take care of ourselves and our planet. Let's start with wind farms, compassion and go from there.
Tom Cotton is either misquoting Churchill or both he and Churchill are playing loose with facts when he 'quotes':
'Socialism may begin with the best of intentions, but it always ends with the Gestapo."
The Gestapo represented Hitler's secret police . The Third Reich was many things but socialist? Not so much.
Substituting 'Lenin's secret police, the NKVD', in socialist USSR would at least give the absurd statement historical legs, though 'fascist' states are the ones more prone to such policing arrangements.
Here is part of the challenge to reduce CO2 emissions: just from transportation (automobiles, trucks, buses) the annual US emission is about 2 billion metric tons of CO2, which represents 40% of total US emission of about 5 billion metric tons. This is spewed out by over 250 million vehicles alone in the US. To reduce this to net zero emission, as the Green ND aspires to, would require replacing 250 million vehicles to be replaced by none-polluting vehicles, such as electric or hydrogen powered, the latter essentially non-existent. In addition, we would have to generate the "clean" electricity used to operate these cars in addition to our present generating capacity. At present only 36% of our total electric generating capacity is carbon free (wind, solar, nuclear and hydro), the remaining 64% being generated by fossil fuels. Since the average lifetime of a vehicle in the US is about 13 years, which translated means that half of the cars, or 125 million, are permanently removed from usage. So even if every new car sold in the US is now electric, it will take 13 years to reach half of our goal and this assumes that the electricity used by these cars is supplied from yet to be built carbon free generating sources. It's pie-in-the-sky to believe that the goal of doing this by 2030, as the GND posits, is even remotely realizable. It would behoove these proponents to first get some technical advice before setting such unrealistic goals and encourage ridicule.
5
AOC's big issue should be a no-brainer. Student debt!
Immediate impact, generational unity, a push-back against big finance. Not to mention, the obvious injustice of debt just to train the next generation to do what's needed to run the country. It even has some nationalist appeal.
"... just when the governor of California is basically throwing in the towel on the dream of a high-speed rail service from San Francisco to Los Angeles. ('There simply isn’t a path. … I wish there were.')"
Just to be clear, for non-Californians who may not be paying quite so much attention: that capitulation is by newly elected Gov. Gavin Newsom, not now-retired Jerry Brown, for whom high-speed rail was a priority.
2
Sadly, all the work that was done to improve the environment is being rolled back by a GOP president when another GOP president, Nixon, started it. One more example of how far down the road to the "good ol' days" Trump and his party of incompetents want to go. One does hope that they aren't counting on breathing the same air as the rest of us, eating the same food, or living on the same planet.
2
Corporations and their wealthy stockholders are drooling at the idea of profits fro selling us air to breathe — probably in plastic bottles.
1
I'm surprised with you, Gail. The last thing we need is to scale back on the promotion of ideas to combat climate change. Thank God someone like AOC has the vision and the guts to treat it like the dire global emergency that it is. We don't have the time to be timid and piecemeal about this. The Republicans wouldn't appreciate it, anyway. They'd just find some way to make fun of wind energy, if that's all we offered. And wind energy alone is not going to save us. We need to do everything we can. We can't just sit around worrying about the jokes Trump might make about cows. And throw in the social issues, too. Global warming is a social issue. We live on this planet. Young people, especially, get this at a gut level and will be all the more motivated to throw their support behind politicians who get it, too.
3
To address global warming we need to raise the price of carbon pollution, one way or another.
Raising the price of (carbon intensive) energy is going to make rural lifestyles much more expensive, so Republicans would be disproportionately opposed to it, even if they weren't a bunch of....
We could target those people affected with some kind of subsidy, but that would defeat the entire purpose of it. An explicit goal of environmental legislation has to be to make harmful choices more expensive. So its going to be very hard to do politically, even in a perfect world.
2
As good as it is, wind alone can't get us out of this fix. We need some way to store the wind electricity for times when demand is high and the wind isn't blowing. Same thing for solar. We need nuclear. And we either need some kind of liquid fuel produced with zero net carbon emissions or some form of efficient battery power to fuel air travel. Or both. We could start by making a pact to eliminate coal use in ten years, but as long as India and China continue to burn the stuff, we are back to square one.
Really, Ms Collins, how is it possible to be so funny and so glaringly truthful at the same? Splendid writing
Regarding wind power - have you ever driven across the width of Missouri, home of the Koch brothers? Abundant billboards on the highway politicking against wind power because it will "destroy our landscapes." Unlike, I guess, billboards on highways. Nary a wind mill to be seen.
As soon as you cross into Kansas you are met with great evidence of wind power. And then on to Colorado, wind and solar.
6
Read it for yourself! Greennewdeal.blog
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-resolution/109/text?fbclid=IwAR3McyCR5MfJLry_tveKU2qTNix9IcSQ00m1PdTTneCUaySMUpgY0Z3LX0U
2
If I were under 20, my anger at the older generation, especially the ever demanding self ingratiated Baby Boomers would be beyond description.
Back around 1970 there came awareness of environmental harm to the Ozone. Back then the middle class was strong, Democracy still, mostly, worked. Legislation was passed to deal with the issue. The EPA was created.
Today high schoolers have to worry about their personal safety at school, and then if they survive that, whether they planet will be habitable when they turn 40.
Come 2030, when these issues start to become more pressing and today’s youth is in the majority, there may be no place for people like the Koch brothers to hide. Extreme problems may trigger radical reactions and the people who got in the way of finding solutions aren’t going to be too popular. I suppose they assumed that their money would always find or buy them comfort.
4
To paraphrase Ike, "Beware the military/fossil fuel/ agricultural/pharmaceutical/ republican industrial complex."
republicans howl at the moon about leaving our children and their children with some man made debt but they care not a fig about leaving them an uninhabitable planet.
Do they really think they will all be able to gather and live in the koch bother's gated compounds while surrounded by millions and millions of desperate and heavily armed fellow Americans?
We had better get started rebuilding our failing infrastructure so why not do so with the technology of the future and with the goal of a sustainable future.
Why not do so with the scale in mind that the United States was so proud of after WW II? Huge investments in the people and their communities.
Put young people to work in start up jobs rebuilding highways and sewer/water systems and hospitals and before you know it they are in high skilled jobs, raising families, and paying taxes.
Maybe if they put a provision to let the kochs keep the untapped oil on their books at some value the hostility from the oligarchs might abate. Nah, probably not.
As for Cotton, Hitler got started getting his supporters to beat up other Germans who disagreed with them. Does that sound and look familiar to him, I wonder. He's a moron.
5
We Dems should refuse to vote on the stunt by McConnell. He won't allow votes on anything consequential, only things that he can play to partisan advantage.
Since this "vote" really means nothing other than an opportunity to score cheap republican points, let's just refuse to play his ugly game. Refuse to be sucked into his ugliness since it means nothing anyway.
7
I'm a trifle unclear and uncertain how we might go about compromising cow farts.
2
Thank you Gail for supporting the “Green Deal” idea but again pointing out in your wonderful way how we Democrat’s cannot stop ourselves from over reaching and handing the Republican cult Tweet lines to make fun of us and thus destroy great policy ideas. Air travel and cows? Seriously? In a memo? And staffers are still naive enough to write stupid s__t down and believe some person in the shadows is not gonna leak it? And we couldn’t stick to climate change ideas, we had to throw in “oh BTW, we’re gonna “repair historic oppression” (whatever that means) and save our oppressed women out here in the fly-over states. My god, no wonder our states get more red every day, we just cannot stop ourselves from shooting ourselves in the foot! Another example: suggesting Kirsten Gillenbrand as a possible president, instead of Al Franken! We’re gonna screw around and get Trump re-elected!
6
Actually, Gail, wind power is not a free lunch and will remain a small player even in the absence of fossil fuels. It works now because there is not enough of it to do much harm.
If most of the world's electricity were to be taken from the energy of air movement, it would create significant and likely disastrous changes in the earth's weather patterns.
Now that comment may seem ridiculous. But I've no doubt that if enough windmills are constructed the jet stream will be forget disrupted. I know that when I set up a couple of fans on my deck the weather pattern in my county changes for weeks.
1
We're doomed from the right and we're doomed from the left. Is there anybody out there who understands how to run a government for 325 million people of diverse backgrounds and ideas? Because from where I sit it sure doesn't seem like it.
3
The progressive wing of the Democratic Party should be careful not to give Trump and the republicans easy ways to redicule them. There are enough great progressive plans that the public already supports.
1
The Green New Deal is an IDEA! Who on the other side has had any ideas to improve anything for anyone (other than the rich) for years now?
Start formulating and discussing IDEAS for the benefit of the people, rather than tearing down AOC’s ideas. Come up with some of your own. Talk about them in the open, rather than hidden in back rooms with donors.
I for one appreciate hearing new ideas rather than the old, tired, non-working trickle-down theory of everything.
268
@Monellie
So here's an idea: Nuclear.
Cheaper, reliable, constant, clean, zero carbon electricity benefits everybody. Directly. No trickling required.
Lowering the cost of electricity enables business to pay higher wages. Also directly, without trickle.
Whereas expensive, erratic, unpredictable windmills and solar panels benefit no one, except the subsidized manufacturers and installers, at the expense of everyone else. (Directly.)
THEN, TO BOOT, there's even a considerable "trickle" to the "non-rich" -- middle class, white and blue collar workers with a retirement account or pension (especially municipal pensions) -- who will benefit from their pension funds' investments in nuclear construction and operation. (Without which, some of those pensions may default . . . worry about that, too. )
5
@Ron Nuclear is not a positive suggestion. The long term and even short term dangers of radiation no matter how contained are palpable but hardly mute. We do not be told what past events they echo. A Green New Deal is merely a name but it should not be the occasion for introducing nuclear into the area of viable proposals. It should return far beneath the earth where it serves us all crucially, not here where it has led to the exact causes of what holds us back from true growth and change.
9
@Monellie
The "IDEAS" in the Green New Deal are not new. They're good, but not new. They're also not inclusive.
1
I'm all for making fun of Trump. I've been doing it for years. But in this case, it's the ridiculous "Green New Deal" that deserves scorn. Worse, the runaway left (I'm talking to you, OAC) is strongarming the Democratic Party into endorsing this nonsense. No greenhouse gas emissions in 10 years -- zero? Rehab EVERY building in the country? Free Medicare, free college, free everything, to boot. Guaranteed jobs? One thing this is not is "socialism." No socialist historically has been crazy enough to propose this. It's just juvenile silliness.
4
The Green New Deal is idealistic statements, not a plan of action. It certainly is not legislation. So, why vote on it? Just publish it in the New York Times and the Washington Post, and get on with the follow-up nuts and bolts legislation!
The Democrats don't need to craft a statements of ideals that will distinguish them from Republicans and bind them to a course of action. We already have the perfect one; it is the Preamble to our Constitution, which all legislators are sworn to uphold.
Ideals are fine, but action gets things done. Better to repair and build our infrastructure than quarrel over a useless wall in the Sonoran Desert.
Chongqing's marvelous 21st Century infrastructure was built in a few years by political will, engineering design, and purposeful labor, not by quarrels, indecision, intentions, and obstruction.
Let's see America rebuilding to 21st Century standards by pouring concrete and erecting steel in and between every city!
I love the idea of lining the southern border with German shepherds! Maybe throw in a few Rottweilers, too. The cost would certainly be less than $5 billion.
2
All the ideas that you say are in this resolution are good ideas and have been implemented in various forms in other jurisdictions -- especially the wind power -- in Norway, a major oil producer -- wind power is being developed as an important source of energy. Renewable energy is seen as the way of the future in most developed countries, so the sneering and joking by Republicans is not only distasteful but ignorant and stupid and shows what dinosaurs they are. -- all captured in that mean little smile on McConnell's face as he announced that there should be a vote on this resolution.
2
My great fear is that an all-encompassing manifesto like the "Green New Deal" will be used as cudgel by Trump to beat the Democrats -my Democrats- to a bloody pulp in 2020. It is obviously necessary to address all of the issues raised in the "GND" -they are real- but to have a wild-eyed amateur and egotist leading the charge is a serious mistake. I realize Ocasio-Cortez can speak and tweet her mind all she wants but I hope her celebrity is soon -the sooner, the better - tempered by some humility, reflection, and, most of all, an awareness of how things actually get done. As it now stands, I see her as a left-wing alter-Trump: noisy, obnoxious, self absorbed and oblivious to political reality. That said, in her case, there's at least a hint of good intentions underneath the clatter. You certainly can't claim that for Trump.
3
How odd, I searched for the Churchill quote that Senator Tom Cotton quoted. I can't find it anywhere on the Internet. Churchill was no friend of Socialism but it looks like Senator Cotton made it up. No surprise there, the Republicans make up their own facts such as that Obama could not legally be President since he was born in Africa. The US Constitution clearly states a person is a US citizen if that person has at least one parent who is a a citizen.
2
Republicans refusal to accept the dangers of global warming is based on their basic philosophy: protect the profits of industries that they depend on to keep them in power. including those that pollute our air and water.
3
"Ocasio-Cortez is one of the most talented tweeters in Congress." LOL! AOC recalls many other pop culture celebrities (Kardashians, anyone?) who are famous for being famous, but little else. We are indeed the society of the spectacle.
4
Just a word about methane from cows: more than one farmer has found that adding dried, pulverized seaweed to their cows' feed results in a significant decrease in gas from both ends of the cow, and it seems to be good for the cow, too. A farmer in Prince Edward Island starting doing this at least a decade ago, and now it is being studied in several places, Australia and California, included.
https://foodtank.com/news/2017/06/seaweed-reduce-cow-methane-emission/
3
As usual, Republicans are incapable of having a good faith discussion about any meaningful topic. Their whole world is now consumed by petty little sound bites. They can't even begin to talk about the nuances of ideas/policies. The Democrats should not be cowed by the inanity of Republican "criticisms." They should instead go about trying to solve real problems as opposed to the imaginary ones conjured up by the likes of Don Trump.
4
Why in the world are younger legislators going bonkers over climate change and some older legislators are in the you must be a crazy socialist mode? Some of it is playing to political bases but one big underlying motivation is the youngsters will be here and the oldsters will be dead.
The Green New Deal is a proposal. It might have been more palatable if it were more focused and less all encompassing. The urgency to act has total merit. How fast, at what economic cost and the nature of the mitigation effort should be debated. The message of the proposal is action must be taken soon. No more waiting around to see what happens.
As for the divine wisdom of some of the oldsters in power, their "plan" seems to be to promote policies and practices that add to the problem of climate change and roll the dice. Even if they are wrong it won't matter to them.........because they will be DEAD.
3
The Green New Deal is a fatal messaging error. Democrats, if they are to have any hope of saving us from the depredations of the reactionary Republicans, must find a way to walk this back. And fast!
2
When you think about it, it's kind of odd that El Trumpo doesn't like dogs, or rather has never had a dog as a pet. Dogs are ready-made for the Trumpish personality, once they're house-trained at least, and Trump wouldn't have to do that himself. All that adoration and never an unfair word.
People who mock the Green New Deal do not understand, or will not admit, the seriousness of global warming and of runaway economic inequality.
1
@John Williams
In keeping with your thought that we need to understand the seriousness of global warming, what we should do is repeal the laws of thermodynamics. Then it would all be simple, replacing fossil fuels with limitless quantities of non-polluting hydrogen that would be readily available from our vast waterbodies.
If you did not see the facetiousness, the foregoing is a metaphor for the magical thinking that suffuses the Green New Deal. People are not mocking the GND because they do not appreciate the urgency of the climate change problem. They are mocking it because of the profound ignorance it reflects of the real technological, social and economic constraints there are to solving the problem, certainly solving the problem in the time frame of the GND.
The GND is an adolescent distraction from the type of mature deliberations we need. The GND is not even bold--it ducks tough questions for progressives such as: (a) can we achieve our goals without nuclear power, and (b) won't we have to brush aside numerous environmental laws and civil rights that have been used to block the acquisitions of the type of infrastructure right-of-ways (transmission lines, railways) which would be vital to the GND.
Because it is so puerile, the only effect of the GND will be to damage the credibility of anyone who is an advocate of it. Already, in their piling-on to support the GND, several Democratic potential candidates have shown a lack of wisdom needed to be our President.
2
Climate change is the biggest enduring threat facing humanity and the planet. Economic inequality is perhaps the most important domestic issue facing America at this time. It was a major factor contributing to Trump's election.
As written and released, the New Green Deal is ridiculous. The blind rush by almost all Democratic presidential candidates to endorse it was a mistake.
3
@John Williams -- I'm a PhD scientist who understands the seriousness of global warming; it has been my work for most of my life.
I mock this ukase from AOC & Markley; it's a sophomoric bad joke.
4
And while we're at it, I'd like to discuss the anti-American, socialist unfairness of stop signs on the streets. I resent the government telling me I have to stop my car because a sign tells me to stop, even when there are no other cars coming in either direction. Next thing you know, they'll tell me whether to stop or go because an electric light flashes at me on a regular basis.
2
"Democrats from conservative states, or coal states, or just neurotic states, softly moaned." Ms Collins, would you please name the "neurotic states?"
I believe, in addition to worrying about the climate change,their residents should start looking for the ways to remove the neurosis their states are suffering from.
2
While Mr. Trump receives another few bags of coal, keep it a secret, Ms. Collins, but this American's Green Deal is in a crock of gold and belongs to the Leprechauns of Gort. This is not an invitation to dig up the lawn here, covered in snow and ice on a day in the sunlight, and the Police are asking the neighbors some questions.
It might help the president if he were to have a golf simulator at The White House and a parakeet for company. Congress may be living in the Twenty Year Century during the Reagan Era, while the Nation goes forth in the blustery wind.
Those of us with a vision, armed with clarity and scientific windmills, are reporting that the president appears to be surrounded by a toxic cloud of yellow canaries that sing off-key
Le grand Matthew in Baltimore, a German shepherd puppy, regretfully declines a future career in guarding the Mexican border, and sends you jazzy greetings on this Valentine's Day.
Voting for The Green New Deal is kind of like voting for Mom and apple pie. Mitch McConnell said he'd put it up for a vote in the Senate. The Democrats should say "Go ahead, make our day!" There is no downside for going green if you are a young person. The youngsters will inherit the planet as the oldsters check out. Shouldn't the oldsters want to hand off a planet to the youngsters that has at least a 50-50 chance of not sloshing out of control? Let the Republicans go on the public record for ridiculing and voting against The Green New Deal, and let their cynical attitude be duly noted in the history books. Voting for The Green New Deal is a whole lot less ridiculous than 60 votes against Obamacare, which is still hanging in there.
4
I don't see anything wrong with bringing the issue up for a vote in the Senate. Go for it, Mitch! It will be a day of reckoning for all senators, not just Democrats in red states. Climate change can and should be a prominent campaign issue, such that those who recklessly ignore climate change are burning us all up, at least those who do not drown first.
1
Winds don't reach Trump's mind. It is too “coal”.
You joke, but really, I think stressing the evidence that Trump hates animals, especially dogs, is the only thing that would erode his support. His bizarre claims that he loves dogs and his recent retweets of animal gifs makes me think his advisors discovered that his dislike of animals is hurting him.
1
Enough lollygagging dems. Start negotiating. Start here. This is called creating momentum.
1
It just might be that the best way to fight climate change is to reduce the human birthrate so that the population growth rate is negative and plant billions of trees.
2
Last year, the Times published a piece on Drawdown...
"the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming...the plan exists and is being implemented worldwide...a qualified and diverse group of researchers from around the world to identify the 100 most substantive, existing solutions to address climate change...revealed that humanity has the means and techniques at hand...The solutions we modeled are in place and in action."
Not given to optimism, I was astonished by this. I am now convinced that a way forward exists. Alas--while reducing CO2 is possible, vast mobilization and sweeping changes are necessary. The GND must consider issues that are "unrelated"...as per simplistic GOP thinking.
Consider. #6 of the top 100 ways to reduce CO2 levels is educating girls. #7 is family planning. Who knew? Wind is #2, solar #8. Biggest surprise--14 of the top 25 are in the food or land use sectors. Reduce food waste is #3, plant-based diet #4. Tropical/temperate forestation, #5,12,14.
Then there's food production #9,11,14,16,19,23,24. There lies complexity and inter-relatedness. Industrial Ag not only releases CO2, it kills soil life, hastens erosion, relies heavily on fossil fuel, harms biodiversity, pollutes downstream, etc. Regenerative Ag on a huge scale could not only build soil and
sequester carbon. It would give us healthier food and engage and build communities.
Who's talking about this? NYT? Progressives? Al Gore? Anybody? Hello?
www.drawdown.org
1
Q: How does President Trump plan on fighting record high temperatures?
A: By switching from Fahrenheit to Celsius.
4
Et tu, Gail? Do we always, always have to view Democratic proposals through the lends of GOP criticisms? Can we not stand up and be proud that with one dramatic move, the Democrats have put rescuing the environment at the front of the Country's mind, as it should be?
We need 20 green deal proposals. We need to start doing something, anything. And god-dang it, we need to stop caring what the party of coal, the party of oil, the party of corporate profits has to say about it.
1
AOC wants to reward those UNWILLING to work! This tells me all I’ll every need to know about her.
1
I believe Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is rapidly becoming more infamous than famous and has done a great deal to boost Republican chances in 2020. Every thinking person realizes that climate change is a real and present danger and must be addressed immediately but every thinking person also realizes that many Green New Deal proposals - like eliminating air travel in ten years - are sheer lunacy. I love you Gail but you can put as much lipstick as you'd like on this Green New Deal pig but it's still a pig. And worse than that, it plays into Republican hands by rightly portraying some Democrats as delusional loons who don't have a clue how things work in the real world.
1
The Republican Party functions almost purely on demagoguery now.
1
When will reality dawn and "reactionary" grace our vocabulary?
I really hate Mitch McConnell, but you can’t blame him for taking a big swing when someone lobs a softball right at him. I think AOC is smart and refreshing, but she is a political novice. I’ve been worried that something just like this would happen. Is there no control, no review before a Democratic member of Congress sends out a proposal as radical as this? I’m all,for green energy, but this was not thought out well. It’s idealism written as though it’s a solid proposal. And is Ed Markey so starved for attention that he’d sign on to something that is so easily picked apart?
Democrats. Be smart. You’ve got an opportunity now. Don’t blow it with self-inflicted wounds.
1
Thanks, Gail. Humor is desperately needed in these trying times. If only we could harness the wind that comes out of politicians' mouths, it would offset all that gas from cows.
This made me laugh! Especially the German Shepherds and the poodle, and the thought of lining the border with them.
A great place to end my little news binge, after abstaining for several days.
For that matter, why not line the border with windmills? Then the "wall" will pay for itself in power generation and any drug smugglers will have to do battle with the blades, Don Quixote style.
1
Is there anything more pathetic (and dangerous) than old white men desperately clinging to power, rejecting any and all ideas that they don't like and that look to sustain the future of the planet. My only consolation is that they'll all be dead and gone in the relatively near future. And please, young people, keep having new ideas and keep voting to make those ideas come to pass.
1
This prompts one question. Who owns the mineral rights under Mar-a-Lago? This vast undeveloped grassland is ripe for exploration. Drill, Baby, Drill!
2
I see that most of the alarm for people on the coast and specifically the people of Florida, come from people in the Northeast or Midwest.
What you don’t understand is that rich, powerful and well-to-do people don’t want to retire in the Midwest, New Jersey or Michigan, they want to be in the islands, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina etc.
In many cases, these are the people that make the laws and direct the money from this country, there is billions of real estate at risk, do you think the most wealthy country in the world isn’t going to go ahead and protect that real estate?
Do you see lobby groups, politicians and the 1%’s who one these homes just saying, hey, I guess it’s all over, better lock up the house and move somewhere else, not going to happen. Think largo mar.
No I’m not saying it’s going to be fair, many of the taxpayers in this country are going to wind up subsidizing the cost of saving coastal property, but it will happen.
Miami is already building higher streets and higher Sewalls, everyone calling for a doomsday on sea level rise better hope they live to see 200 years old.
No matter what the problem, money can solve anything and we have lots of it, so breathe......
1
Such a gift to the GOP.
All Trump has to do for the next 2 years is sit back, say nothing (for a change), and watch the Democrats conduct a seminar in self-immolation.
40
@Rufus
Ask yourself who experienced "self-immolation" in our past.
Was it Nixon, or was it FDR.
18
@Rufus Well it IS true that non thinkers ie conservatives like nothing better than living in the past - I wonder? Is this 1955 still?
14
The challenge of resolutions like the Green New Deal is often less the "There", but the getting to it from Here. We've constructed a very complex (and environmentally challenging) Here, a here that infiltrates every part of lives and, like our internal organs, is either invisible to or ignored by most of us. That is, until major surgery is proposed. Unless the GND advocates begin to provide a roadmap for making that trip, the GOP will continue to exploit its vagaries.
1
Some facts
Canada (BC) has a $37.00 per ton carbon tax and it is lowering CO2.
Countries restricting methane loss from drilling have significant reduction
Yes, cows and pigs etc. contribute millions of tons of CO2. By altering their feed and therefore their bacteria in the gut this could be decreased. Also, cutting forests for more grazing reduces ability to remove CO
Airplanes, trucks and even large boats will be able to have electric engines.
Energy efficient homes and businesses can significantly reduce CO2.
Conservation of use of energy can make big difference. ? Why do we light up huge buildings at night? Why don't we use more motion detectors to turn on and off lights ?
We already have 6-7 times more green energy workers then coal miners, more green energy more jobs.
WE need informed people to discus this issue. We have lots of answers we could do immediately.
1
@RichardHead
A “cow fart” is actually methane....
It's time for proper negotiation on this topic, and this Green New Deal is the perfect start. That is, if anyone remembers how negotiations actually work...you start with a proposal that asks for everything, then the other interested parties counter with proposals including all of their wants and needs. Now, here's the hard part, you need to respect all participants, listen to their arguments, check the facts and compromise (what a foul thought to many people) until you come up with a deal/law that everyone can live with. Pretty basic stuff. Decades ago, our elected officials knew how to do this. A successful negotiation should not have any "losers" but result in an outcome that benefits the country and, in this case, the world in a substantive way. Climate change is real, it is complicated and deserves more than a discussion via headlines or 280 character tweets.
3
@Little Mama The fine art of negotiations is not a "hold my breath until I win" art. It's bad for everyone. Make the list of items you want, knowing full well you're not going to get all of them, and then everyone gets a bit of what they want. I've tried to remind my teen that we don't always get everything on our wish list.
I remember when legislators sat down and negotiated, and legislated. We've no had negotiators in a long time. They've been replaced with debaters, people who aren't willing to move one inch on anything. They really all need to be replaced.
The business of generating and distributing electrons efficiently and economically is a very complex subject. Few people outside the industry have sufficient knowledge to construct viable proposals for alternative, renewable energy propositions. Just like flipping the switch to turn on the lights many believe switching energy sources is that simple. It is not.
While I am in favor of finding viable solutions for climate change...the key word here is "viable". The Green New Deal is not viable. It is pie in the sky and the sad part is that when people like AOC promote a scheme that is demonstrably not viable it gives ammunition to the opposition to discredit and ridicule.
1
The unbelievable breadth of the Green New Deal is part of its genius. Mainstream Democrats can pick any part of the resolution as grounds for dismissal without rejecting the proposal in its entirety. The fact that the resolution is so ludicrously big is grounds for dismissal in itself. Let McConnell bring it to a vote. What are Republicans going to say when Senate Democrats vote the resolution down? Republicans can't even claim to support the popular parts of the Green New Deal.
I find it amusing that the GOP wants to call a vote and the Dems are hoping they won't have to commit themselves to a Democratic resolution.
1
The Dems should run on fighting climate change and the creation of lasting, well paying jobs in the renewable energy sector. Solar panels installed on every appropriate roof in US would make a huge difference. I have solar panels on my roof and an electric car in the garage, reducing my carbon footprint for local transportation to virtually nil while greatly reducing my transportation costs. If you drive an electric car you will probably want to buy or lease one.
2
Not having read through the Green New Deal memo as I ought to have done, I was surprised to read that “emissions from cows” were a concern.
I had no idea that cows were behaving so inconsiderately. I may have heard them doing it all along but thought they were mooing.
@Longestaffe
They're actually pretty much as bad as it gets. They emit methane, which which is shorter-lived than CO2 but a much more potent greenhouse gas. Getting rid of red meat production would do a whole lot more for the planet than getting rid of cars.
1
@Jeoffrey -- " Getting rid of red meat production would do a whole lot more for the planet than getting rid of cars {that run on fossil fuel}."
That's not true, although the methane flux from ruminant meat production is a real issue.
A great deal of the confusion comes from people who talk of the methane emission in "CO2 equivalent." Methane is a much more powerful "greenhouse gas" than CO2 (usually taken as 29 times more powerful, per molecule)
But methane don't last a long time in the atmosphere ... it gets oxidized to CO2. The long-term effect of methane from cows isn't very big.
1
It’s actually no joke. Factory farming is absolutely destructive to our environment, as well as being horrifically inhumane to the animals involved. Methane from cows is not the only problem with factory farming, but it is a problem.
1
Actually myopic obsession with one single technology to solve our climate problems...is the problem. This green new deal is good for one reason alone: holism. It finally connects the solutions to what we actually want the world to be like instead of just fixing the problem and planting the seeds for our next collapse or creating new kinds of inequality. Wind alone will not stop massive soil erosion, for example, a significant contributor to climate change. And we focus only on piecemeal solutions that require expensive manufactured solutions we will continue to be subservient to the chieftains of industry and technology. Policy must insure that this revolution does not create a new slave class just as the agricultural and industrial revolutions did, for example, and that starts with a statement of our values. Maybe they won’t get the whole country to agree that we should value rural women’s issues, but that conversation is the start.
4
Like Trump, the GOP feels it must diverge and digress, in order to divide public opinion. Their current policies and recent legislation--tax breaks for the wealthy, for instance--have been so harmful that anything worthwhile suggested by Democrats is sure to be mocked.
2
If the Green New Deal had been anything less, no one would be talking about it. And just think about it..... None of the aspects of the Deal have a down-side. All are good for the planet, the country, and humanity. Sure there are details to be worked out. So get to work.
8
@Jeff P
No downsides? Maybe you want to talk to pilots or aircraft mechanics, or farmers, or or or....?!? The only upside I see is that the authors of this joke wouldn't be able to get back to DC to vote on it, unless they like to bike long distances.
For those of you that have been very concerned about our country during these two years of Donald Trump please consider the following:
I live in the Midwest and ultra progressive ideas do not go very well here. The Democrats need to pick a centrist type candidate somebody than can connect with the people in rural communities. There is nothing wrong with pursuing progressive ideas but no during a general election. This part of the country is needed to win a national election and anything that resembles socialism or super progressive will insure the re-election of Donald Trump.
4
@Conrad -- it's unlikely any Democratic candidate can win Missouri. Missouri is voting to the right of Texas and Kansas these days.
Gail obliquely makes two important points that the dems really need to think about: this Green New Deal is better called the dem playbook for remaking America. If that's their plan, fine--let's talk about it. But don't let your non-environmental desires subvert our abiliyt to achieve real energy/environmental progress. Second...the newly empowered dems, especially the AOC the media has fallen in love with, just aren't ready for prime time. Pelosi seems to see this, but all this youthful energy is embarrassing the dems and preventing them from being seen as legit, responsible alternatives to the current illegitimate, irresponsible current powers. C'mon dems, governing ain't for immature children. All current evidence to the contrary.
4
Coming to terms with climate change is the most important priority for the planet. If we do not, the planet will become increasingly inhospitable and will ultimately wipe us out. Trump seems to think, as I once said to my professional colleagues, that if one turns one's back on the ocean, that stops the tide from coming in. Well, in this case it's literal. The United States has turned its back on the ocean, and the tide is coming in, not so dramatically here yet, but certainly so in other places in the world.
At the same time, we should be cautious in our embrace of wind power because it has not received enough study. We need to understand that the energy we are milking from the wind would have had some undetermined environmental effect if we had not taken it out of the atmosphere. Right now, we do not know about those downstream effects, and so we do not know how much energy we can safely take from the atmosphere without disturbing some other natural balance.
Wind power may be great. It may be the solution to a significant portion of our energy problem. We just should not proceed on the illusion that it is cost free merely because we do not now know the potential cost.
2
@WTig3ner -- the direct environmental consequences of extracting wind power are well understood, go read the literature.
Please don't go off on Louie-Gohmert-inspired rants about wind-turbines.
@Lee Harrison
Lee,
I have, and I have no quarrel with it. There just hasn't been enough study.
And I wasn't intending to rant; I meant merely to point out that we may not know as much as we need to know, meaning only that we should continue to study.
@WTig3ner -- please explain what effects you believe are not understood.
1
Advocating things with no chance of happening is done as much by Trump as by AOC. Consider "Lock her up," or now consider, "Build the Wall." The game both are playing is not only to play to their base, but to articulate the issues of the base, so that the rest of the people will think about them.
It's also possible to think about public political utterances as bids in a huge negotiation. Research in economic psychology shows that setting an anchor point in the first bid, even if it is unreasonable, can influence the subsequent negotiation in its direction.
Of course, it's possible to make so outrageous a bid that the whole negotiation can be stopped. This depends on what AOC's game really is. I suspect she does not see this as the start of a negotiation with Republican senators but more as part of the continuing communication with the electorate. Her real goal is to beat the Republicans in 2020. Nothing else can realistically be expected to happen that will significantly change things for the better.
From that point of view the Green New Deal makes some sense.
For that matter, Trump's "playing to his base," that we hear about all the time from liberals, may also be part of a longer game. But that's hard to think about, isn't it?
1
How about climate scientists work with green energy technologists and well-meaning Democrats such as AOC to draft up a workable and reasonable Green New Deal? It's time the scientists get involved in the policy process!
6
What makes you think scientists were not involved in the New Green Deal which is supported by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The studies have been done. Stanford Professor mark Jacobsen has demonstrated the how to and feasibility of conversion to renewable energy by 2050. We really don’t have a choice at this point if the object is survival of life on this planet.
@Helena -- FWIW I know several scientists in NYC who attempted to communicate with AOC and were ignored. Read this article about AOC's staff:
https://triblive.com/politics/politicalheadlines/14613394-74/meet-the-hill-staffers-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-hired-to-upend-washington
She's basically acting like Trump; surrounding herself with loyalist sycophants who don't know what they are doing, and doing this intentionally because apparently she sees this as the only way to get "change."
2
Go wind power! My senior year mechanical engineering design team project was to specify the size and blade profile of a wind powered system for single home use, in 1974!
Well, better late than never.
7
I love it when the Republicans run about like the Chicken Littles that they are, yelling things such as: "There is no climate change/global warming"; "Go Coal!"; and "Socialism is coming and going to bring us authoritarian government and dictatorship and health care for all."
Old Mitch McConnell then adds things like "Renewable and sustainable energy! No the American people don't want that."
However, the tide is against the GOP's love of coal and rejection of renewable energy. According to a 5/18 Gallup poll, when asked if different age groups were worried about global warming (yes, I know, wrong terminology):
First of all, 76 (old)-82%(young) of the age groups claimed they understood global warming well. Really??
2. 70% of 18-34 year-olds worried about it; as did 62% of 35-54 year-olds; but only 56% of those 55+.
But political party was the big divider (Pew). Those saying there is no solid evidence for climate change:
Conservative GOP = 57%
Moderate GOP = 36%
Independent = 24%
Moderate Dem = 13%
Liberal Dem = 10%
The good news is the GOP has been losing people who identify as GOP since 2004
The bad news is 68% of those left in the party claim to be conservative GOP while only 32% call themselves moderates. So what the country gets is what the conservative Reps. want, whether we like it or not.
But the GOP is declining, esp. with the young: Only 17% of Millennials (1981-1996 identify as GOP). (Pew)
To save the planet, don't vote GOP until they wise up.
6
Not part of a workable approach to win in 2020. That requires clear practical solutions to precisely defined problems that make Republicans look like dunderheads or evil peons of billionaires when they oppose them.
The last thing you need is to make the Dems look like Don Quixote.
Not s good beginning.
3
Progressives would have more impact if they would consider practicalities before they issue their documents. Their Green New Deal relies on technologies that don't exist yet, they provide no path to get from here to there. Had they said instead: "This is where we want to go. We will be working with experts and people across the aisle to build a firm path to get there." They would have found a much different reception to their Green New Deal.
2
Actually a lot of the technologies are being worked on.
3
@Bruce1253 -- ARRRGH! WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGIES! Yes, some could be improved, but we have what we need. Wind power from good sites is now the cheapest new-construction electricity there is. Solar (from good sites ditto) is now cheaper than coal, and getting cheaper fast.
We need the construction of a true 48-state HVDC distribution grid so we can move electric power long distances; this largely (but not entirely) deals with the "intermittency problem," and has other large benefits for reliability. The HVDC technology to do this is well-proven.
We could use better batteries, they seem to be coming.
2
@Lee Harrison
Until we solve the energy storage issue renewable energy will remain a small percentage of the total energy grid. If we were to switch now to 100% non-carbon based energy now it would be cold and dark for much of the country. The technology is bench scale, not utility scale and that is a big leap.
Much of the other ideas in the Green New Deal are a wish list as well. Universal payments for all residents have been tried in several locations with mixed results, verifiable results are hard to come by. Universal healthcare however is a success in many, many countries around the world. Paying for it without incurring a crushing debt load would require some hard choices. Are we willing to cut our defense budget in half as an example? Again, a lack if a plan to move from where we are now to where we want to be is a major weakness in the Green New Deal plan.
Republicans pick out simple, one-sentence lies, like,"This tax cut will pay for itself," and say them over and over and over, till 39% of the country believe them.
Democrats have grandiose plans, tilt at windmills, punish other Democrats for not being pure enough, and never arrive at a consensus.
1
ACO, shorthand for America's entitlement class and woke politics, will show up anywhere a TV reporter's camera is turned on.
Has Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez helped in any way any constituent in her district yet? What is Ms. Ocasio-Cortez's stance on the most important issue for Queens -- the proposed Amazon HQ2 site?
She is anti-capitalist, yet needs the taxes paid by real companies and real hard-working people to support her fairytale spending projects. So is she for or against Amazon's HQ2 site in Queens?
She proposes a Green New Deal, yet cannot even open a home office in her own district yet or provide any local leadership on a potential development that will vastly change her own district's economic future. I wonder if she even knows that it took companies like Amazon to create the fortunes that paid for the endowed scholarships that she received at BU. Or does she truly believe everything get accomplished for free?
There is certainly a lot of wind coming out of Queens, but very little of it is useful.
2
AOC represents me and I am 100% behind her. She opposes Amazon—as did her constituents. Amazon does not pay taxes.
Infrastructure and green technology can work together. We know that there are several more efficient and durable products that could be used on road surfaces. Also, there actually are ways to have vehicle traffic over surface PRODUCE energy.
We know that concrete currently is the most commonly used building material in world.
Scientists at a British concrete manufacturer, Novacem, claim to have developed a new form of concrete that absorbs large amounts of carbon dioxide as it hardens. It uses magnesium sulphate, which requires much less heating. Novacem claim that each ton of cement can ABSORB up to 0.6 tons of CO2. That is a huge change from current cement said to emit about 0.4 tonsof CO2.
For a building material to absorb carbon —not emit it in its production—is a breakthrough.
5
@Jean
A Grey New Deal, I love it!
There sure is a lot of hot air about the Green New Deal (or Green Dream or whatever, as Speaker Pelosi would have it). Here's hoping Markey, AOC, and others speak forcefully, clearly, and even with some humor about the benefits of this bill and some of the foolishness of opposing it. And, if things start to get a little wonkish, they can start speculating about the president's abhorrence of dogs just to lighten things up.
5
Perhaps the Green Deal sounds so overwhelming because it is. It outlines an agenda we should have started working on some fifty years ago. Remember Carter and solar panels on the WH and remember who tore them down. The GOP hasnt stopped since. We have a lot of time to make up for so lets get started.
10
@Steve We do need to get started on a plan. Any plan that combines in programs unrelated to green energy and climate change are just distractions, however. They should be dealt with separately on their own merits.
1
The Ontario (Canada) Liberal Party recently was annihilated at the election, because of a policy package much like the "Green New Deal." It had been a festival of corruption, taking Ontario Hydro's (HydroOne) resources and money to fund all manner of economically unsustainable programs, brimming with conflicts of interest. The program resulted in enormous rate increases, to the point where HydroOne customers are paying rates in excess of some of the highest rates in North America. All in a province brimming with formerly cheap hydro power. It has economically crippled the middle class in Ontario.
It is painful to watch the U.S. Democratic Party flail around, looking for issues that "resonate." Governor Jay Inslee of Washington turns around any question of any kind into an answer involving climate change--the only issue he can talk about. Democrats have the answers right in front of them: Wall Street surveillance capitalism, billionaires, health care, the strength of Social Security, and more. What they really want is an issue to develop programs on that can't be rated on results (takes too long), that provide payoffs to buy votes to special interest groups, and which preserve their immoral, incestuous financial relationships with Wall Street.
Climate change is about science. The evisceration of Labor Unions and individual economic agency in this country is about elections. Why don't Democrats give up their dependence on Wall Street Money?
1
Solar & wind power are good starts but are not the whole answer. You have to have energy storage so that you can create excess solar & energy when the sun shines & the wind blows and then store it for when they don't.
The power grid must always supply power equal to the demand. Currently, we use power plants fueled by natural gas, oil & coal to make up the difference where we are using renewables.
The cost of a national high speed rail network is beyond belief - it would be much better to invest money in fast & effective rail service for daily commuters. California could not afford high speed rail between the huge population centers of LA & SFO. How much ridership would there be between Des Moines and Omaha? how could we afford that?
3
Americans are getting the message about green energy. Look at the number of RVs with solar panels on the roof.
3
@Tom Daley
Yes, solar panels on RV roofs are an improvement.
Another improvement would be for Americans to give up gas range cooking and switch to induction, which instantly gets up to temperature, uses the least energy, and keeps the cooking surface cool to touch which transferring 100% of energy to the cooking vessel and food.
The cool surface also means any spillage can be instantly cleaned up.
2
@Tom Daley And when they can use all electric trucks to tow them then it will be even better. I am a camper and can’t wait for an all electric truck.
For Tom Cotton:
Capitalism may begin with the best of intentions, but it always ends with Victorian workhouses and burning rivers.
11
The dripping condescension given the plan by the generations that have failed thus far to do anything substantial about climate change except talk about it is interesting.
AOC came up with a plan less than two months into office. It's a start and has a lot of good proposals to discuss.
Which is more than the smug dismissive Nancy Pelosi, Gail Collins and Mitch McConnell have done in their entire lives. Thus the condescension, they're scared and hopefully just a bit embarrassed. They should be.
6
@Lou Good
Or maybe they just have common sense.
Please look at the Green Deal as a conversation starter. It has you, Gail, now promoting WIND power. It is giving Washington State a platform for their extraordinary move away from non-renewables! From the mere fear of AOC and he twitter force, Republicans are falling all over themselves, like Tom Cotton, to ridicule and demean and hit a panic button re: climate change and AOC! Get the torches, AOC is coming! That is a true sign of progress in finally putting climate change high on the priority list. I like your attempt to simplify. But I feel that throws out too much out with the baby with the bath water. Why not compartmentalize this. It is a broad statement that can spawn a number of highly significant bills that would be quite suitable under a different administration. Go long! I hope smart people like you who command much attention do not "torpedo" this effort. It can have enormous significance as an impetus to regenerate the confidence of America to say, Yes We Can when it comes to big and bold moves to save the planet. Ok, ok. Too much, right? How about saving our state, or our city, or town or village? Go Green! Please keep writing about this.
1
I estimated the cost of transition of the Scottish electricity grid to 100% renewable energy
https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/scotland-electricity-generation-my-plan-for-2020/
as $80- to $130 billion - actually £60- to £100 billion.
Scotland has 1/60th the population of the USA, so if I was in a heartbeat to factor the cost for Scotland up by 60 to do the same for the USA I might estimate $5 trillion to $8 trillion to transition the US grid to 100% renewable energy.
1
@Scottish Scientist Many estimates from American economists seem to align with your figures. This gets us most of the way, however, renewable energy is still not carbon neutral. There will need to be costs accounted for to remove carbon from the atmosphere and from manufacturing facilities.
Well, since we can’t buy a new earth, guess we will just pony up. Pay now or cease to exist.
Because you asked, here's my variation of the Green New Deal.
1) Minimize gasoline use for automobiles. Start with mileage standards that don't let SUVs off the hook; they are passenger cars, not trucks. Next, time the lights on all thoroughfares so that through traffic avoids 90% of the stop and go. Then figure out how to get people to and from their jobs without the morning commute. Housing near job sites would go a long way. So would working from home when possible.
2) Wind and solar. Heck yes. Full steam ahead. The sunlight striking a roof in Phoenix ought to be enough to run the AC.
3) Air travel will never be environmentally reasonable. Sorry, it's just a fact. Give people enough time off to take trains and ships when they need to travel. Harsh? Yes, but Mother Nature is a harsh mistress if you mistreat her.
4) Reusable containers to replace single-use plastics. Containers that degrade gracefully for cases where that isn't feasible.
5) Get the money out of politics so we can argue these points in a rational way without amplified interference from vested interests.
I'm not egomaniac enough to believe that my program is the right way, but these things need to be on the table, and we don't have much time.
11
@mlbex -- air travel is about 2.5% of the total transportation CO2 flux. Transportation is in turn about a third of total fossil fuel use.
It's entirely feasible TODAY to make air-travel carbon-neutral. There are three paths to this, all may (or may not) end up in use:
1. aircraft fuel interchangeable with today's JP-4 can be made synthetically from biomass ... that biomass took CO2 out of the atmosphere, so the cycle is carbon neutral.
2. Hydrogen-fueled aircraft are feasible, and may even be attractive on the longest routes (hydrogen is the best fuel in terms of heat/mass ratio, and airplanes flying long distances are penalized by the weight they must carry in fuel.)
3. Possibly short-haul aircraft will go to batteries; at present this doesn't look feasible for ranges longer than about 250 mi ... that's pretty short.
1
@Lee Harrison: Point taken. The possibility of curtailing it severely might hasten the improvements you mention.
Essentially if anything benefits the Middle Class the poor or the planet, the Republicans will do everything in their power to block it. FDR's New Deal was reviled by the conservative Republicans, just as the New Green Deal is being reviled by them now. Under FDR Social Security was enacted, under his New Deal work initiatives gave people jobs, which lifted them from poverty, and gave them dignity. The Tennessee Valley Authority was established in deep Red states and still serves to provide power to them to this day, and "green" initiatives such as the soil bank to prevent erosion were established.
The Republicans of today are trying to dismantle Social Security (along with Medicare), deregulate any environmental control of pollution of the air we breathe and the water we drink, and deny the science of climate change. They fight against waging the minimum wage. They fight against banking regulations. They fight against the very things the core of their base rely on, yet that base like many in an abusive relationship will still vote for them. The only thing Republicans do stand for are enriching the already wealthy.
The New Green Deal is idealistic, yes, but it should be discussed and not dismissed. The Republicans are now stoking the fear of "socialism" as their new bogeyman. The Democrats need to pound home the fact that socialism and capitalism are not mutually exclusive terms. That everyone, including the wealthy can benefit from a marriage of the two.
6
The Green New Deal looks like a manifesto instead of legislation. We should keep climate change legislation clean. It should primarily be funded by government to keep the economy growing. It should focus on tax breaks and incentives that induce sales of renewable energy. It should require removal and destruction of used equipment/vehicles that are powered by fossil fuels or are inefficient.
1
The Republican Party is trying mighty hard to equate one freshman Representative with the entire Democratic Party, rather than one district in Brooklyn. The press, in it's relentless focus on the extreme or sensational, is helping.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez does not represent me, no matter how much sympathy I might have for her goals. I would hope that, after a couple of years of Trump, even the young would know better than to tweet whatever is on their minds.
While much of the Green New Deal is idealistic in every sense, much of what Republicans gleefully attack, like single-payer health care, or high speed bullet trains, is commonplace in the rest of the world, and works well. The Republicans continue to trot out the notion that American Exceptionalism means we can't possibly learn anything from anyone else.
5
A different angle: just how malignant would trump be if he didn’t spew his innards via Twitter all the time? At least we know what’s in there.
The problem with wind power at least the Texas coastal use, is the disruption and destruction of migratory birds. It's serious enough in the mountainous areas of West Texas but devastating on our coast. Also, frankly, such wind farms are eyesores, at least among the mountains. Compromises can be made for aesthetics, but not if the damage affects the necessary bird migrations.
2
@gary wilson The reason wind turbines are listed is that solar panels have only a slightly smaller carbon footprint than natural gas. No electric, including renewables, are 100% carbon neutral.
1
Wind power is great, except when it is not.
Focusing only on wind energy, one sees almost no flaws to the concept. Wind drives the turbine, and the energy is relatively clean.
Focusing on the environmental impact, one sees several problems that require mitigation. Crews servicing the turbine requires access. The access cuts through the last pristine remote patches of the great plains.
The plains ecology happens to favor predatory birds. They can easily fly into and not out of a turning turbine. How many kills can we tolerate before a whole species begin to decline towards extinction?
I am all for alternative renewable energy, but let us not focus on one problem and offer a single solution most convenient, expedient and economically most efficient for humans at the expense of everyone else living and sharing the space with us.
2
If we can rocket to space, we can mitigate problems with wind and other relatively faaaaar less invasive systems than fossil fuel.
4
Conservatism is always reactionary. That is the insight of Corey Robin's "The Reactionary Mind". Without change, and especially a threat of change, conservatism loses its animating force. It spends its days mumbling to itself about how great things used to be. "Look away, look away, Dixieland."
But change - real change - invigorates conservatism. And the greater the change, the stronger the conservative reaction against it. Remember the South's reaction to the Emancipation Proclamation? Southerners sought to keep the status quo against a change for the better.
This is important to know because "The Green New Deal" proposes great, necessary change in a short period of time, and it threatens a great many who benefit from the way things are.
Our conservative intellectuals are correspondingly aroused. And so are all those who will lose economic advantages they now get from continuing the status quo.
I think the hardest thing about stopping climate change will be overcoming conservative resistance. The technical difficulties will be easier.
2
We most certainly can get behind the Green New Deal. We need to marshal the efforts of the entire country just as we did during WWII in order to save our future.
This time it is just a different enemy--us.
6
I took the fifteen minutes needed (slow or fast readers, your time may vary).
What I read was akin to President Kennedy's address at American University in which he essentially announced the manned moon project - the ambitious goal of sending Americans to the moon and returning them safely to earth before the end of the decade. At the time, Americans had clocked a total of fifteen minutes in sub-orbital space flight.
Kennedy's proposal was a big audacious goal and scared the living poo out of the folks at NASA. But that goal unleashed a fury of initiatives that industry and American workers rose to.
The New Green Deal initiative is a laundry list of great hopes that are in fact very intertwined. It is not just about how we can better provide energy, it is about how we as a nation plan to build our next generation. And while goals this lofty seem absolutely so insane that they have no chance of succeeding, I suggest that there is an opportunity in those fifteen minutes of reading.
The New Green Deal as currently drafted isn't a plan as much as it is a call to action - a vector to guide us. But unfortunately, neither a senior Senator or a junior Congresswoman can be like Kennedy. In order for America to embark on this journey, it will require a leader that has the trust of most Americans to listen and pay attention to the mission.
Which leads me back to Joe Biden. He doesn't need to mention the Green thing until after in office. But he could move us toward it once there.
2
Gail,
In 1987 Senator Pat Moynihan of NY held hearings on his discovery of Superconducting Maglev transport, which was very energy efficient and very low cost to maintain and operate in comparison to steel-wheel rail systems. Capable of higher speeds than high-speed rail, his Senate Transportation Subcommittee approved a 750,000 Maglev development program to test and certify this system as a public carrier. The system had been invented in 1966 by Brookhaven National Lab scientists, Drs. James Powell and Gordon Danby. Moynihan's bill passed the Senate but failed in the House Committee with strong opposition from vested interests, led by the airlines. Moynihan's committee envisioned a 300 mph, all weather, national Maglev network built mainly along the rights-of-way of the Interstate Highway system. That would carry both freight trucks, freight, and cars as well as passengers at much less fare and freight cost than on the highways. See www.magneticglide.com for the concept. Its benefits would be broadly shared by all Americans with reduced cost of goods and travel. I think it was a great idea but it is a tough sale because of the fear that people have over the economic short term downside of job loss. Unfortunately, I feel that the ideas in the Green New Deal will run into the strong forces from existing economic interests. For this reason, Dr. Powell, his colleagues and I are proposing technologies that can produce electricity cheaper than the current fossil energy.
4
Thank you for adding to the defeatist blather about how radical, undo-able, and expensive the New Green Deal would be. Have you not noticed that the house is already burning down? That the cost of not mitigating CC as much as we possibly can by taking drastic measures far outweighs the cost of actually dealing with it?
4
One commenter here said AO-C is as clueless and uninformed as Trump. Declaring that Trump is clueless and uninformed is true.
The U.S. sits on huge coal,
gas and oil deposits. Fossil fuel dependence here, and around the world, contributes to global warming, and makes fossil fuel barons and corporations rich.
But fossil fuel pollution, and the plastics made by fossil fuel, pose grave problems the planet. To change it, we must lead by example.
If the U.S. gives up most of it's fossil fuel usage and sales, in exchange for a green technology economy, we will be a role-model for other nations, and in a stronger position to persuade other countries. By sharing our wind, solar and hydroelectric power technology with others, we can help the world.
Solar and wind power are plentiful in many countries, water, not as much. Nuclear works only in countries with a rock solid geological base, which never get tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes or large fires, and have enough money to keep these facilities in good order.
Going green to improve the world's climate is not a waste of money and effort. After China, we're the world's second largest polluter.
Solar, wind and hydroelectric power can be uploaded to the nation's power grid and used immediately. We do have enough sun, wind and water to power the U.S. 24/7, including electric transportation.
We will perish if we keep using fossil fuels.
The other ideas in the Green New Deal are welcome. Need budget and action plans.
4
The New Green Deal sounds like a reasonable set of environmental goals to which we should aspire. It does not, however, address the most massive methane pollution emanating from 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue and I would not feel that bad to see Mara-a-Lago swallowed by the sea.
7
A Senate vote on the green new deal. Great idea! When do the hearings begin?
Surely Sen. McConnell wouldn't schedule a vote on such an important matter without hearings. Not without a careful examination of the proposals. Not without the calling of expert witnesses so that the public and the senators can be informed before a vote. Surely I jest.
In all the attacks on the Green New Deal and the personal attacks on AOC by Republicans and trolls (I repeat myself) there's not a trace of awareness of what a terrible threat climate change poses or the need to do anything about it. The GND represents a vision for America's future centered on the absolute necessity halting the destruction of the environment on which the entire human race depends for its existence. It recognizes the interrelatedness of economics, the environment, education, healthcare, and jobs as opposed to the traditional – and now inadequate – piecemeal approach.
Republicans have no vision other than what they can see in the rear view mirror. They and other conservatives have no viable alternatives to the GND other than supply-side economics and a touching faith in the benevolence of the marketplace.
Gradualism and incrementalism have had their day. Mother nature is calling time.
5
Green was leaked to the public, not presented as a finished product by its authors. It should be judged for what it is, a very broad and idealistic expression of a progressive set of values. We have to wait to see what the legislative strategy will be. Yesterday Senators Stabenow and Baldwin, along with four House members—all men who have been in Congress for awhile—introduced a bill to offer Medicare as an option beginning at age 50. They gave an intelligent rationale for why this is a good idea, from an economic/insurance perspective and a public health/medical needs based one as well. Where is the buzz on that? We need to discipline ourselves to focus on legislative solutions rather than ideological rhetoric!
4
Gail Collins isn't very funny but she is clueless.
The environment is to my son what civil rights was to me. I think there are A LOT of young people who feel the same way. And my son turned 18 last year and voted for the first time . They see the environment as something with which they can engage and make a difference. They are not ideologies nor ar they cynics like Collins.
There are millions of young people, and older too, who reject the cynicism of Collins , Cotton and McConnell and respect Cortez for the courage to think big and use her platform.
Collins just found her place in the swamp.
8
I think you’ve misread Collins. She’s endorsing the GND (while suggesting a focused version that stands some chance of becoming law). You mistake her trademark breezy tone for sarcastic dismissal. On the contrary, Ms. Collins deploys comic wit to serious ends—for which we can be grateful.
Some observations on humans. Humans are driven by efficiency and simplicity. Efficiency and simplicity are the 2 sides of the same coin, I call, human genetic predisposition. Once a process has been developed, developments continue towards greater simplicity and efficiency. No regard is given to tangential issues, like health and the environment.
Ponder this. Man walked. Then, he road horses. Man invents the wheel and axle and horse drawn transportation reigns for 6,000 years, more or less. Next, the steam engine. That begets the ICE and automobiles. We have had the ICE for about 120 years. In parallel development, aviation.
We fly, if we have to. Drive, if we can. We ride horses for fun and walk for exercise.
I await the day, NY14 can theorize, how to change the genetic predisposition of humans. More interesting, will be the day, she can demonstrate the ability to alter said genetic predisposition.
@Mike
"Humans are driven by efficiency and simplicity."
Which is why we tolerate things like commercials, spam email, and robocalls. Which is why we fill up our day responding to meaningless social media posts and write responses to opinion pieces on major news websites. Because we like to use our time efficiently and simply.
5
@Mike
It is also human nature to ignore any problem that isn't an immediate threat. Climate change is the simmering water slowly coming to a boil and we are the frogs.
If we don't jump out of the pot soon, it will be too late.
@Mike
Sorry Mike, I was there, women invented the axle, making the wheel a useful tool..... got the men out of the cave, and on the road.
1
It appears the next big fight is going to be socialism. Most elderly Republicans, the base, believe it to be of the Communist variety that we went to war to destroy. Others and the Millennials correctly equate it with Democratic Socialism as practiced in the Nordic countries in Europe. Thus the push for green policies, free college, universal health care. I don't know if the US would ever accept this but would love to see a referendum on whether the public would accept higher tax rates for the freedom of worry about college costs and ever rising health costs. Notably Nordic countries have the highest happiness rates and educational success in the world. Not read any big stories about Swedes and Finns fleeing the country. They appear to lead quiet successful lives . We don't educate our populace, not in history, civics or interest in foreign events. Live in our encapsulated world with our decrepit streets and schools while China builds new infrastructure at home and around the world. And we argue about coal vs solar and wind. In Sweden I read they are developing solar power recycling stations on the streets. Enough said.
5
One thing the green new deal recognizes correctly is in order to get to zero net carbon emissions, our entire fossil fuel based economy as well as the rest of our existing infrastructure will have to be rebuilt or extensively modified. This will not happen in a decade. It is more likely the work of several decades during which on-going climate change and its effects will have to be endured.
Just consider the transportation sector. Getting to zero carbon emissions will require replacement of every single vehicle currently operating on our roads. For example, I still have a 1990 Toyota Celica. It still runs beautifully, and it gets better milage than my first generation Camry hybrid.
And not to disparage wind energy, but every serious study of the technological revolution required to address climate change shows that there is no single silver bullet for dealing with this problem. Pretending that this problem is simple is misrepresenting the magnitude of the task before us.
6
It amazes and saddens me how small Americans think when it comes to the education, health and well-being of its citizens. For the country that put men in the moon to find healthcare for all and renewable energy too big and too hard is depressing.
America is no longer the leader, nor the greatest country on Earth, because it is mired in politics of division that force it to think small.
15
I can see it now ... giant windmills from the East Coast to England. From the West Coast to Japan. What about all those poor fish and sea mammals dying while they are built?
For those who no longer fly, to and fro, Shippers will have to redesign shipping lanes around the windmills. What a beautiful scenario ... cruise and cargo ships circuitously meandering around windmills all over the world.
At home, from sea to shining sea, endless light gathering mirrors on every landscape not used by those Wacky Windmills. Where will Americans go for beautiful landscapes?
4
@Lew
I don't know Lew. Where will they go? Perhaps to the mountain tops that have been flattened by mining coal. Or, maybe to the fields and rivers that have been polluted by runoff from coal and oil power plants or massive pig farms.
And, what will happen to shippers! Oh, those poor shippers! They will have to ask their sat nav systems to re-calibrate. Horrors! There will be other obstacles in the ocean besides the oil spills from wrecked tankers and the giant garbage patch of the Pacific! There will be other things in the ocean for fish to run into besides the hulls of ships or, you know, the sea floor!
Society will clearly collapse.
@Lew
You live in Florida. Before all of those mega suburbs, hotels, condos and shopping areas were built on Florida’s coastal beaches, there were immensely beautiful views of the horizons of the Atlantic Ocean and the seemingly endless beaches. Yes, where will we all go for the beauty nature had to offer.
Gov. Newsom’s statement about California high speed rail is misrepresented in this article. Here it is in its all-too-important context: “But let’s be real. The project, as currently planned, would cost too much and take too long. There’s been too little oversight and not enough transparency. Right now, there simply isn’t a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to L.A. I wish there were... Look, we will continue our regional projects north and south. We’ll finish Phase 1 environmental work. We’ll connect the revitalized Central Valley to other parts of the state, and continue to push for more federal funding and private dollars. But let’s just get something done.”
He is proposing to focus on getting the Central Valley portion now, and the connections to SF and LA later. A Green New Deal could make those connections a reality sooner rather than later, which is the only time frame that allows us to avoid complete climate catastrophe.
7
@Nate
Thanks for this. The problem in CA isn't that high speed from SF to LA is impossible or even un-economical. It's that they had improper oversight and basically didn't hire people who are currently the experts, i.e. someone from France or Japan or China - anyone who has built a high-speed rail system before.
5
Politicians who rail against renewable energy do so at their own peril. The electorate is changing, as us old folks die off and the youth run for political office. Unlike the oldest generation residing here who will never face the extreme results of climate change, the youth know it is here and getting worse. They also want to take steps to curtail it.
AOC is representative of the younger voters, being 29 years of age. Her point of view should not be disregarded.
7
Too bad the grown-up Democrats didn’t
refine this childish bit of self-promotion into a lean and reasoned proposal. Just imagine if they had had the courage to do that, and it was the Republicans who were in a bind. Unless the Democrats control the puerile, bigoted, anti-semitic elements in the party, they will lose badly in 2020.
6
@Moderate
"Unless the Democrats control the puerile, bigoted, anti-semitic elements in the party, they will lose badly in 2020."
Um, what? Ok, sure. Because the Republican party lost badly in 2016.
We pay Congress to have serious discussions of policy and find ways to advance constructive ideas in a practical, non-ideological way. Instead we get childish accusatory sound bytes. It’s Nero fiddling. We have every right to hold our representatives to a higher standard and call them out when they fall short.
4
What political economy created this existential environmental crisis ? Capitalism, my NYT friends, capitalism.
Now that a comprehensive realistic solution to this crisis is proposed, practically everyone (including Gail Collins) tells us how impractical this Green New Deal is. Are we amused ? No, we’re not.
Humankind is poised on an abyss, an abyss created by Capitalism Run Amok. Is it too late? Maybe.
Should we take these ‘pie-in-the-sky’ Green New Deal giant steps now, Ms Collins ? Absolutely.
Regardless of whether we’re socialists, capitalists, cultists, evangelicals, NYT op-edists, or ignoramists, we can no longer take little baby steps.
Have we all forgotten the Biblical lesson about Noah and his Ark ? Not US,
We’re getting in the boat, NOW. you would be wise to do the same.
5
... and Socialist countries don’t have Environmental problems ? ...
Too long for this format, but here's a link to a Twitter thread where I explain why the "New Deal" parts of the GND are so inextricably linked with the "Green" parts. Our entire economic system based on technological innovation and mass production—while it has produced the highest standard of living in the history of humankind—has also generated three problems (financial insecurity, loss of community, and environmental degradation) whose severity is reaching crisis proportions. We need to address the entire system holistically and radically transform the way we organize our economy. If not, I'm afraid the whole system that has made us so wealthy will collapse disastrously.
https://twitter.com/617to416/status/1095995690025697283
2
Ocasio-Cortez is to the Democrats what Trump is to the Republicans: Standard bearer of a rabid group of zealots who claim issues in isolation. Her "manifesto" sounds eerily Stalinesque. Her ego is similar to that of Trump, although she seems to prefer Instagram to twitter. It flourishes in the limelight, and the press provides the platform just as they do for Trump. She is as equally misinformed. She's a freshman congressman, one of 435, and her behavior, when there are so many other issues to be dealt with and about which she is critically uninformed, is just as infantile as Trump.
If the Democratic leadership doesn't give her a time out, she will give us another 4 years of Trump.
8
@alocksley -- I largely agree, though were I forced to choose solely between AOC and Trump it would be AOC in and instant: she's much less selfish and mean. She's also young enough that change and growth are possible.
What worries me about AOC is that she's like my daughter was at 17. AOC is 29.
The other thing about AOC that worries me is that she shares one big bad trait with Trump -- surrounding herself with sycophant B-teamers. She has NOBODY on her staff with any credentials in science or engineering. That's witless if she wants to play in this arena.
1
The “Green Deal” is a vapid, sophomoric collection of dreamy notions that are, in fact, best suited for Twitter. Not a whiff of any actual detail or thought, and as much a “vision” as proclaiming an initiative to advance teleportation. If this is the progressive version of “leadership,” we’re looking at Trump for 3 terms.
5
Bold, Go There journalism from Ms. Collins and the Times!
I especially love this:
Green also included a gabby, rather unfortunate memo that explained the goal of zero greenhouse gas emissions in 10 years had to be tweaked a bit because “we aren’t sure that we will be able to fully get rid of, for example, emissions from cows or air travel before then.”
I guess that quotes the revised version put out after the original (still available at NPR) drew so much laughter. At the risk of crossing the NY Times publishing standards, this was in the original version:
"We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast."
Bovine flatulence certainly contributes to greenhouse gasses (methane.) Odd that Ms. Collins, with her keen eye for humor, didn't find the original Team AOC phrasing funny.
https://apps.npr.org/documents/document.html?id=5729035-Green-New-Deal-FAQ
4
The absurdity of Republicans opposing an environmentally friendly series of proposals should be beyond belief, but it isn't. Their reflexive rejection of anything smacking of progress when it comes to cleaning up our air and water is de rigueur.
I say, give 'em a lump of coal for Christmas. They love that stuff, almost as much as the money they get from the coal industry.
329
@Quoth The Raven At 11:09 EST your comment had 61 Recommends, an encouraging response to a critical issue.
3
@HRaven And now up to 184 at 1131 am PSD. Birds of a feather, and all that...
2
@Quoth The Raven
What's wrong with proposals that seem super idealistic?" We must begin with ideals as no matter what is proposed, we'll never get the whole package anyway. Environmental degradations, always with us, are expensive as well as destructive, yet when solutions are advanced one can feel the shudders and quakes for threatening the status quo. How will we ever advance and save our planet?
7
It's instructive that one of if not the youngest member of congress is involved in this project, as whatever the grown ups have done thus far or are continuing to do is doing nothing to allay their realistic fears about their futures.
That fear extends to many other areas, including our severely lopsided economy, but climate change is the most glaring existential threat they are facing. Somehow, despite the relentless efforts of science deniers nationwide financed by the fossil fuel industry and meddling educators, our young people are perfectly aware of what is taking place right in front of them, events that cannot be explained away by contrived "biblical" explanations.
The Green New Deal is a blueprint for a discussion. Even the most idealistic understand that without a huge calamity affecting the entire country, sweeping change is rarely instituted in one fell swoop. However, if the alternative to presenting a grand, if imprecise plan, is flat out denial and perverse deregulation, then the choice is simple, doing something.
4
My roof mounted solar panels provide almost 100% of our electricity. I bought in over 10 years ago thinking that many of you would join the club. I have been disappointed.
The carbon tax is the slow drive to sustainability. We have dithered for too long and that solution is weak at best. Time to rally the troops and get the job done. Time is short.
8
@Albert Petersen
No one wants ugly solar panels on their roof
I think of their proposal as a bold idea, not a specific plan for action. As such it does address the problem of income inequality as inseparable from addressing climate change. The Yellow Vest movement was a side effect of raising gas prices in France which affects lower income much more than higher income folks.
And why not think big. We keep hearing what we can't do because one special interest group or another won't like it. I include the very wealthy as a potent special interest group.
A Green New Deal could make a difference in income inequality and do great things for the environment.
I do agree that once we buy into the Green New Deal, lets be pragmatic. What is the low hanging fruit so to speak. What gives the biggest climate change mitigation impact with the greatest impact on income/jobs.
4
For those who noticed, you can only comment on this GND article, the one in which it is said to be idealistic and tending towards socialism. The other GND article that says it is realistic and implores you to support the most idiotic proposal in history, is off limits. There is no debating that one because the NYTimes knows that it is extreme. Do you know how many people would lose their jobs if they enacted garbage like that? And i don't even mean it's so ambitious that it would be great if they succeeded. No, it would be an utter economic disaster if they succeeded. How are we going to pay people who are unwilling to work. Who would think that is fair? What worker wants to pay for the lazy? How are you going to retrofit the private property of all the citizens? Wouldn't property owners find that an overreach? Look, all AOC's young supporters will grow up and hopefully realize how dumb an idea this is, and hopefully AOC will gain no traction as the realities of what she proposes come to light.
2
Wind is not that clean. It kills sight (even where few people travel), good vibes and birds. It's still by far preferable to nuclear, coal, oil, and gas, but solar and tidal have the more promising perspectives.
2 other observations.
We need catalysts purging the micro particulate matter from the newest generation of direct injection petrol engines that emit on average 64 times more of the supertoxics as modern diesel motors. See the article "Directly into the Brain", by Philip Bethge in the February 2 paper edition of the Spiegel. In this unnecessary proliferation of air pollutive matter our legislators are asleep or bought at the wheel, crashing straight into the next environmental calamity.
A Dutch national invented a manure spreader that injects it an inch or two into the ground instead of spraying and hurling it through the air. Our current collective maniacal madman's manure surplus from irrational livestock breeding exuberance is toxic several times over and this invention can at least mitigate three negatives: the smell, the particulate matter pollution from Big Ag that is considerable, and the stupid multiresistant killer bug proliferation, where they even get hurled through the air onto our salads, Bug Appétit!
Which leaves the rainforest destruction for cattle fodder fields, the ongoing pesticidal ecocide and carcinogenics proliferation created in and from our fields, and more unsolved. Cutting meat intake per capita should be in the
Green New Deal, you heal!
6
The green new deal is a national suicide pact and shows that AOC and her ilk are not to be taken seriously. Can you imagine the laughter from China (the world’s biggest polluter) if we undertook this self-implosion? Do you think the voters of Pa., Ohio, Mich, and Wisconsin are going to jump on board with the destruction of the country for some pie in the sky theory (did the extremists learn nothing from the Y2K hoax?). Socialism and communism (yes - that is what is being espoused under another name) may be in vogue among in NYC but not in the rest of the country.
The Democrats are being ruled by the fringe. They are guaranteeing four more years of Trump.
3
Here's a more relevant song to our times:
"Greenhouse Heat Death" (King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard)
Heat death
Bake rot
Torrid
Char crop
Heat death
Hard yolk
See flames
Smell smoke
My house is green
You know what I mean
My house was blue
It cooked right through
Come meet me inside
Greenhouse, we will fry
Heat death, hormones
Good broth, cook bones
My house is fried
All life has died
My house was blue
Beautiful too
Come meet me inside
Greenhouse, we will die
1
if you hated the New Deal (and what Republican didn't?) you will really hate the Green New Deal. ergo, it's probably a pretty good program. there is no endorsement as reliable as Republican negativity.
8
We must wait till the neanderthal Republicans are voted out or simply go the way of the dinosaur. Remember that’s the party who controlled all three branches of government yet couldn’t get anything done besides a tax scam for their rich donors. Wind and solar power are the beginnings of a new order. Electric cars and high speed rail travel too. The old order must end and it will it’s just painfully slow. As far as the other things in this green deal, well much like everything else it’s be put in the blender of fake news and misleading info. Good luck sorting it out.
2
Cotton claimed limits in defense spending reminded him of how “Adolf Hitler had taken power in Germany.”
Of course like most things Senator Cotton thinks, just the opposite is true. Hitler pulled Germany out of the Great Depression and consolidated power by huge spending on the military.
3
If Cotton is so obsessed with fascism, he should just read Trump’s speeches…
7
Dems have already violated the first rule of campaigns, which is to not make yourself a big target. Rolling out an ambitious, lengthy and complicated statement, however laudable, opens them up to misinterpretation, misrepresetation, and GOP ridicule.
This is the Twitter era. Americans' attention span has become too limited. We can only digest small bites. Gail is right; focus on one morsel at a time.
1
"Too ambitious" and "too complex for a tweet" are sad/funny comments on us human beans.
The oceans are rising, the weather is wilding, the insects are disappearing, the tropical diseases are
marching north, the climate refugees are swarming, theAmazon is deforesting, the Himalayan glaciers
are melting... oh, you know.
The Green New Deal "too ambitious?" "Too complex?" How stupid are we? Stupid is as stupid does: F. Gump.
5
Perhaps it would help to point out to Senator Cotton that Hitler and Stalin never published their tax returns. What does this say about current American politicians?
7
With the many important issues surrounding climate destruction and with the cogent columnists who write for the Times, I am amazed that you devoted column inches on this drivel which trivializes the needed efforts to stem climate disruption.
2
Ah, Tom Cotton. The treasonous Senator who sent an open letter to the Iranian mullahs warning them to reject the proposed nuclear deal being put together by the Obama Administration.
Yes, that Tom Cotton, who at one point was being pushed by the right wing lug nuts as a potential Supreme Court nominee. The guy who sees the ghost of Hitler or Stalin behind every Democratic Party idea (and who probably worries that Hitler may be hiding under his bed).
If he is the voice of opposition to the Green New Deal, then we should all be completely for it, if for no other reason than to tell Tom Cotton that he is a fool.
8
Tom "Leave-No-Prisoners-Untortured" Cotton suddenly worries about Gestapo?
Freudian overdrive.
6
How many times can a Republican turn his head
They turn their head and pretend they just doesn't see
1
As far as DJT not liking wind or solar power (or dogs, for that matter), in actuality, the only thing that he likes is himself. Everything else is extraneous. At least he won't strap a dog to the roof for the flight to Mar-A-Loco.
2
What will you tell your grandchildren when they ask, "Where were you when the world was going to hell in a hand basket?"
Climate change is no joke, and we owe it to future generations to act now.
In the near future, we will program the human mind in the computer based on a "survival" algorithm, which will provide irrefutable proof as to how we trick the mind with our ridiculous beliefs about what is supposed to survive - producing minds programmed de facto for destruction. These minds would see the survival of a belief or the bottom line as more important than the survival of all. When we understand all this, we will begin the long trek back to reason and sanity.
See RevolutionOfReason.com
2
what a stupid, cowardly column...if you don't like the Green plan, say so...don't make fun of it..say so
oh, and look what you're writing about- climate change...that'e the power of the resolution
if you can't write without the snark, don't...go write for a right wing rag- they loveee to make fun of stuff that'e beyond their comprehension...jeeeez
2
Fred Rogers said "fame" was the other f-word. When you come down on Ocasio-Cortez for being ("increasingly famous") an elected REPRESENTATIVE for those of us who are worried about the destruction of the planet, and quip "You’d think she’d know we live in a world that has trouble focusing on more than 280 characters" your envy undermines your clarity, &, as ever, your humor is just not strong enough for this moment in time.
If you think putting her at the head of (contempt-alert) "a march of several hundred little kids carrying windmills and chanting: “Blow away climate change!”" - will stop her passion on behalf of those of us who are not your stripe of jaded, think again. And don't appropriate the title of a song about social justice. You are not fit to do so.
1
Psychiatrists have a field day with Republicans. They project their true selves every time they speak. Republicans are the fascist party, the people who don't love freedom and liberty for anyone but themselves, and that is why Cotton equates saving the planet with the Gestapo.
4
So Gail, what do we power our homes with, and charge our cars with, when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing? Battery technology to store energy is currently insanely expensive and poorly performing. There is a carbon-free energy source that can keep our lights on at all times, and that is Nuclear, which is taboo among the far left and not part of the green new deal. This despite the fact that scientific advances have made nuclear energy a thousand times safer, and made the accidents impossible. Right now the beliefs among the far left on energy appear to be based on religion (“Nuclear is evil, thus said the Gods!”) and not science. Wind power, even when it does work (because the the wind happens to be blowing) kills hundreds of thousands of birds and creates acoustic conscussions that disturb wildlife on land and under the sea. Solar energy plants consume vast tracts of land to the detriment of wildlife, and the rare metals in the solar panels come from enormous open pit mines in China where the earth has been raped. The point is that this is a complex conversation that must be based on science and not religious tenets of the right and left. Only if we are willing to put aside our dogmas will will be able to solve the climate crisis.
2
Let me paraphrase Winston Churchill since he was mentioned by Senator Cotton. "The best argument against democracy would be a 5 minute conversation with Tom Cotton."
13
We landed on the moon less than 10 years after JFK’s speech why not completely cut greenhouse gases in 10!years?
9
The Republicans long ago gave up on making sensible "policy" once they discovered (through great introspection, or whatever they call thought) that the absence of ideas is not a talking point. Instead they replaced it with snarkiness and Hitlerist quips. Secretary of Snark Ann Coulter, the interim queen of snarkiness, leads their pack. Unfortunately for Trump snarkiness is beyond his range, so he babbles.
4
Gail Collins’ first-rate technical qualifications have certainly been put to their best use in this piece. Oh, not THAT Gail Collins. This is the one with the Marquette University degree in government and a career behind a typewriter. A short list of fatal flaws of these proposals:
1. Wind power collection systems are high-maintenance and widely dispersed. Ask for an engineering cost-benefit analysis on it first, the cost would be crushing at scale.
2. Solar energy flux is insufficient for appreciable collection, even with cell efficiencies at 90 percent. Cells are a wasting asset, have a half-life of roughly 5 years, and require regular replacement. The cost would be crushing at scale.
3. The necessary battery systems do not exist.
4. Electrical power does not travel long distances without significant losses.
The Big Lie repeated by the Left, to its self-destruction, is that all this is Only A Matter Of Will. I suppose this means that the laws of physics and economics can be “simply” overcome by bellowing into a microphone (to drown out pesky facts), while surrounded by old white guys Looking Grimly Earnest. Oh, but maybe those lazy engineers can be bullied into creating more innovation, and faster. Simple!
We have an opportunity here to pull the country back from the destruction of Trumpism, but climbing on the Stupid Train won’t do it.
3
@George
The Big Lie of the Right is that this is all impossible. Which is quickly followed by other whoppers like:
- "The cost would be crushing at scale", as if rebuilding or replacing a city like Miami or New Orleans would be cheap.
- "The necessary battery systems do not exist", as if using solar power to pump water behind a dam where it can be stored until used is impossible.
- and, "Electrical power does not travel long distances without significant losses", as if we don't currently transmit power long distances either through transmission lines or by shipping coal over rail or oil through pipelines.
It is entirely a matter of will. The engineers have done the work. The scientists have succeeded. We have the technology to make clean energy work. We only need to look past defeatists like this and fund it at large enough scale.
@George Sigh. You feign technical knowledge and do it very badly.
1. Just ask all those Texans about these stupid opinions.
2. My home solar rig is in its 18th year, zero maintenance and has paid for itself twice.
3. You apparently don't read the journals. Utility scale super batteries are here. See SW Australia.
4. Duh. However produced. Europe's HVDC is better.
--Speaking of "Big Lies," there are so many anti-factual points in your comment, one must wonder if they are on purpose or just prejudiced ignorance.
1
Sadly, in terms of crushing such progressive initiaves, Trump and McConnell are going to break wind.
2
I really wish AOC would just stop giving the GOP fodder for the re-election of Trump. Pelosi needs to gag her (metaphorically, of course). This “Green New Deal” is so ridiculous ( providing “ economic security “ to all unable or UNWILLING to work., ? Really?), AOC needs to get over herself.
6
Someone should remind Cotton that quoting Churchill as a warning of the evils of socialism might look good on paper but for the fact that Great Britain has had socialized, national health care, a single payer funded system since 1948
8
Haven’t we been through the wind turbine experiment before? And wasn’t it shot down by the “Lion of the Senate”, ‘ole Ted Kennedy, as it spoiled his view from the family compound in Hyannisport? We need to look at alternatives to fossil fuels going forward, but that will require accommodations from everyone. AOC must have the Dems pulling their collective hair out since she has made her splash. They have enabled a publicity drunk neofyte to assume a leading role in shaping policy. It will be interesting to see how Pelosi gets that genie back in her bottle!
1
"Calmer heads might have then proposed that we simply line the Mexican border with German shepherds" --- No, no, no. Use Border Collies!
13
Whenever trump met a woman he wanted he always had a pet.
2
I’m hopeful that AOC by goading McConnell and his pack of lemmings bring it to a vote because once it’s on the books it can be fine tuned
1
Are ANY of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' ideas more ridiculous than a wall between the United States and Mexico?
8
@Jason Sypher: well we already HAD a wall -- a border fence in some areas, concrete in others -- voted for and supported by Hillary Clinton in the mid 00s.
So a wall as just fine, until Trump was elected and then it was "mean" and "xenophobic".
@Concerned Citizen
Stupid then, stupid now.
The only use dogs serve for Donald Trump are as a comparison or label for women. Besides, what dog would want to be his pet?
5
I believe that Gail Collins intended to write this article days ago, but was forced to wait until the wind picked up sufficiently to turn her computer on.
2
In a normal political climate, someone puts out some ideas like this and that spurs a dialogue on the pros and cons. You know an actual fact based debate. Maybe there are some good ideas in here that people on both sides can agree on and maybe some that they can’t. You compromise on something that’s better than doing nothing and you move on. But I guess it’s been so long in this country since we’ve actually had one of those, no one knows what to do except bash any and all thoughts that come from the opposition outright.
478
@Jeff
Both sides don't do it.
16
@Jeff
What you say is true to a certain extent, but almost all of it comes from the GOP side. The anti-science, anti-fact party of delusion.
28
@Jeff
Bully politics.
The only thing that has trickled down from the GOP methods is bullying. The Bully - in - Chief has had Mein Kampf and Hitler's speeches on his nightstand for a little late night inspirational reading.
He learned from his fayher and the Third Reich how to get things done. With fear and an iron fist. Now he has Putin to show him a few KGB tricks.
The GOP ruled Senate uses threats too. They'll cut off funding is someone sways off course even a bit.
How they must rie the day Chief Justice Roberts was confirmed.
But Speaker Pelosi has demonstrated admirably that you don't cave in to bullies. They can rant and rave and throw temper tantrums but you don't pay the ransom to terrorists or hostage takers. You stand up to bullies. Or else.
18
Democrats with a plan? No objection here to a comprehensive statement of goals. They’re all good ones, and some synergy may result from seeking to reach them simultaneously. Republican hysteria is a good sign.
7
I wish Ms. Ocasio-Cortez had the wisdom, as well as all her smarts, to understand that this right-of-center country will not be hauled into Social Democracy over night. Winning over the disaffected who have been left out of society is an easy task compared to getting the vast majority over to your way of thinking. That would be like trying to turn the Queen Mary around when she's headed full steam, straight for the pier. Changes must be made in believable, achievable increments. Solid long-range plans must be laid. Making America sane (again?) will take time, patience, and the intelligence born of wisdom about human nature.
The Republican Party is an army that marches in lock step. I greatly fear the splintered Democrats will pull their usual stunt of forming a circular firing squad while the Rs win once again. And the people who really suffer will be the rest of us wondering when the Dems will accumulate enough wisdom through their numerous mistakes, understand the powerful enemy they are facing, make plans with reasonably achievable goals, and move forward as a block.
6
@Jim
"...this right-of-center country..."
Why do you think this is a right-of-center country?
Trump? He lost the popular vote and Candidate Trump promoted things exactly like what is in AOC's document - which probably got a lot of people to overlook his racism.
Republicans screaming "socialism!!!!" get votes? Many people seem to think there aren't any differences between the parties. Which is a generally weird opinion to hold when Republicans are screaming "SOCIALISM!!!!!!", but anyway...This document makes a clear distinction that is difficult to ignore/explain away as "both sides". To face a powerful enemy, you have to put forward a bold strategy that addresses people's needs - this document is helpful for that.
2
The Green New Deal is a beginning. Young people, who are the generation who will have to adapt to the challenges of climate destruction, get it. Great for AOC and Markey for beginning the serious discussion about saving the planet.
Transit, energy production, and food production will all need to change. The excessive heat, storms, fires, and polar vortex events all are telling those who listen that the planet is in crisis. Time to wake up, pay attention to science, and slam the door on those like Donald Trump and his minions who refuse to accept reality.
378
@Nancy Braus yes, i agree that the green deal is a beginning. these projects cannot be realized in a mere 10 years. the ravages of climate change, along with this administration's denial of it, will take decades to reverse. but at least let us see that republicans are against it all with a vote in the house and senate. then we can begin to vote.
11
@buskat
The ravages will almost surely be irreversible. All we can do is minimize them. The longer we wait, the less we can minimize. I know the politics are bad for effective action, but those are the facts as the experts see them.
16
How refreshing to have new and very bold ideas to debate. AOC provides leadership of ideas. She is not stuck in the mud like politicians on the right and left who have become entrenched in inactivity. This is an opening volley. None of it is binding. It’s the beginning of a long but urgent discussion. The millennials want to improve combat climate change. They want avenues to improve our country and world. They are realists who understand this needs to be addressed now. The legislators mocking progress will become as extinct as dinosaurs. They are on the wrong side of history. If they have nothing new to add they need to get out of the way.
388
@Linda Greenwood
It would really be helpful to the cause of dealing with climate change if millennials actually cared enough to vote. I recently read 31% of the 18 to 29 cohort voted in 2018. That is not enough votes to move responses to climate change further down the road toward success. Not when so many Republicans stand in the way. I vote, but I will not be around long enough to see the effects of global warming; millennials and those who come after will.
36
@amp
" I will not be around long enough to see the effects of global warming"
I get your meaning; my first reaction was to say "me too," but then it occurred to me that you and I already are seeing effects of global warming, albeit not on the scale to be experienced farther down the road (which, I take it, you had in mind).
21
@Linda Greenwood
Transition to renewables hardly constitutes "new and bold ideas." In fact, the Green New Deal is comprised of old bold ideas, most going back to the 1970s (soft-paths vs. hard path). We really should not be "debating" this "deal," anymore than we should be debating climate change. We should not be heralding this as the beginning of a long urgent discussion. For many of us, it's already been way too long a a discussion, albeit, on the bright side, there has been significant progress in renewable-energy implementation. Yes, many nutty legislators are on the wrong side of history; a more fundamental problem is that too many citizens (including millennials) are ignorant of history.
14
Why is giving billionaires a tax break considered normal and proposing zero carbon emissions considered radical? Every idea coming out of the new progressive Congress---what they were elected for---is considered a radical move to the left---Yet, the GOP's war on health care, college tuition, child care, social security, medicate..I could go on.. Are all of these takeaways now considered centraists policies?
16
@Amanda Jones Sadly, yes. The 24/7 broadcast news business is run by corporate entities, and they are conservative.
@Amanda Jones
"Yet, the GOP's war on health care, college tuition, child care, social security, medicate...Are all of these takeaways now considered centrists policies?"
According to the candidacy of Howard Schultz, yes.
No energy policy is more radical than this administration’s push to revive coal, ramp up fracking, expand offshore oil drilling, export more fossil fuels and weaken fuel efficiency standards. I love Gail but she’s not well informed on this topic. Here in the Northeast, climate activists are helping offshore wind become a reality. Wind power is part and parcel of the Green New Deal.
This column makes me sad.
I just got back from vacation on the gulf coast of Florida. Thinking it might be a nice place to retire I looked at the NOAA maps that predict the impact of rising sea level on the coastline. The lovely little island where I stayed will be completely gone in 50 years, even under modest forecasts for sea level change.
Very very soon coastal residents around the country will find their real estate is worthless, it will be impossible to get a 30 year mortgage, flood or wind insurance. Residents of the south-west will find the heat intolerable, wild fires in California, polar vortex in the NE. The impacts on the third world are a thousand-fold more serious.
And yet here we are twiddling our thumbs and debating whether the Green New Deal is a bridge too far. Shame on us all.
754
@ML
Please stay in Princeton. Sea level rise, however severe, cannot be worse than the destruction wrought on the Gulf Coast by developers building condos and canals for snowbirds, tourists, and retirees. The Gulf habitat of my childhood is gone, and it's starting to look like the LA River.
35
@ML
Yeah, worthless real estate that you and I will end up paying for.
27
In our lifetime and in the next 100 generations, climate change will be written into history as climate destruction.
Humans can adapt to almost anything except nuclear annihilation.
Get used to this.
17
Gail, you are an optimist so I don't understand why, since this is merely a resolution, you object that Markey and Ocasio-Cortez included the kitchen sink in the Green New Deal. It's an ideal and let Congressional leaders look it over and choose the items that are immediately necessary to implement it -- like appropriating money for research into storage of green energy, how federal funds should be distributed for encouraging creation of the new infrastructure, etc. The most important point is that this issue is being discussed seriously, finally. Even the Obama administration failed to address it adequately (after the Solyndra debacle) so we've lost a lot of time. This ideal is speaking to young voters who have the most to lose if we don't address the problem of climate change head on, right now. Get them to the polls in 2020!!!
179
Really, you're still falling for the Republican party line that Solyndra was a big scandal? It was one of the few companies in the solar program that received some money that did not make it commercially. Over 90 percent of the companies and the money invested resulted in stable companies and a profit to the US government.
Just like the big bad bailout of US automakers. Those billions given to GM? Well, we got that back, with profit. It's time to stop repeating the lies of Republicans.
42
@Clearheaded
Right! But the Obama administration knuckled under to the fake scandal nonetheless.
4
@Clearheaded I am falling for what? Question, did the Obama administration pursue alternative energy initiatives after the Solyndra "incident" (I guess you would have been happier had I used that word)? The point, which you seemed unconcerned about, is that Obama's administration utterly failed to take more initiative.
2
It goes without saying that Republicans are hypocrites and will gladly cook the planet, but that doesn't mean that AOC hasn't managed to botch a chance to address one of the most important issues of all time because she apparently lacks an ability to keep it simple.
AOC seemingly decided it was utterly impossible to offer a remotely coherent environmental package without including everything and kitchen sink, and that the kitchen sink would feel pretty lonely in the middle of any attempt to address global warming unless it had the company AOC's convoluted treatise on economic security, all tangled into an enormous knot with her other brilliant ideas on identity politics which will be "repairing historic oppression" of 12 different groups. Good grief!
The whole thing comes off as a right-wing caricature of the left. Instead of advancing a vital issue, it discredits it, and is therefore a gift to the right.
AOC has done a beautiful job tweeting in her less than 6 weeks in office. Then she gave us this.
Nancy Pelosi needs to take the hall pass away from AOC and a bunch of the other Congressional freshman for a while. No wonder McConnell wants a vote on this disaster.
AOC should have stopped tweeting for a few seconds and considered what a pretty smart guy said after making some of the most important and complex discoveries in history which he then needed to formulate into concepts.
"If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough."
Albert Einstein.
168
@Robert B
She just got to Congress. Give her a break. She's got Congress talking about climate change. That's more than anyone else has been doing.
54
@Robert B
It has been explained simply and not understood for far too long.
39
@Robert B Gee, maybe AOC isn't the savior of the Democrat Party after all. But keep digging: I'm sure there's a environmental-friendly pony somewhere underneath all that stuff and nonsense.
7
Gail, I can't believe you didn't mention Trump supporting a coal driven power station against TVA's plan to retire coal stations for cleaner power. Why? His friend and donor's coal mine supplies the coal for the plant. TVA is one of the best government actions in history. It brought rural Tennessee and North Carolina into the age of electricity. An 80-year-old Tennessee acquaintance of mine didn't have electricity until the mid 1940s. My mother had electricity in her native Denmark before she came here in 1925. My dad had electricity in his very rural area of Virginia in the 1930s. TVA has always worked to modernize and to improve its delivery of electricity. The strange thing about that is the recipients of TVA power love it but hate government programs!
9
Why do so many scoff at idealism? I see Green New Deal as a statement of idealism, from younger people who look at the world they’re inheriting and shake their heads. Maybe, yes, it tries to deal with too much at once. But maybe we need to be shaken to move out of the rut of habit, to be reminded that what is, does not have to be.
I remember being young, although that was a half century ago. I remember singing about giving peace a chance. I remember the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. seeing the promised land from the mountaintop, and we shall overcome. These arose from idealism. For that matter, so did “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” and freedom of speech and religion. It would be easy to dismiss them all as impractical. But, in fact, the gravity of an idea based on a shared humanity pulls us forward, so we can shake off the rust of stagnation, and find a way to the practical means.
Green New Deal has us talking in ways we have not talked for a while. It give me hope.
554
@Alan
I viewed the Green New Deal as a way to try to change the conversation about energy from 'what about coal miners, billionaire oil executives, and frackers' to 'time to move from the 19th into the 21st century on energy. It was never meant to be a bill because it would never pass in one piece. It was meant to be a vision of a modern America and an start on catching up on the rest of the world who is smelling the stink of our coal plants and saying 'what's the matter with those guys - they led the world in energy and technology and rightly reaped the rewards, and the just stopped, expecting us to stop too.' It's time to knock down the Wall that separates us and get to work.
46
@Alan
Could you please submit this about
10 more times? Make sure everyone gets
a chance to read it. Say it loud. Say it proud.
14
@Alan On this issue it would be good to remember what Robert F. Kennedy once said. “Some men see things as they are and say, why; I dream things that never were and say, why not."
16
Ms. Collins is suggesting that the entire "New Deal" element be dropped from the GND. But that was what garnered more enthusiasm and publishers ink than any Democratic proposal since, well...The New Deal!
And the scale of the crisis now is even greater than before; it isn't about national or even global prosperity, it is about survival itself -- our own and the majority of other species. So no, Gail, AOC and her supporters are right to push for a GND; in a few years, after the next set of climate catastrophes, her proposals will seem conservative.
2
@stephen -- "enthusiasm" is guaranteed to fail if the enthusiasm is not accompanied by a workable plan and the endurance to see it through.
Remember Phil Ochs acid line about the left in the Viet Nam war era: "they won all the battles .... but we won all the songs!"
1
Thank you Gail for providing these common sense tips leavened with breezy humor for our young Brooklyn congressperson.
It must be very heady stuff to become a celebrity over-night. Without a level of caution, such a rise can end in early flame out.
I have great hope for AOC, with her confidence, charisma and intelligence she can become an enduring flame for the progressive movement in the U.S.
But change is usually slow and requires great patience and compromise.
The one issue in Green that we can't afford to be resolved slowly and with patience is climate change. That one needs to be confronted with the immediacy of a war where the enemy is laying siege to our castle.
We have to fight this as one country and try (as hard as the Kochs are making it) to enlist the help of the GOP and independents that still think of socialism as a dirty word into the fray.
The Green is full of good intentions, but is a strategic mistake that threatens a serious government response to addressing our climate emergency.
53
@alan haigh
I couldn't agree more. Well said!
5
@alan haigh She's from Queens. But yeah, you'd think she was from Brooklyn, she's so ... fuhgeddaboudit.
4
I thought I read she was from the Bromx, and a part of her district extends into Queens. better yet, she's a BU grad.
So now Republicans are worried that an environmentally responsible plan leads us to authoritarian rule? Where have they been every day as Trump consolidated power? Oh right, helping him do away with the notion of checks on balances.
908
@NM -- I'm really leftie. I am also a PhD scientist/engineer who has spent my life on climate physics. This "GND" is not an "environmentally responsible plan." It's NOT A PLAN.
It's the leftie version of "MAGA" -- otiose sloganeering, and then AOC and Markley released a list of bullets that make it obvious to anybody who knows the issues that they are clueless.
7
@NM So true. The only consolidation of power that they fear is power that goes back into the hands of the average American.
24
@Lee Harrison The difference btw politics and science today is vast; the one begins with emotion, with stirring things up, the other begins with (and ends with) analysis. The two should be working together.
29
“One of the other nice things about wind power is that Scotland put a turbine across from one of Donald Trump’s golf courses, and he’s hated the idea ever since.”
He surely does and took his petulant whining all the way to our Supreme Court, who duly handed down the kind of decision you get when the justices aren’t hand picked to suit the whims of the despot that picks them.
http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/2015/74.html
5
Cotton screams “socialism” while benefiting from incredible government largesse his entire life. He’s best understood as repressing his true nature not unlike advocates of gay conversion therapy.
2
When the green police come for my SUV, I’ll be ready for them...with my AR-15.
1
@Greg
lol, unless you plan on shooting at taxes, it is unlikely the "green police" will every come and try to confiscate your SUV.
@Greg -- lemme guess ... it's one of those faux hummers that's really a Tahoe?
1
So, what you're saying is that Donald Trump never drove 12 hours with his dog in a carrier on top of his car during a 1983 family vacation?
1
Some Republicans ran down a tortured synaptic pathway to show that the "Green New Deal" would lead to the end of ice cream. On the bright side, at least they are recycling their old battle cry, "
They'll pry my ice cream cone from my cold dead hands."
2
The best ice creams for you are made with tofu so take that cows
1
The real terrorists are US citizens with guns. Keep our country safe, outlaw guns.
3
Republicans lie about global warming to protect the 1%'s wealth.
Full stop.
5
Green was written for millennials.
1
Give these young, idealistic Democrats a break, Gail. Not everyone is born with the Trumpian flair for ambiguously criminal flamboyance. It takes maybe a decade or two before the idealism of normal people runs into The Wall so many times it mutates into cynicism, then settles into a lifetime of status quo. They will eventually learn that you cannot simply tell the truth; that truth has a useful number of shades; that what your intuitive brain thinks and what your gabber mouth says do not necessarily have to connect. For goodness' sake, it's taken 200,000 years for humans to develop our extraordinary talent for nuanced corruptibility. One can't simply change all that just because the mind is fresh and the spirit is bold.
3
We need radical intervention to get back on track for this planet that humans as parasites seem bent on exploding into oblivion.
3
Is anyone else tired of reading articles that always have Donald Trump in them? I am Trump weary.
3
Tom Cotton should definitely be censured for violating Godwin's Law.
Didn't Mitt Romney have a dog? Maybe Trump should get some tips from him about the joys of vacationing with one's pet.
1
I didn’t know Trump loves dogs. Why don’t you let him have one. It seems very mean.
2
Even the great Gail Collins seems to miss the point. The GND is a message about urgency. We could build 100 wind farms and not come close to meeting the moment. With no respect to Senator Cotton, but with respect to climate, it’s 1934; the Nazis are already in power. We do not need another Nevel (sp?) Chamberlin moment. We need bold action.
3
Another winning Op-Ed from Gail! How right she is! We know how stupid Tom Cotton is and that Trump's mindless minions will follow him into the darkest and deepest black hole as long as there's coal to be mined. AOC, on the other hand, desperately needs to CHILL. She doesn't have one legislative accomplishment to her record and if this is a template for things to come from her, she won't be having any. As my female friend from The Bronx recently told me, "girl's gotta calm down!" Truer words were never spoken.
3
At least Trump didn't put a German shepherd on the roof of his car, so to suffer the incessant wrath of Ms. Collins, who wraps her wrath in "humor." But why no "humor" about AOC, and the stated goal of supporting people who are "unwilling to work"? Could Ms. Collins not think of a joke about that? It's easy being Green when you have facile supporters like Ms. Collins and the Times. Really, the target of derision this week should be Green, not doggy snark, if Ms. Collins were even-handed. Which she is not.
I love Gail Collins' columns, but this one needs to be balanced with another op-ed in today's Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/opinion/green-new-deal-ocasio-cortez-.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Oh my goodness . . . that nasty ol' AOC is making Democrats decide whether they stand for something (other than being reelected). How rude!
7
@KCox . . . oh please -- I'm a liberal, and I stand for 1+1 = 2, and all the rest of the math and physics and chemistry and .... that we know.
I refuse to back loopy fact-free sloganeering. That has been the province of the right. It does not "balance" the matter to have fact-free sloganeering on the left.
1
I produce 52% of my electricity with solar panels, and the IRS paid 30% of the project costs. Sounds Good? Because it is! Anti-green, pro-fossil fuel policies are idiotic at this point. The clock is ticking and WE are losing. Green New Deal should also include the Metric System! Let's Go already! USA should be ashamed of itself.
3
Gail, might I suggest a different Dylan title? "The Times They Ara A'Changin'"
"Come gather round people wherever you roam
And admit that the waters around you have grown.,
And accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone,
For the times they are a'changing."
Just sayin' ...
5
@Richard Green
Perhaps the more appropriate line would have been: "Come Senators, Congressmen, please heed the call." or better yet,
"Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command.
Your order is rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin' "
Cotton is the new authority on Winston Churchill, Hitler, socialism and Nazis? I happen to find it refreshing that AOC doesn't scare easily and seems to avoid reacting to Fox News. These same stupid observations were thrown at Social Security and New Deal programs by the political ancestors of Cotton and Trump. And we all know where those socialist policies led.
Democrats need to learn how to fight Republican dinosaurs. They play dirty and you get nowhere by playing by their rules. Remember that these relics were the ones who opposed women's suffrage, medicare, civil rights and voting rights.
6
There must be something in the water that causes people in states like Arkansas to vote for stooges like Tom Cotton. Just take a look at who funds him; he's a bought and paid for flunky who has no credibility on any subject, particularity energy. When will the people in Arkansas and adjacent states that will soon be vast cracked mudflats wake up? Maybe when there's no more water?
https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/summary?cid=N00033363
2
Trump doesn't own a dog because dogs, like babies, can sense evil intentions. Dogs will sniff out the evil in Trump. Dogs barking at Trump would be a bad look; expose him for what he really is.
3
It is interesting, and ironic, that the unsmiling, humorless, and intractable Cotton, a major right wing zealot of the Senate, brings up Nazi references in his clumsy attempts to demonize progressive Democrats when it would not be any stretch of imagination to picture him at attention in a crisp, starched brown shirt. The saying “it takes one to know one” readily comes to mind.
5
Ms Collins, I appreciate the work you do to lend light upon events of our day. We need to understand how we got where we are.
Our system of government was deliberately designed by some of the greatest minds our nation has ever known. But our system of economics was not designed by anyone—it developed over many years under the brutal process of evolution by natural selection, also known as “the survival of the fittest,” other times known as “the invisible hand,” or “the free market,” or “trickle-down economics,” but more
accurately described as “Nature, red in tooth and claw.”1 This system is usually referred to as “capitalism,” and because it overwhelmingly works against the common good, I call it, “tyranno-capitalism.” Slavery was monstrously cruel in many ways: masters whipping and murdering their slaves, raping them, breeding them and selling their children, breaking up families by selling a parent or a child down the
river—the horrors were many, and they are eternally sickening.
Slavery was a business model, the original form of tyranno-capitalism. The slave owner was no rocket engineer—he was a tyranno-capitalist. By becoming a slave owner, he satisfied one of the two primary desires of tyranno-capitalists—he had power over others.
Tyranni naturally, aggressively, selfishly push forward to take power. Democrati naturally, timidly, unselfishly step back to let them pass.
Mitch McConnell is a tyranni the other side wants a better day for all.
3
Reminds me of bumper stickers that have so much on them one can't read them without rear-ending the vehicle. Stay focused, Democrats. Few read long-winded comments and bills, so they are unread and die without hearings. Gail: 40 characters are the limit of effectiveness in today's America. I'm wayyyy over.
1
Socialism is not communism! Socialism is healthcare and education for everyone!
Capitalist USA fears socialism because that would take power from the wealthiest Capitalists and give it to the people, you and me...!
5
"The answer is blowin' in the wind."
Absolutely!
There's so much wind coming from Trump that we almost forget about the winds coming from Republicans in Congress. No, we're not talking about wind power here, we're talking about foul winds.
There are two types of Trumpublican foul winds. First is their OMG halitosis (hot air emanating from their empty headed attics). They blow this foul hot air everywhere, a la Senator Cotton's references to Nazism and Trump's call for coal mining. It happens whenever they open their mouths.
Second, there are the Republican foul winds leaking from their musty basements, which rival hog farms. This, unlike their inane hot air halitosis, is the essence of their ideology. This is where they are most productive, blowing wind, obfuscating issues in a fog of phony patriotism that masks vitriol for the poor who they call takers, attacking minorities, truth, science, education, and of course anything which benefits the working class.
If it benefits the working class it must be Gestapo style socialism. Apparently that is how Cotton describes Social Security and Medicare. But that's just Cotton's wind.
So what to do? How about capturing all the Trumpublican foul winds and channeling it to fuel electric power plants? They could supply the entire nation's energy needs forever.
One thing we don't want to do is subject poor German shepherds to sniffing along the southern border because there, Trumpublican foul winds are at tornado hog farm strength.
4
Dare I say this: at least Donald Trump didn't tie a dog to the roof of his station wagon!
The GOP is the party of fear . Fear of blood thirsty brown people coming across the southern border . Fear of socialism . How about fear of an unhinged President ?. How about fear of a President compromised by the Russians ? .
6
not so fast..... Gavin may have stopped completion of the entire rail project but part of it..... to Bakersfield, will be completed. I think it's genius. Bakersfield is a hot bed of anti progressive sentiment...... but wait until they see how high speed rail affects their lives in a very good way. they'll be all for it. maybe, given the theme of your column? you can understand that he does not want to tilt at windmills.
1
Best case scenario to slow global warming: if the sub continent anti natalist millennial suing his parents for bringing him into the world without his permission wins his case, it could put a huge damper on human procreation.
It strikes me as strange that Tom Cotton links lowering defense spending to Nazism given that Hitler increased defense outlays during his reign of terror. But, he conveniently does not see how the GOP's racism is similar to Nazism.
2
Good analysis, but did you have to dignify "Tom Cotton" by citing his lame-brained remark.
How did that clown ever get elected. What state is he from, so we know where not to visit. He is the absolute worst, by which every other politician should be measured. Please do not mention his name again!
2
Cotton would find a Nazi message in Sleeping Beauty. The Oil & Gas folks are certainly a little concerned, and have no doubt communicated this to those they fund. The Brown Old Deal (Sludge now, Sludge tomorrow, Sludge forever!) will die hard.
4
Donald Trump owning a pet would be cruelty to animals.
4
Hate Miss Ocasio-Cortez -- and my would-be wife -- all you want, but at least she's coming up with ideas and solutions. Let's think back to the GOP, who wanted to scuttle Obamacare and replace it with...with...
4
Cow emissions, a high-priority threat, demands that McConnell head up a Special Senate Task Force to gather substantial quantities of tangible bovine venting from all 50 states for the President to sample at his pleasure.
Trump and Dogs. Unnatural at the least, a crime against nature.
Analogous to Virginity AND Pregnancy. And NOT in the Religious sense.
Grotesque.
1
Does anybody besides the NYT Op-Ed columnists (and we readers of said columns) have a clue as to what is going on in our world?
When I read of the latest “whoops!" I really can’t help wondering whether anybody except the two groups named above ever stop to think about anything.
Help! somebody, anybody who has a clue: talk to those gummint folks. Please!
Thank you.
this is a light, airy poke at the Republican Trump-led party apparently obsessed with Stalin and Hitler, as mentioned about what Sen. Cotton said. It seems no untrue rhetoric is beyond their stooping to it. mmm . . . weill let us not keep stating the obvious like it is something new.
1
Trump and his ilk are the epitome of *Dirty Power.*
3
So, what is your point, exactly?
1
We will see how CC is playing out as a political issue come August. Will we have a summer like Australia? More fires like Paradise, another storm like (fill in your favorite hurricane)?
Let the insurance industry remind everyone of the cost with dropped policies and higher rates.
In the meantime, do what you can to build a low carbon life...or not, it really depends on what you care about.
1
As some have mentioned, we will be going to voting booths, and we must, but the Republicans have known for decades that their ideas are unpopular and they can't win through free and fair elections. This is why they have been working (and succeeding) at things like vote suppression and court packing. We must vote, and we have a lot of other work to do as well. Most Americans do not want the planet-killing and inequality-intensifying policies of the Republicants.
2
Trump voters claim that they voted for him to drain the swamp, to retaliate against the status quo, to usher in a new era of disconnect while claiming to MAGA. Here we have a young congresswoman with big ideas, boldly taking on the establishment and the tired notions of the status quo. Here we have a politician who imagines America as a global leader, surpassing all other nations, a comprehensive change that could change us and the world for the better. Here is a plan to hold the USA accountable for it's relentless pursuit of dominance through economic and military means at the expense of most of it's citizens and the world. It is radical, far-reaching and scary. Is it socialism? No. Is it new? Yes. The nation complained and voted against the status quo yet we are terrified of an actual change that isn't just a baseball cap and hate-rallies. Grow up America. We are entering our adolescence and it's time to put away childish things and become adults. Many clamoring in fear of AOC will be out of office or dead in ten years and then what? Let's start listening to our young and accept that the self-serving goals of a 72 year old billionaire, and those like hime, are not those of our young, ambitious nation.
5
Clean energy will cost the very wealthy oil, gas and coal industries a lot of money.
Most members of Congress depend on the very wealthy to get re elected.
Congress will never pass anything that costs the very wealthy a lot of money.
4
It's Trump's nightmare and my kids will be living not in it, but through it long after karma claims his soul... if it hasn't yet been sighted "blowin' in the wind"
1
Thank you Ms. Collins for once again letting us breathe a little during the constant smothering of sanity and goodness conducted every darn day by our nefarious president and his army of pinocchios.
1
There IS dangerous climate change occurring right in front of us —wherever we live. We need our best politicians spearheading this vital issue. Senator Markey is smart, consistent, and has a great track record. I trust his leadership. I don’t trust Ocasio-Cortez- not for a second. As of now she’s all about glamour and Instagram— she makes great headlines.
2
@Mike Thanks Mike, for the input on Sen. Markey's record.
But why is he getting dragged into something that is not even a negotiating position? To secure the 21 to 24 year old vote in eastern Mass? This only makes Senate Democrats look divided, or worse, stupid.
Was Markey just told by Senate leadership to do this, as the person with the greatest security in his seat, to keep the far left happy? If so, how much more will they need to be fed to get off Instagram and come to the polls in November 2020?
1
AOC’s goofy Green Deal and Omar’s tweeting are creating an easy path to re-elect Trump In 2020.
4
Here you can read the fundamental difference between the colloquially metonymic opinion column (is column the term ? ) and real European journalism like in a news paper like French Le Monde . Here, absolutely no causality, no scientific or organizational arguments .No thinking about budgeting . Just a swirl of subjective impressions twirled with political prejudice .
I have an easy solution for green energy. At DJT's next rally, just install a wind turbine in front of him. The lies and hot air he spews out would power the entire US electrical grid for at least 2 weeks. With rallies twice a month, we'd have free electricity for an entire year. At last he would be doing something really useful for all of us!
4
Gail, you may or may not know this. Nancy Pelosi is a huge fan of Dalai Lama. She respects him tremendously and considers him a safe. Just recently the Dalai Lama spoke about the environment and the need to get the world rid of nuclear weapons. He made an effort 2 years ago to address Nobel Laureates to take a stand on this, so far nothing has happened. But he has not given up, he sees in fellow Nobel Laureate Barack Obama tremendous potential to carry on the Dalai Lama’s work in furthering the cause, of getting the world rid of nuclear aresenal.
You might Pooh paah this and dismiss it as idealistic and write comical columns about these serious matters. But know this, Dalai Lama is a patient man and if it’s not a myth he has been around the block a few births. He is deeply concerned about children, our planet, and the entire human race, 7 billion strong. We have to think like we are part of one organism that is humanity, each one of us has the potential to make a difference. And AOC, Markey know that, even if you take your role too lightly!
4
What an absurdity. Your rjght, Senator Cotton pointed out that the MSM conspired to hide the Q&A sheet that had "helping those who didn't want to work." One giant step towards socialism. I'm glad McConnell has scheduled a vote on this, to get all senators on the record, especially those running in 2020.
1
@OldTimer
Hey "Old Timer": Are you planning to reject YOUR OWN socialism? By that I mean Medicare and Social Security. Those are socialist programs. So is the FDA that makes sure the drugs you take are safe and effective. So is road building, Homeland Security and Air Traffic Control.
If you are not planning to junk your Social Security and your meds, then please don't criticize the socialism that will protect the next generation, namely: government support for green energy, a big tax on oil (or seizure of oil deposits to ensure it stays in the ground) and whatever else it takes to save the country and the planet from global warming and environmental pollution.
1
I'm for hearing about the poodle. What a bunch of old fogies. It's a new world out there, we need new blood, new ideas in line with the new technology. The times they are a changing, as well as, blowing in the wind.
4
I'd just encourage people to read the proposal.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5729033-Green-New-Deal-FINAL.html
It's an easy double spaced 14 pages.
It is a draft proposal. There is nothing I found in it to mock.
All of us should read it well enough that we can talk about it intelligently and honestly.
If this isn't the exact bill we need, we do need to be identifying issues we agree upon and develop constructive policy that isn't focused on the needs of lobbyists.
Knowledge is power. Read the proposal, please.
7
Anyone still remember that '73 dystopian flick called Soylent Green? You know, the one that starred gun-clutching Charlton Heston, Edward G. Robinson in his final role, Chuck Connors of 'Rifleman' fame, Joseph Cotten and Dick Van Patten as an usher?
It even won the Nebula Award for Best Dramatic Presentation!
Point is, while the Green New Deal makes all the best sense for our future, it's message is best managed by cooler, calmer heads
willing to more patiently explain the benefits for all of us while the real work of accomplishing it is done by those who are willing to
labor behind the scenes.
As always, Gail, thanks for bringing this serious task to our attention in your inimitably humorous way!
1
Politicians with constituencies in the following industries will not support the Green Queen.
Aviation manufacturing, maintenance and operations.
Ranching and animal husbandry, processing/distribution and the restaurant industry.
Commercial and residential construction.
Any of the above industries that require regular financing.
So, if politicians says they will support the Green Queen's agenda, look to where their voters work.
That we had to spend one second on this, should demonstrate how foolish we are. Placating a millennial, to appease millennials, that do not vote, is stupid. Biden knows this. As does Schultz.
And as quickly as this passes, we can get back to the witch hunts. I know there are witches out there and they need to be hunted. Mueller couldn't find them, but, the Sherlock Holmes of the the US House, Adam Schiff is on the case.
Find the witch. Find the witch. Find the witch.
I almost felt pity for 'stiff Cotton' (not the variety you use to dress people), a paranoic guy that seems insufferable in spite of his smarts, perhaps 'a la Ted Cruz' in it's obvious arrogance. Now, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a tough young woman who knows what is needed, social justice...while saving mother Earth from our greedy exploitation, and suggesting that the stoppage of climate change is just 'what the doctor ordered'. In this, the republicans are not only miles off but seemingly envious of not being able to get attention for their ill-informed (by choice, 'a la Trump' stupidity) knowledge of what needs to be done... if reason and common sense are allowed to show up. On the other hand, being too ambitious and trying to solve all our problems at once, will meet with doggone resistance...and doom even basic needs to save our own skin. The saying 'the best may be enemy of the good' may be 'food for thought', and try to come up with a wish list with gradual implementation. Of course, sending our obstructionist in the Senate packing may have to be the next step, as McConnell's viciousness knows no remedy to date. Even if he allows the 'Green New Deal' to reach the floor...to be voted down!
1
Please stop Gail - the liberal media's attempts to "ha ha" away the Green Deal mess is almost as embarrassing as the Presidential candidates who blindly endorsed it. Face it - Pelosi figured the best way to control a loose cannon like AOC was to let her keep talking until she caused a major problem for not only herself but others. Didn't take long.
1
@Chris
"...the Presidential candidates who blindly endorsed it."
I'll be voting in the primary for one of the Presidential candidates who endorsed it. If you didn't endorse it, don't bother trying to get my vote.
Republicans are against health:
- they don’t want you to have affordable health care
- they do nothing to stop senseless gun violence in schools, movie theaters, and at concerts
- they prevent women from having agency over of their own wombs
- they are against taking any action at all to halt climate change
If you like seeing people hurt, vote republican.
But please understand you are a masochist and the pain you are underpinning with your vote is so wide ranging and all encompassing that there’s no way you will ever remain safe and unscathed. The bed is on fire, and you have no choice but to lay down.
3
Is it not a bit too early for republicans to start the repeal and replace dance? BTW, it would be nice to hear their quality plan instead of contributing to the problem by just spewing hot air like the cows.
3
No one should be surprised that a shameless self-promoter whose horizon is his life could care less about the impending collapse of the global environment.
5
The Green New Deal is an abomination and absurdity. Technically & economically it has the intellectual depth one would expect from a class of third graders. Every American’s intelligence has been insulted by the mere creation of such Marxist propaganda.
That said, I hope Democrats continue to praise & uphold it. Rest assured, many of the liberals I know who are otherwise all-in on the climate change & social justice agendas tell me they too realize the idiocy of this ‘proposal’. The Democrats are exposing themselves for the unhinged totalitarians that they really are.
this green + new deal does a lot more than rescue the environment. and some elements of it are indeed socialistic. so the admonition that true socialism leads to the gestapo or the nkvd (both products of socialist governments) is indeed correct both historically and for all times - unless we turn into the human equivalent of ants. the experience of california with a huge government transportation project shows once again the potential pitfalls of such endeavors. all one has to do is look at medicare fraud to see that government guarantees of employment and income are ripe for corruption and malfeasance. so if the democrats push for this sort of thing the republicans will once again be getting my votes. but should the democrats stick to the green part and leave off the new deal part ill be sticking with them.
Talk about the gang that couldn't shoot straight. Ocasio-Cortez and her staff couldn't put a nut on a bolt, and Markey--Schumer's chief rival for screen time--has spent 30 years trying to figure out the cause of the month. Governor Moonbeam cancels the train to nowhere--how much has that already cost the taxpayers? This group wants to save the world and cannot even operate a subway system. Oy vey.
Trump's new name is Nero- fiddling while the planet burns. His nick name is drought and fire. His aka is urban heat. Let's get the name calling going.
2
AOC is a flash in the pan, she won’t get much, if anything, done. Her ideas are juvenile, simplistic and generally not well thought out.
She does love the limelight though..l..she certainly loves having her pic taken. Lol
Nancy Pelosi was pitch-perfect in her assessment's scale -- "the green dream, or whatever." But no one can top Sen. Cotton for compulsive campaigning for Trump's favors (many say, The Court to End All Courts), in assessing the manifesto in Trumpian terror.
Good luck reversing the Industrial Revolution.
@TD -- we are in the midst of the 3d industrial revolution.
The first was water power.
The second was fossil fuels.
The third will be some combination of renewables and nuclear, with wide scale electric distribution.
I was raised by my grandparents and my grandfather saw his first automobile at about age 10; he did grow up in a poor rural part of SC.
Before the auto it was horses, and a very large fraction of agriculture went to raising horses and growing their "fuel." In the space of about 30 years almost all of that infrastructure was gone -- and in New York you can see all the abandoned farms from it.
Sheik Yamani, oil minister of Saudi Arabia, is famous for the remark "the stone age didn't end due to a lack of stones."
1
@Lee Harrison
I appreciate your optimism, but I think you miss that each revolution was additive from an unscaled start. This is much different.
"Mitch McConnell, who generally doesn’t like to let the Senate consider Democratic ideas more substantive than post-office-naming, gleefully announced he was going to schedule a vote on the whole Green package."
This says it all about the republicans--McConnell delayed a vote on a supreme court nominee for 14+months and would not take up vote to end the shut down but has the audacity to say this. The republicans have nothing but contempt for the American people and democracy and don't care to hide it anymore. Vote them out!
4
Oh, what a time to be a Republican. The faces of the Democratic party are a woman in a headscarf who says Israel is evil and a woman who routinely wears what appears to be clown make-up and wants to give your tax dollars to people who refuse to work. In both cases, big mouths connected to small brains with no filters in between. Their scripts appear to have been written by the RNC. They are the top story on Fox just about every day (not even Hillary can get space any more). In short, they work overtime to fire up Trump's base and turn off the suburban middle class and people in the rust belt, both essential constituencies if the goal is to get rid of Trump. This kind of circus is not going to flip a single state in 2020.
I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I have to ask myself whether the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson are funding these people without their knowledge. If anybody can get Trump re-elected, it's the new Democrats.
There is, to every politician’s chagrin, no single solution to a “greener” world. But there are lots of workable solutions that in total have the potential to transform the planet and the way humans live. But our elected representatives treat every idea or proposal as an all or nothing approach, and denigrate any idea that isn’t “perfect.”
The ultimate solution is the combination of many things: weaning ourselves off fossil fuels, adopting more renewable energy sources, electric cars, managing with less air travel, less plastic (which depends on oil), more durable goods of all kinds, smaller houses, committing to high speed rail, having more people work from home so commuting and related transportation costs decline, the list goes on and on.
Any kind of change is especially difficult in the U.S., where too many feel entitled to everything, any change that doesn’t deliver more of everything is seen as a negative. But the status quo is not sustainable, either.
The Green New Deal contains many good ideas, but it’s delusional to think it can become reality by 2030. Maybe some of it by by 2050, and probably never completely. But if nothing else it helps get a conversation going that can be continued. And that’s the first step.
3
Let's have both. Green energy and coal/oil generated energy. Why does it have to be one or the other? Members of congress should just stick their tongues out at the lobbyists and laugh at them. Oh wait...that would be rude. Especially after everything they've (lobbyists) done for them (members of congress).
1
Tom Cotton thinks he's smarter than most of us which is quite offensive.
Michelle Goldberg in a recent column referred to “Freedom in the World,” Freedom House’s report on democracy. On the top of the list are Finland, Norway, Sweden, Canada and Netherlands, all of which have generous social welfare program, affordable healthcare and so on. The US comes somewhere in the middle in the Freedom House report.
Instead of worrying about socialism and Gestapo, Sen. Cotton and his colleagues should worry about why the US is lagging behind all the Nordic countries and is lumped with Croatia, Belize and the like.
6
No offense, but please stop talking about how Trump has never had a pet. This could goad him into getting one.
And that would be a tragedy for the poor pet.
11
"May you have a strong foundation when the winds of changes shift". (Bob Dylan; Forever Young) - 2020 - Trump, enough of your hot air. The times they are a changing. People get ready. The answer may well be blowin' in the wind.
1
Gee I didn't know that Senator Cotton was such a genius! Thanks for pointing that out.
1
Not your best column by far. CHANGE THE INFRASTRUCTURE! Of course the GND is about social and economic justice, which are, by the way, other words for socialism. It’s the whole planet and everything living on it, not just wind farms!
1
Sadly, I think, something so horrible and awful has to happen to our country and our people before we get the attention of our politicians resulting in any meaningful change . But by then that meaningful change will be meaningless.
6
And, you don't have to dig a huge hole in the ground where once a mountain rose from the earth and sent crystal clear streams filled with trout coursing through picturesque hollers. Or figure out where to put everything that wasn't coal that you ripped from the mountain, then gouged from the earth where it had stood for billions of years.
I'm amazed Trump has had a foot-stomping tantrum to get Air Force One retrofitted with coal-fired steam engines. Who knows, it might work. And the Air Force could then do away with the god-awful expensive fighter jet escorts that accompany the big bird everywhere it goes and just dispatch a couple of Goodyear blimps to serve as flank and rear security.
Gail, I am tickled with the way AOC has upended Congress, but, as it is with our national nemesis, so it is with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez: Twitter addiction is not a strong point, it is a weakness.
4
Sure some of the freshman Dems in Congress are young, rash, inexperienced and prone to shoot from the hip. But they have ideas, which is more than can be said for the pale old white men of the GOP whose political agenda revolves around tax cuts, preserving the status quo and groveling at the feet of a serial liar. Many of those ideas are good ideas, and the more the better. They just need to be polished up and presented more practically. When all is said and done, even those wearing MAGA hats would rather drink clean water than water laced with coal oil and industrial waste.
160
@Christy
Or so you'd think.
I'm not so sure that they'd all rather drink clean water if they thought it would cost them a few more tax dollars to get it.
8
@Glenn Ribotsky I share your skepticism about MAGAhatters’s choosing clean water over oil tainted water. They will put off dealing with climate change until ocean waters are are literally lapping at their doors and salt water runs out of their faucets.
3
@Christy
They may in fact be drinking polluted water. Dirty little secret of the regulation thrashing GOP is that too many communities in the US are in fact drinking polluted water.
Sinclair Broadcasting will make sure that reporting about this will be kept to a minimum so that the GOP can continue to serve their donors who are doing the polluting.
State TV is working for the GOP. A rude awakening is coming.
5
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the left's version of Donald Trump.
She's in articulate, uneducated, ill-informed, and generally clueless... But her base simply LOVES her!
Just like Trump.
It doesn't matter that wind and solar are unreliable, inefficient and don't generate anywhere near enough power to meet our needs. It doesn't matter that there's no efficient technology to store that electricity even if it did produce enough.
It doesn't matter that we are the "Saudia Arabia" of coal. It doesn't matter that we are the world's largest producer of crude oil and natural gas. It doesn't matter that we could power the entire nation with one of the most carbon neutral fuel sources known to man - nuclear.
It doesn't matter that even if the US banned all coal, automobiles, airplanes, re-built every structure and bundled in free college (those kids did so well with that free elementary school we gave them - they can barely read) and free medical treatment.
None of that matters.
When "we" talk about climate policy the "we" isn't the US. The "we" is every country in the world. "We" - the US - don't have our own climate.
Ms. Trump-Ocasio-Cortez needs to convince India, China, Russia, Indonesia, Mexico and every other polluting nation on the world to do the same, at the same time.
Otherwise it's just the US taxpayer funding another insane "new deal" doomed to failure just like the last "New Deal" that largely kept the depression alive for years longer than necessary.
22
@Johannes de Silentio
Just pointing out Ms AOC has a BA from Boston University. May daughter attended BU also. They might even know each other.
The New Deal failed? Please get a grip.
42
So true. If the New Deal hadn't bailed out capitalism in this country we would have had the revolution that we should have had and would no longer be watching the return of the robber barons, the snake oil salesmen, and the con artists in politics, banking, health care, energy, etc. etc.
23
@Johannes de Silentio
That must be what they told you to think. What you say does not appear in any way to conform to objectively observable fact.
22
We're the frogs in the pot, only we're turning the burner up to high. Oh well, at least it'll be quicker that way.
4
The authoritarians you mention are mere ephemera.
The true authoritarian in this equation is Mother Nature.
She takes no prisoners.
We are our own worst enemy, on slow boil.
We behave like toddlers in a playpen.
The storm is coming.
4
It would seem impossible to speak of what is being called a "socialist" idea as a path toward Naziism. Tom Cotton sure likes to fling ideas around that whatever he dislikes is Hitlerian. From where I sit, it is authoritarianism which is Hitlerian and it is where Cotton and Trump strive to live and, let's face it, climate change is the one idea the Republican Party has no use for despite the fact that most scientists agree that it is wreaking havoc wherever it is not taken into account. There may be things wrong with the Green New Deal but none that can't be resolved by people with good will. This is clearly an attempt to vilify and demonize the morally admirable Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, something the Republicans have become quite proficient at. Easier to blame her than to face a truth that is evident to so many.
5
@harvey perr, and so interesting that when anyone compares the rise of Trump to the rise of Hitler they are chastised and told not to bring up that trope again.
1
AOC has jumped right into the fray- unprepared. The Republicans are going to chew her up, and she is becoming the face of the Democratic Party (radical socialism). All of the freshman in the House should be careful.
2
The politically perfectly correct pretty-far Left: Never misses an opportunity to mess-up an opportunity.
1
The same people that voted against their own self-interest by electing trump also believe climate change is a joke. Maybe we need to start with education..
6
@Thomas Renner education would be great, but never work..these oeople woukd need to have brains capable of understanding facts
A single wind turbine has up to 1 ton of rare earth magnets. The smelting process is an environmental disaster of biblical proportions in China. Every alternative energy has a hidden cost. Solar panels required acres and acres of clear cut land, destroying trees and forests.
Oil and gas is plentiful and has infrastructure in place. This proposal, declaration or whatever is pure nonsense. And it’s not even about the environment.
It’s about a utopia where Government controls every aspect of your life including what you eat. Don’t want to work? That’s fine you can stay home and clean your solar panels, or do nothing at all.
@hawk, actually you are wrong about oil and gas infrastructure are already in place. Have you heard of fracking? And the damage it does to the environment? You are correct about one aspect of the issue, all energy fuels cost us in one way on another. Wind energy might have the least impact. Denmark is a smaller country than ours but most of their electricity is supplied by wind. We couldn't hope to do the same here but every little bit helps.
1
Principles should not be unwelcome in the "we, first" vs "me, first" debate.
1
Just call it the New New Deal and include limits on profit. All corporations having to do with Energy are going to have to do the heavy lifting. Of course the elephant in the room is the runaway unbridled capitalism that is subsidized by our politcal machines along with the to big to fail banks running the show for absurd levels of profit and risk. America First will not work to solve the problems that we face going forward. Viva La Revolution, Viva Ocazio-Cortez!!
3
Check out the bipartisan Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, HR763, now in the House. Puts a price on carbon, raises it every year, and send the money back to all of us to spend however we want (though some will have to go to higher prices). Free market, revenue neutral, effective, creates jobs. What's not to like? And it's bipartisan!
energyinnovationact.org
2
I know this will be deeply unpopular with a large segment of the NYT readers (and commenters!) but could the national media just give us ONE day a week without AOC? Has there ever been in US history another 29 year old member of Congress who apparently has never been west of the Hudson River, and who has gained more attention from the media? As Ms. Collins would say, really people, do we need to hear from her every day??
1
Either Ocasio-Cortez gets smart or she becomes a one-term footnote. Local politics not loco politics.
Finite resources
Infinite human population growth
That's the core of the environmental disaster we are heading towards
Not PC to address
Good luck, glad I'm old
2
During an interview with the press, by emphasizing the need for a Green New Deal, US Congressional Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez metaphorically pointed her finger in the President’s face and made it clear that we are the one species on this planet with the power to destroy all life on it and that is what we are doing.
Planetary resource depletion and destruction (negative external costs) were never a part of Adam Smith's pricing equation (defined as maximal satisfaction of wants) nor was recompense for ongoing irreparable ecological consequences. (In his age it was of no concern)
The Green New Deal calls for a pricing recognition of fossil fuel negative external costs. And that is just the beginning.
www.InquiryAbraham.com
1
Fluff about serious issues.
Nobody has looked good on this one, but it amazing how quickly the GOP has succeeded in dumbing down the discussion. Washington, we have a problem. It is not going away because Donald, Mitch and the usual suspects blow pixie dust at it. Nor does laughing about the pixie dust help solve the problem. This is not a laughing matter, Ms. Collins.
1
' “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions” by 2030' is certainly commendable.
It is also simplistic and unrealistic. Someone should have done their homework before tweeting.
@Fred
But why? Net-zero is certainly able to accommodate quite a large emission of greenhouse gases, just so long as there is in place an equally large absorber of greenhouse gases. It might well be achievable.
Most people who have pets posses at least a monocle of love and caring in their heart for others species of life. Trump's love is for himself. There is no room in his heart to share it with people let alone an animal. With that in mind, I'm glad he doesn't have a pet but if he did, what kind of animal would suit the personality of Trump? My choice is the venomous orange copperhead snake.
If Trump uses his executive power to declare an emergency at our southern border then the next president could enact the entire Green New Deal, without congressional input, in response to climate change. I envision a windmill in front of every hole of every golf course Trump is invested in, just like they have in miniature golf. Also it is more then ironic that Senator Cotton would mention the novel "1984" when Trump has gone from telling his crowds that Mexico will pay for a concrete wall that will stretch from "sea to shiny sea", to the American taxpayer will pay for a barrier of some sort (he doesn't care which) that will augment some areas, to the wall is already being built and only needs to be finished, to whatever he spews to his, always eager to be fooled, crowds tomorrow. Trump is, literally, the embodiment of that great piece of literature.
1
Underneath all this is the recognition that we're all doomed. The millennials like AOC are still optimistic that we can act now and forestall the worst effects, but the truth is, the time to act was during the Reagan administration, and the Reagan administration killed any possible action. Instead, we're all so totally misinformed that we're wondering whether we'll be ok with electric cars that only go half as far a normal cars. It will be so inconvenient.
It's too late, and even if some dramatic turn of events aligned the intentions and actions of every one of the 10 billion or so people who will be alive on this planet in a decade or two, the worst will still happen. Ice will melt, ocean currents will change, weather patterns will change, crops will fail, species will die off, and there won't be enough food. What do people do in the face of a disaster such as this? They fight each other.
The wealthiest and most powerful people on earth have known this for decades. Exxon Mobil scientists told their executives this a long time ago. The wealthy and powerful are not stupid and they don't deny science, or they wouldn't be wealthy and powerful -- a company like Exxon Mobil is completely dependent on science and technology in order to make a profit.
When civilization collapses, after billions die off, who will be the lords and ladies in the new feudal system? Answer: you haven't thought about this at all, so it isn't going to be any of your offspring.
2
Gail and readers: Wind and solar, yes, the more the better, but let me add a 24/7/365 pair of energy resources that here in Linköping SE are to be found in the green container present at the end of my driveway.
The pair: 1) Ordinary dry solid waste, preferably minus recycled materials, 2) Food waste in double-knotted green plastic bags.
The container is emptied every other week, weight registered electronically at the truck. The truck travels 5.5 km to the Gärstad waste to energy system, most advanced inthe world.
1 is incinerated to heat water that reaches my home to enter a small white box where the water to my radiators and to my kitchen/bathrooms is heated. Silent, no fumes, no fire hazard.
2 green bags are optically separated so that the food waste can become biogas, completely replacing fossil fuel in city buses and some inter-city buses.
Never in America. A former student sent me a copy of an appalling irrational PP presentation made by a Sierra Club affiliate. Reminded me of this line from "Europe Finds Clean Energy in Trash, but U.S. Lags" NYT 2010-04-12:
Prof. "N. J. Themelis: 'America’s resistance to constructing new plants was...environmentally “irresponsible.
It’s so irrational; I’ve almost given up with New York,' he said. 'It’s like you’re in a village of Hottentots who look up and see an airplane — when everybody else is using airplanes — and they say, ‘No...too scary.’"
Visit Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com for a rational view.
2
@Larry Lundgren
Kudos to Sweden and other countries who are seriously utilizing biowaste. I can’t understand why it doesn’t get more attention in any energy solution proposals. We finally started a curbside composting program here in NYC a few years ago. Imagine the potential for re-using food in the city that never stops eating! Still, the reception of the program is exactly what you might expect: Too messy, too inconvenient, too time consuming, the rats will get to it, etc., etc.
Like you, residents in our small apartment building bring our little green bags out to the collection bin, and the reduction in our regular trash has been enormous.
1
@Claudia Leslie - Thank you Claudia. Wish more would take up the discussion. New York recently provided an example of the standard American response.
A proposal was made to develop a facility in Seneca Falls. I could find nothing technical about the proposal so I have no idea if it was satisfactory or not.
What I do know is that the Governor simply declared it environmentally wrong and that apparently was the end of that proposal. There is one new facility in the USA, picture at my blog. That system was designed by Babcock & Wilcox, Copenhagen and is up and running. West Palm Beach FL ran out of landfill space so a modern incinerator designed by B & W was the answer. If you look at my blog you will see that the WPB incinerator is not 21st century exterior design as are those in Copenhagen and Linköping.
Expect to bring my blog up to date in a day or two.
You have green bags. Do the contents go to composting?
Thanks, Larry L.
@Larry Lundgren -- that's all CO2 producing.
Let me know when Europe's waste burning starts to sequester the CO2.
1
Pets are too independent for a DT (unfortunate acronym since this DT reportedly does not drink alcohol).
As for the Green New Deal, it is difficult for most people who think at all to confuse a statement of policy intention with the Communist Manifesto, but the present GOP spokespersons have a Frank Luntz talent for bending words into contortions. When thought fails, just demagogue a good set of societal aspirations into absurdity, say the avaricious plutocrats in black suits.
1
Tone deaf Trump and his clan and Republican Party only get worse as time marches on. Don’t they care about their grandchildren? Great grandchildren? I guess money will buy the best air masks and black market water. But what happens when that runs out....?
The Democrats have to be very careful with all of this. There are still millions of people out there who equate socialism with communism, and, for all of their ignorance of history and political blundering, Republicans are still very good at weaponizing words to serve their purposes. And remember that after gaining the House in 1995, the Republicans, flushed with victory and filled with ideological certainty, made themselves look like a swarm of zealots and handed Bill Clinton another term. Hey, new Democratic members? Do what Nancy tells you to!
If current Republicans had been alive just prior to the American Revolution, they would have been apoplectic over the “extreme, radical, socialist, anarchist” proposal of our Founders for daring to break away from the clutches of crony capitalism and birthright aristocracy. Subsequently they would have leaked rough drafts of the Constitution and bitterly attacked it for planning a “big government takeover of our nation.”
3
First: We get Trump a goldfish named Max, Duke or Bitem.
Second : We convince people that cutting out the middle cow between grain and table would be good for all involved.
Third: We start a serious conversation about scaled down liquid salt thorium reactors. No, they are not the tea kettle reactors of yore.
Four: We start replacing and repairing our infrastructure with an emphasis on EVs.
Five: We study flying pigs as a mode of air transport because the chances of Americans changing their wasteful habits are zero and his little brother No.
So nothing more about AOC reducing cow emissions? It's potentially as long-lasting a topic as Mitt's transport of the family dog on the roof of his car.
Capitalism is destroying life on earth. That is fact which is not debatable. Humanity cannot carry on the way we are endlessly and think there will be no consequence- or is humankind somehow magically exempt from the laws of chemistry and physics? If you're a living thing that breaths, likes to eat and likes to live a long life then you have a stake in climate change!
Imagine all the big, beautiful Wind Power in the Oval Office.
Period.
Nuclear. We won't get green without it.
(The wind thing is just hot air -- like the cows'.)
2
After hubris comes the fall, though I'd have expected Sen. Markey to have a bit more political savvy than that.
This is precisely what I was concerned about; Cortez took her pathetically small victory (57% of a 12% turnout) and started behaving as though she won a tremendous victory, when in truth she won the same way Trump won: low turnout.
Since then, she has behaved as though she is the leader of the Democratic Party, and the experienced GOP pols were waiting for this sort of ill-considered proposal, and now they are painting the Dems as "The party of AOC". If the Repubs can successfully do that for the next two years, it will go a long way towards re-electing Trump.
It's past time for her to sit down, shut up, and get to work on putting out substantial proposals, and not just this Trumpian grandstanding she's so fond of, like that silly "Where's Mitch?" stunt. Climate change is a serious issue, and though it's likely no legislation will be passed and signed this term, due to GOP intransigence, a sober, workable bill would both show that the Dems recognise the issue, and are capable of actually legislating, rather than just engaging in the beloved political theatre of the Republicans.
1
I love how the author glosses over the fact that these insane pols are relying on technology that hasn’t even been invented yet.
The whole thing is a Marxist fairy tale. We should treat it as such.
1
Demand the impossible, keep working towards it. And settle for nothing else.
Put a wet blanket over everything and anything is another way to do things. Gail here is laughing at people who are throwing out a basic challenge. It is easy to mock the boldness, largeness of their vision. The people themselves obviously have a sense of irony and self awareness. But their earnestness and seriousness and commitment is laughed at. Gail clearly is a very humane and decent person. In laughing, even with a degree of kindness, Gail is revealing the limits of her own imagination. Time bound, culture bound and very timid in what she can expect of herself and others. The people she writes about in fact expect much more from her than she does about herself.
1
The National GOP has ZERO credibility on the environment. In only a few instances in a few states, mostly the Mountain West, does any Republican have anything useful or positive to say about air, water and soil and the animals and humans who live therein. Actually, they have negative credibility, as whatever they propose worsens those things to the profit of a small sliver of people who are wealthy already, by measure of the highest standards.
That being said, the energy around the environment in the country comes from people who have entrenched themselves in Red vs. Blue dogma. Any ideas or policies are simply mirrored expressions with 2, 3 or 4 degrees of separation and being touted by people who don't know 'deciduous' from 'conifer'. And in this case, the Occasional Cortex new star on the left has integrated every Leftist agenda, plus the kitchen sink, in with an idea that is incredibly important. Her inclusion of Equity and Free Money for Bums is the poison pill, sure to doom this policy thrust amongst those who know a woodchuck and a groundhog are the same critter.
I appreciate and side with these young, female up-starts in Congress. But they need to use the virtue of their youth to know what they do not know and then learn what to do about it.
Spouting-off like a Green Karl Marx will just destroy anything Progressive you are trying to do.
1
Apropos no pets. I’ve heard he has kept bunnies on several occasions. Often after the births of his children
Will no one tell the paste eaters in the REd Hats
that Soecial Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food stamps,
farm subsidies, public schools, public libraries,
police and fire departments are socialiasm?
As for wind power, on the road to Watertown there
are these wind turbines on a hill that are hauntingly
beautiful. SAme with the road to Altona in the NOrth
Country.
I thought all "clean" energy came out of those environmentally friendly wall sockets with unlimited supply.
Is the president the only person who has never had animals but does have an invisible fence?
Aren't we glad Ocasio-Cortez is as detail, and plan free as Don Quixote Trump!
I've never seen our great leader wear a green tie. Might clash with his coal gray suit.
We need someone who can gently pull together the will of our nation's populace to make any serious headway on environmental issues. It will take someone with a great deal of technical and economic understanding to do this. We have a bunch of egoists on both sides who think they can sell snow to our Eskimo population.
Windmills have been around since the 9nth century. We have wind turbines now capable of generating tremendous electric power. We have the technology. We need the will to use it more and more.
3
Satire of Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" is hardly new in environmental policy. As politicians bicker over proposed legislation, collapse unfolds. See "Blowin in the [Brackets]: Tribute to the Convention on Biological Diversity":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYJx-J31Op8
1
Hopefully, all who have any serious interest in stopping and reversing climate change will wake up to the fact that our only chance is a quick shift to nuclear power.
1
@Bill -- I worked for a decade at the DOE laboratory at Hanford. You simply do not know what you are talking about. There will be no "quick shift to nuclear power" -- it's dead now as far as new construction.
1
What we really need is something between Ocasio's "Green new deal" fantasy and Trump's "Coal or bust" bluster.
Unfortunately, politics in our country has become so polarized that both parties, by default, talk past each other rather than debating and compromising.
Where are Tip O'neill and Reagan when u need them most?
1
There are all kinds of approaches to solving our energy needs and helping reverse environmental damage, we don't have to focus on one, we have a whole toolbox full of possibilities. If nothing else is found attractive, what Sean Hannity puts out every night is likely flammable.
It seems to be impossible for any writer working for the NY Times to issue any critical comments about a Democratic Party politician without using their column as a platform to attack President Trump.
The AOC set of ideas should have been analyzed as a stand-alone proposition - and, with some of the humor which characterizes Ms. Collins' writing, picked apart piece by ridiculous piece.
In the run-up to 2020, AOC is taking the Democratic Party over the electoral cliff. A Pied Piper analogy would have been appropriate in writing about her program.
24
@Maurice Gatien there seems to be a lot of confusion about what is ideal and what is an actual plan. The New Green Deal is an ideal. Getting to it hasn't been submitted to Congress as actual proposals yet.
What puzzles me is why there isn't a sense of urgency over climate. A few years ago a 2 degree rise was considered a disaster. Now we're keeping our fingers crossed that we won't go above 3 degrees yet 4 degrees is a distinct possibility. There seems to be a naive belief that we can simply move somewhere else but that's going going to be viable for a large number of people, nor our crops.
So maybe instead of criticizing it maybe the GOP (or commentators making snide remarks about it, such as in WSJ, which said basically it would be cheaper to burn the planet) they could come up with their own ideas? Instead of wasting time and lives by sticking their heads in the sand.
21
@Maurice Gatien, I have never been a republican (raised in a racist south and seeing what they were), but there was a time even so when the party would not have insisted on honoring a sexual-assaulting, draft-dodging incompetent like Donald Trump. Even the appearance of virtue is absent, an embodiment of the seven deadly sins if ever there was one. That you cannot see this plain fact does throw doubt on your other perceptions, I am afraid. And that is the least of justifiable fears your choice of leader creates in reasonable people.
22
@Maurice Gatien
I see you don't read David Brooks, Bret Stephens, or Ross Douthat.
6
Why are we so reluctant to jump into this deal? We may not reach the total goal but since when does that stop America?? We have put men on the moon and now we are reaching for Mars! Exploration, curiosity. America always moves forward in front of the pack. So what if we don't reach everything on the list. Since when have we become scared of trying. We can move mountains when we want to. That is who we are (or used to be). I am all for this green deal. I accept the challenge and am willing to try. Republicans run scared of anything new - Not Democrats.
5
Unfortunately Democrats tend to have college educations.
A Green New Deal sounds a lot like build a wall. It's a bumper sticker not a well thought out plan that takes into consideration current and future energy needs and how to replace it and pay for it.
While they figure all of that out start with a carbon tax.
9
"Big" wind is no better than big oil. Both rely on centralized energy generation. This plan relys on corporations commandeering private land for high capacity electrical lines along with sending continuous electricity half ways across the country.
The East coast basically shuts down when 1 pipeline shuts down or the grid gets interrupted. Focusing on making the areas we can self suffiecent and larger cities need to focus on generating their needs closer to home, with a variety of method.
@Laureen Greenwood
A distributed system for power generation and delivery makes lots of sense.
It kinda like Power for the People, Power by the People.
@Laureen -- you need to understand the numbers. Cities have always had very high energy requirements, and required import of fuel/energy. By the 1830s Paris was in something of a crisis because they had cut down all the wood that was within feasible transport range ... they started the shift to coal that came from far away, barged up the Seine. And yes, it had bad consequences.
There is no way large cites can be "self sufficient." Even nuclear power needs imported uranium, and cities will not build reactors in their midst.
Rural America feeds the population in the cities; that's where your farm income comes from. Energy isn't different.
1
Things like economic security and other humanitarian issues have increasingly been recognized as necessary for protecting the environment and reversing climate change. Therefore these do need to be included in a "green new deal" that aims to be comprehensive in its scope.
2
Wind power has its problems, including noise and light pollution and wind turbines killing bats and birds at high rates. Our rural county is struggling with this as citizens come forward to complain about the noise and light, which disrupts their lives day and night, to the point of illness and causing people to sell their homes and move. Meanwhile, big companies pushing these things get farm owners who don't live on their land to sign leases without nearby homeowners having any say. Our county is working on how to better regulate this but the damage to wildlife alone is enough for me to say that these wind turbines are not a good solution, believe it or not. And in Iowa an offshore wind farm isn't an option. Solar or even nuclear power would be better overall, it seems.
6
The GOP has carelessly declared war on the young by ignoring the shooting of our children and by denying climate change evidence that threatens their future. So, a word to Republican politicians who are ridiculing the Green Deal: Unlike their elders, the young are not afraid of democratic socialism, and they will soon be coming, in great numbers, to voting booths near you.
8
Republicans see Democrats as sheep to be sheared to subsidize billionaires, corporations, and pork-barrel projects in Red states. Frankly, I'm sick of it, sick of $.39 out of every $1 that I pay in Federal taxes getting spent in states that THEN raise taxes on us Blue states even more! With what housing costs in the the tri-state area, try finding a decent house that does NOT have in excess of $10,000 / year in interest!
I'd like to seen all the wind generators and solar farms planted in and off-shore the Blue States. Lots of wind on the coast from Maine to Virginia, and from Washington to San Diego! Also off the lakes in Illinois and Minnesota Lots of Sun in California, Nevada and New Mexico. These are already the states that drive most of the American economy (California is the 5th largest economy in the world).
Yeah, I'm bitter. I hate seeing my tax dollars go to states represented by people (mostly men) who want to limit our freedoms while they reach even deeper into our, the Blue states' pockets.
12
I really wish Ocasio-Cortez would take a deep breath and spend a couple of terms just learning the ropes, rather than trying to lead from day 1. Say what you like about Nancy Pelosi, but her years of experience paid off when she "dog walked" Dirty Don last month.
Theory is great. But so is praxis. There is an art, that has to be learned, to getting things done. Unless you want to be the mirror reflection of no-nothing Dirty Don, who is great at ramping up the fringe, then leading them to no where.
What's next? A O-C lectures John Lewis on civil rights?
7
Ah, there's a cost and a benefit to every decision, including the "Green" ones. Take Gail's example:
"But we can talk about wind power instead. It’s lean, it’s practical, and extremely tweetable."
I am not so sure about "Lean," but it is very tall. "Practical" depends on which green factors are yours, like solar. "Tweetable" is another dimension in an over-loaded social media channel. Birds "tweet" too.
Given the many bird deaths from the huge props, many ornithologists would disagree with Gail's tweetable.
What about solar roofs?
6
Yes, wind power is an efficient source of clean energy. And, yes, Trump and his sycophants will reflexively object. One is tempted to suggest that we harness the wind generated in Washington, particularly among Republicans, as this is after all a Gail Collins column.
3
As grave as the climate crisis in general is, we have, incredibly an even more urgent issue to deal with: the catastrophic collapse of insect populations across the planet. This hasn't been written about or talked about enough. Insects are dying off at a rate that could mean their total extinction within the century. Our farming practices (and our desire for wide, green, empty lawns) have stripped the land of much of its biodiversity and taken away the habitat for many insects that are absolutely essential as pollinators and food for other animals higher up the chain. The monarch butterfly migration has dwindled to a trickle; bugs smashed on windshields are nearly a thing of the past; and scientists say we may only have 60 years -- SIXTY YEARS -- of harvests left.
Any efforts at environmental conservation and fighting climate change should focus on helping insect populations recover. Because if THEY go, WE go -- and they're going alarmingly fast. I hope AOC and all Green New Deal advocates come to recognize this as their top priority. We have much less time to act than we think.
7
@Jason
right on! And another tiny piece of evidence that insects are disappearing on an epic scale--all those architect designed homes that dominate the house beautiful shows always have sliding wall/window/doors that open without screens to nature, always bragging about how the inside and outside have become one, blah blah, well obviously its because all the bugs are gone and you can live without screens.
4
@Jason
I’ve noticed the lack of dead bugs on my windshield the past number of Springs relative to prior year
I believe it was a Norwegian scientist who noticed the same while bike riding. He was smart enough to research the issue & hence our current awareness. I wasn’t so smart.
1
In congress, - RIGHT NOW – there is a bi-partisan bill that that would have a dramatic effect on carbon pollution: the Energy Innovation and Dividend Act, HR 763.
HR 763 fights climate change by imposing a fee on carbon pollution and greenhouse gasses, incentivizing energy companies to reduce their use of fossil fuels and use cleaner, cheaper, renewable options. It would reduce emissions by 40% in 12 years, improve air quality and create 2.1 million new jobs over 10 years. It's NOT cap and trade; the fees imposed on fossil fuels are returned to all Americans via a monthly dividend check. This is consistent with the philosophy of the Green New Deal.
Go to: EnergyInnovationAct.Org. for information.
8
This is an example of how democracies don’t work. There is strong evidence to prove man is responsible for climate change and yet the republicans deny this fact to get re-elected. The republicans know they can continue to use this strategy because young people don’t vote and they are the ones that care the most about climate change but continue to not vote. The irony of the facts that are unfolding is if one thinks long term it just might be that the greatest democracy in the world will destroy the world and their own existence. Seems melodramatic but predicting events that might come to pass decades from now by interpreting actions one takes now is obviously up for debate but if the scientist are right is there a different outcome if we ignore climate change? When you can convince people that health care for all is bad and caring about the environment is bad and equality is bad and dictatorships are good there is no telling what the greatest democracy can and will do.
3
Yes to wind power. Yes to solar power. Yes to free local public transportation. Yes to bike lanes. Yes to insulating our old buildings. Yes to turning down the heat before we go to bed. Yes to turning off the lights when we leave the room. Yes to eating less meat. Yes to high speed trains instead of planes. Yes to it all. And yes to these brave young people who dream big, because they are the ones who are inheriting this currently very broken world we elders are leaving them.
I've called my senators and rep in support of the Green New Deal. Will you?
21
Nice column, but this is a perfect example of elitist myopia. The Green New Deal can’t move forward until rural America reaches economic equality with the cities. Here in Maine, the yellow-vested were out in force yesterday clearing snow in the pre-dawn hours with their 20 year-old pick-up trucks. There is no irony or solidarity in their outfits.
2
There in Maine, your winter weather may become worse because of climate change. Or maybe "better", but in the sense that tree parasites find conditions more favorable and the mud season swells to half the year; and given that the Green New Deal explicitly mentions incentives to economic reform, it's not clear what your gripe is right here.
@G
Yes..but when the islands off the coast of your grand state are washed away or swamped in water... don't say we didn't warn you.
20 year old pick up trucks? I live in the richest city in the world and our transit system pre-dates WWII.
Our mass transit systems were dismantled in the 50’s. If Gail wants her wind mill, then give Maine trains (and schools, broadband, opioid addiction treatment, care for the elderly)
An election tomorrow asking Americans to choose between living with cow flop and cow gas and Donald Trump would result in a decisive victory for the cows. Unless it was held in the Electoral College.
22
"(Truly, there is almost nothing he doesn’t like that won’t get compared to Stalin or Nazism. At the very beginning of his maiden Senate speech, Cotton claimed limits in defense spending reminded him of how “Adolf Hitler had taken power in Germany.”)"
Tom Cotton should pull out his WWII books and study up on how these communist and fascist empires started beyond limits in defense spending. He might learn more about the dictator's manifesto, that starts with dividing the populace, invoking restoration of former national greatness, demonization of specific peoples or religions, attacking and packing the courts, outlawing free press, stifling dissent, whipping up hate with speeches of fire packed with lies, and outlawing opposition parties.
He might then take a look towards his own party and tick off those boxes if he's really concerned about totalitarianism here.
82
@ChristineMcM
Everything you write is accurate except this one sentence:
"Tom Cotton should pull out his WWII books and study up on how these communist and fascist empires started beyond limits in defense spending."
He knows that. I'm willing to give a pass to an uninformed GOP voter, but not to Senator Cotton, not to any other GOP leader. They all know exactly what they are doing.
9
@William Dufort You are right, he does know better. Trained in the military, like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, both of them seem to have forgotten the premises of our founding democratic principles when it comes to this president. This is what happens when members of a party put the party over nation.
9
Start with a carbon tax that gradually, and with certainty, increases over time. Then let the free market come up with the best solution to carbon emissions.
4
@Ggm These days the only solutions the "free market" comes up with are those involving maximizing corporate profits at the expense of...employees, customers, the government. Allowing the free market free rein to do what they do best is a fantasy leftover from the 1970s.
4
As far as Trump is concerned, coal is to energy needs as a concrete wall is to border security. Hopefully, his insistence on coal will suffer the same fate as his insistence on a wall.
7
Think fusion (not fission) energy.
If scientists can overcome the puzzle of fusion energy, we will solve many environmental concerns.
The scientists are working on it.
There is hope.
4
Fusion energy is only about 20 years away! Unfortunately it always has been and likely always will be about 20 years away.
6
@New World Fusion was just around the corner when I graduated from engineering school 60 years ago. Fission is now. Its detractors are caught up in first gen; we are now at 3rd and4th gen designs[the first gen plants are still operating safely]. Wind turbines have their own environmental and maintenance problems and they chop up birds especially eagles. Fusion when it comes will be very expensive to build. Now the economics point to natural gas but if your concern is greenhouse gases; think fission.
1
@New World
Big IF.
To paraphrase Steve Buscemi in ConAir - "Define irony:"
"The Kentucky Coal Mining Museum installed 80 solar panels on its roof in April 2017. It is hoped the installation will save the museum $8,000–10,000 a year in energy costs. ..." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky_Coal_Museum)
History has already decided that alternative, clean, abundant energy sources are the present, and dirty, polluting coal is the past.
38
First, Nancy Pelosi is a political realist. She knows that to pass legislation she has to count votes- she Ian widely regarded as a master of this craft. So I can only imagine how often she must be rolling her eyes in her private moments over the grandstanding of this celebrity called “AOC”.
Second, let us not forget the great mantra of environmental awareness: “Think globally, act locally.” This Green New Deal Ian so flawed because it does not address the steps that individuals and towns and cities can take to enact responsible change. How about starting at the state level and require that every town and city convert their buildings’ energy use to solar or wind power? And build from there.
7
@Boswell Think about retrofitting every school in America!?! That would save local taxpayers a bundle and then convert all the school buses to run on natural gas.
@Karen K
I agree! Begin at the town level because it’s small and workable and they will see the savings right away!
Dear Gail,
In my lifetime, I can’t remember a single Republican initiative that addressed Climate Change. Much like Obama Care, they are truly the party without any plan to help solve the real issues facing our country.
They are down with investing in the Military Industrial Complex and giving financial breaks to Corporations and the mega rich.
What they are telling us with their actions is that they could care less about the health of our environment or our people.
God Bless the Representatives that want to put forth ideals and goals for us to discuss and debate. Isn’t that a better use of our time and taxes than spending billions on a wall?
38
The GND seems to be generating a national discussion re: climate change and possible solutions. The purpose is to press the US to consider taking a leading position.
Word is that what is essentially a GND is now working in Germany. And, I'd guess that is true in many EU countries. The GOP says it is beyond the US to consider anything of the sort. Other, non GOP critics, say it is unreal.
So, the US is incapable of leading on an issue critical to the survival of the human race. True? NO. Fact is: the GND will undergo some revisions but the heart of it will survive and thrive. The D's will gain support from all political factions eventually. We can't wait for perfection to address this global problem.
8
The US uses twice as much energy as it produces. Conservation & a reduction of green house gases requires sacrifice. We're not willing to do that. Yet, many point fingers at the BRIC nations, their exploding populations & unrelenting production of atmospheric pollution, all while the US has farmed out it's industrial production through imports as a result of decades of outsourcing.
Talk to the average European about the difference in home building standards between here & there. They are astounded at the lax construction & insulation Americans live with resulting in our homes producing more pollution than our cars.
The Green New Deal is only the beginning.
11
@Apple Jack
Wow! And yet USA is an oil exporter. Hmm.
@Sam Song We don't have time for the laggards around the world to reach peak efficiency in Energy Intensity with our petroleum & gas exports. Thanks for making a case for the Green New Deal.
As usual it comes down to two parties: one, the conservative, which will not upset the applecart from which the powerful derive their money and thus their power; and the other, basically all the rest of us, who see an approaching disaster and want to do something to prevent it from happening. One sees the glass as half empty and the other as half full. One dismisses an idea as impossible and the other sees limitless possibilities.
The country which built a railroad across a continent with picks and shovels; which made deserts bloom; which sent men to the moon and back; which built an interstate highway system the envy of the world....now cowers in the face of the greatest challenge to humankind in its short history.
I wonder what this Republican senate would have done on December 8th,1941. Probably call for hearings?
If we are to ever thrive, we must get rid of the naysayers by voting them all out of office.
39
@Bob Burns
In my parents generation, they would say to someone with your eloquence, “you need to run for office”, to me that was also part of what made our country so great, the dream that you could do such a thing and make a difference.
3
It is in the very nature of confrontational arguments and discussions to take someone's remark and push it to its extremes, the so-called logical conclusion. Forgetting, of course, that logical conclusions become totally illogical. Metaphorically, we can take Ocasio-Cortez musings on green energy as a "Democratic remark" which Republicans are eager to take to "its logical conclusion". Come to think of it, if the politically disreputable McConnell wants to debate the Ocasio-Cortez's wish list for a green world, it might be a salutary exercise (the Senate has nothing better to do, anyhow). They might discuss the intrinsic merit of the items on the list to see if there is anything valuable or doable in it. This way, they can seem to be busy while preparing the issues for future consideration. You know, when the glaciers are no longer there, the Florida Keys have disappeared and the Pacific islands are a memory.
10
There is no proposal on energy or the environment that won’t be attacked, mocked, and misrepresented and lied about by the GOP.
An honest discussion of the Green New Deal, or climate change and the environment can only take place among people seroiusly interested in solving problems. That can’t include the GOP, whose leader is an eight-year-old boy bully, whose Senators and Congress members are either paid off by the coal and oil industry, ignore science and rely on time-tested fear mongering about socialism.
I wonder why Gail Collins even bothers to address their objections to the Green New Deal. That should be in a seprate column—sort of placed in a dog carrier and strapped to the roof the family station wagon while the adults in the car figure out where we are going.
The real discussion ought to be about what actually is being proposed, how much it will cost, and how to pay for it? Should there be a carbon tax? How much per ton and how will that revenue be used? Should it go towards rebuilding our electric grid along with solar panels on all government buildings?
That’s a discussion for the intellectually honest and for scientists and problem solvers. I enjoy mocking the GOP as much as the next guy, but it doesn’t help me decide who I want to run against Trump.
17
@John C --
Should there be a carbon tax? -- YES
How much per ton and how will that revenue be used? -- It needs to start at about ≈ $40/MTCO2, so that all other subsidies can be repealed.
Should it go towards rebuilding our electric grid along with solar panels on all government buildings? -- NO.
It must be rebated to the public -- it's an enormous amount of money, and would be badly regressive and recessionary if not. 100% rebated also makes it revenue neutral; a political advantage.
I agree with many proponents that it should be rebated uniformly per capita to adult citizens residing in the USA. Doing this makes the tax progressive (poorer people will get back more than the CO2 tax costs them individually), and it automatically solves the "yellow vest" problem. Increasing the CO2 tax helps the poor.
Using climate change as a cover for making the US into Denmark is disingenuous. Moderates are in favor of taking on climate change even amongst the GOP. But the Green Dream manifesto will work at cross-purposes to that end because the Green Dreamers are packaging climate change with political change far to the left of reason. Every new generation is convinced socialism will work until it fails. First Trump and now the Green Dreamers. Are any politicians remotely attached to reality?
6
@dudley thompson
Trump convinced that "socialism" works?
@dudley thompson
Can't think of an actual criticism, so you resort to labeling an idea "socialist?" As if that, is a conversation stopper . . .
2
@dudley thompson. Talk about disingenuous! Nothing like a straw man to start the morning, eh?
The New Green Deal -- the necessity of seeing and accepting climate change as the central reality of mankind's (our) lives on earth -- is not socialism or pie in the sky. It is a 15 point proposed House Resolution to solve climate-warming problems, the central fact of all of our lives today. There are many alternative sources to fossil fuels-- clean energy and power -- to fuel our planet. Wind turbines, and solar heat instead of fracking out the very core of our planet by removing water and oil. Instead of kowtowing to King Coal.
Yes, Green is super idealistic. But, as you say, Gail, how about just one climate-correction? Windmills for energy? Whether they could be seen from Mar-a-Lago, our president's southern white house golf club, isn't relevant. Trump, our American honey-badger, doesn't like dogs, wind-power, solar-power or socialism. He does like bigotry, misogyny and white people, and dementedly ranting his way or the highway to us.
Except for the New Green Resolution, idealism and hope are dead in the water of our dysfunctional democracy under
President Trump's reign (The Emperor in Golf Clothes). This president and his people are desecrating, not protecting our environment.
5
Who needs high-speed rail?
I'd be happy with medium-speed rail, and it's not so hard to implement. We used to have a great rail system, but it's been so abandoned that half the old railways are now trail-ways. (Which is nice for walking and biking, if you happen to be near one).
Rail is the most energy-efficient mode to move people and cargo across land. And it's more compatible with fueling by electricity than are cars and trucks.
Instead we have a massive, government-subsidized system of highways and superhighways, with massive congestion in many urban areas and massive consumption of oil.
Rebuilding the nation's railways would employ millions in productive work and make our economy greener.
19
@Duane McPherson
I take your interest in rail transport to heart. IMO a big consideration is that the existing rail infrastructure was originally meant to transport goods and not people. I imagine that to change that emphasis would add significantly to its cost and require much planning. It would amount to rebuilding it from the ground up, as they say. Let's get started.
1
My husband, who worked as a geologist in the coal mining industry for two decades and teaches geology, argues that wind turbines would also work well on the spaces flattened by mountain top removal in eastern Kentucky.
29
@wanda
Several different companies are trying to do just that on the blown-off mountaintops in SW Virginia. After years of trying they've all given up trying to get them permitted. Every objection from degrading the "View-shed" to killing endangered bats killed off that idea.
1
Trump DEMANDS attention. No person or object is allowed near him that can demand more attention than him. That's why he's never had a pet. That's why he never cared for his kids when they were toddlers. That's why there are no large house plants where he lives and works.
The only things near to Trump where he lives and works are mirrors and pictures of Trump.
39
It's mostly hype - reaching many of the pollution levels in the Green Deal would result in huge investment by many industries and overbearing regulation to meet those standards within a prescribed period of time.
It's so easy to speak in front of a television camera about the benefits of green, however, getting there is as complex as it gets.
The Green Deal will fade from the papers and our memory within 4 months - Ms. Ocasio-Cortez will then need to find another issue she can grandstand about.
8
@JMS I hope not. I hope it gets genuine discussion going. The status quo is not good enough, and the GOP needs to get its head out of the sand.
1
@JMS
Ah, complications. Isn't that why we have a Congress?
1
Gail, I simply disagree. Call the Green New Deal fanciful, but it has put on the agenda numerous proposals that constitute a dream to aim for. Even if much of it is impossible now, bringing it to a vote will make many liberal politicians look bad if they vote against it. It’s purpose is to dream big and have a vision - and that is something that has been missing from the Democrats for, well, my whole lifetime.
35
@JS27
Nancy Pelosi missed an opportunity and should have remarked that the GND is, at this point, a collection of ideas and the democrats are the party of ideas.
We need ideas and we haven't had a vision of anything past lunch since JFK.
2
The Green New Deal can be criticized all the GOP and some Democrats want but for the first time, since Trump withdrew from the Paris agreement climate change issues and policies are at the front burner.
Mitch McConnell thinks he is very sharp to take the GND to the floor of the Senate so it will be defeated but more importantly, to take names of Democrat presidential runners and use their yes vote against them in 2020.
The majority leader may be up for a surprise if his strategy backfires. It goes both ways. Do not forget that many corporations and States were against withdrawing from the Paris agreement and are implementing its guidelines anyway.
Democrats should also take the names of the no votes. Medicare, Social Security. Deja Vue.
33
More people more CO2 more heat for our oceans more rain as a consequence.
Check the solubility of CO2 in water as it rains and there will be plenty.
We will be drinking seltzer water out of our rivers and so will be Ocasio.
1
Great, thought provoking column as usual. Great comment section. We need it all: wind and solar, and hydro, and modern nuclear. We need scalable batteries. And we will get there in our messy, fallible, human way. To survive.
Imagine massive collapse of order in China, due to an unprecedented fouling of water, air, and soil, which is current reality. Imagine a massive collapse of Russia, with an aging, poorly educated and demoralized citizenry, with soon to be worthless oil and gas as there only resource. Imagine massive heatwaves affecting South Asia and Africa. Now we are talking tens, or possibly hundreds of millions of humans on the move. Or dying. Not in 30 years, but anytime in our future. The only uncertainty in climate warming is the timetable.
America is the most powerful and resourceful democracy on earth. We must lead.
25
@Bill
I agree. America must lead the War on Warming. But first, we need a leader.
The basic problem is that there are 7.3 billion of us and growing, and each of us wants an SUV. Building wind farms is not going to power them, heat our houses, and fuel our industries. Where is the magic bullet ?
8
@eclectico
There isn't a magic bullet, but some countries are making a start:
Norway is discussing banning the sale of all fossil fuel-based cars by 2025. India, France, Germany, the Netherlands and China are all considering plans to eliminate fossil fuel-powered cars. Norway also hopes to triple its capacity for wind power by 2020 and has committed to a goal of zero deforestation.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/these-countries-want-ban-all-vehicles-run-gas-or-diesel-n781431
http://www.fortune.com/2016/06/04/norway-banning-gas-cars-2025/
3
@eclectico
"Building wind farms is not going to power them, heat our houses, and fuel our industries."
With respect, this is just wrong. The sun alone puts enough energy on the US in an hour to power the entire US for something like 1000 years. A couple years ago Business Insider suggested simply covering Rhode Island in wind turbines would allow the US to completely power itself via wind. The magic bullet for getting to 100% renewable is in thinking that it's not impossible to do. Once you overcome that hurdle, you can start to think about what you want the solution to look like.
1
@eclectico, it’s worse! There are more than a billion each in India and China and they want at least 2 cars in the family, if they can afford. Never mind there aren’t enough streets for parking!
1
I don't have any jokes to respond to something as dire as climate change - but I do ask that everyone read and forward this excellent Times article describing 7 ways to cut emissions - it should be required reading for all:
How to Cut U.S. Emissions Faster? Do What These Countries Are Doing. https://nyti.ms/2E7x2cV
11
Nuclear. Green nuclear.
Without it, you never get to the power demands. It's the safest and cleanest. Let's put that in.
2
@WJL
They did. From Section 2C:
"...meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources"
"zero-emission", that would include nuclear if we want to. Personally, I think nuclear will end up being too expensive to expand verses solar panels or wind farms. But, hey, it's better than coal, oil, or natural gas.
I so desperately want the Liar replaced in the next presidential election. The Democrats are positioned to do it, but the excesses of the Green New Deal will undermine that possibility. If the time frame had been targeted over the next 30 or 40 years, the proposal would appear possible. With a ten year target it merely looks whimsical.
6
@Bruce Stasiuk
You forgot to mention who you would like to replace the president. Marco Rubio? Jeb Bush?
Ocasio-Cortez over-reaches. I hope she does not take down the Democratic party with her idealistic impractical plans. Rome was not built in a day.
All we have to do is have a carbon tax whose proceeds go into a fund used only to aid in repair natural disasters deemed to have been worsened by greenhouse gasses.
Everyone would understand the economic connection.
4
@Will Hogan
Maybe not built in a day, but disappeared just the same.
Rome wasn’t built in a day.....but they got started one day instead of sitting around talking about it. You want a fund for band aids for the inevitable disasters? I’m glad someone’s boldly talking about starting building a better future.
@Will Hogan
A person's reach should exceed her grasp, to paraphrase somebody.
"How about windmills?"
I wish people would stop calling them windmills. They aren't milling anything.
Wind turbines.
14
Remember Newt Gingrich and the "Contract with America"? It too proposed big ideas: a sweeping regime of no taxes on anybody, no regulation, no clean air or water, no choice for women, no nothing for women, no civil rights, no help for the sick or destitute, among a few plucky provisions.
Guess what? The heirs of Newt have been working hard at it ever since. "Green" may be a bit scattershot and scattershootable, but it really is a case of wind vs. coal, when you burn it down to essentials.
Why not do what the opposition did? Start working on the most doable and essential of the Green New Deal's ideas, and stop worrying that Tom Cotton will call on his friend Adolf to rebut them.
17
@Tom Cotton. Republicans may also start with good intentions, but we end up with school shootings, tax cuts for the rich, tax increases for the poor, racism, climate denial, and less separation between church and state.
28
@Ricardo
Congrats. A really great rebuttal.
1
@Ricardo
A better response is to remind people of the England portrayed in the Dickens' Christmas Carol.
"Capitalism may begin with the best of intentions, but it always ends with Victorian workhouses and burning rivers."
1
In the card game of Contract Wall, fear always trumps idealism. The very image of Walls vs. Windmills - one creates an obstacle the other creates energy - is the real super bowl of the American future and worthy of discussion- not the reflexive mud that the so called representatives have at the ready. The climate is a changing ,and rather than be told what to think, we all need to find the courage to evaluate these proposals in terms of beneficial outcomes for our children.
4
Has there ever been a more disingenuous Senator, let alone the majority leader who is the gate keeper, than Mitch McConnell? But I digress.
While a supporter of energy sources other than fossil fuels, and getting the thrust your op-ed title, I initially questioned the use of Dylan's song title. However, rethinking the lyrics -they were about topics people did not want to talk about back in the day - maybe he was even more prophetic than we thought. Maybe the answer my friend is blowin' in the wind.
14
@Retired Gardener
Are you kidding? The Senate is half full of people like you mention.
Wind power is very cheap per kWh produced. It beats coal by that criterion. Its problem is that its output varies according to the weather, while we want to use electricity even on days when the air is still. In the short term, that's not much of a problem: we don't have much wind power in place, and we can compensate by varying the output of gas-burning power plants. We should build wind turbines quickly, until we reach the limits of the cheap way of compensating for its variability. But we also need to do R&D on cheaper ways of storing energy, scheduling demand, and otherwise compensating for variability.
And there are other ways. Taller windmills help some, because wind is less variable a few hundred feet above ground level. Offshore wind helps some, because the winds are a bit more steady over the ocean than over the land. Long-distance transmission helps, because a calm day in one place is often a windy day somewhere else. Another option is to have some over-capacity, and a way of dumping the excess on windy days: wind power is so cheap that this may actually be the cheapest option, up to a point.
2
@dsws
Try a power plant that relies on multiple sources, ie solar, thermal, wind, and natural gas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_power
@dsws -- you are forgetting transmission.
While the wind is often still at any one place, it is almost never still across the entire 48 states. With a true national grid local variability largely averages out.
1
As the old adage goes...”when everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.” Democrats need to focus on one or two high impact environmental actions and then articulate the rational (yes, including the science) and a measurable and incremental path to implementing. It’s the only way things get done, absent an immediate, palpable crisis. While the slowly “boiled frog” analogy is great for illustrating, it rarely spurs immediate actions.
8
@Concerned MD Good point. To me, the top priority is the defeat of Trump by any means necessary. The focus needs to be on his incompetence, his lying, his incoherence, his payoffs, his money-laundering, his golfing - the list is endless.
He deserves no respect.
Gender is the sole signigicant difference between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Donald Trump.
Neither has ever led a complex organization that designed and produced anything. Neither is quantitatively oriented, and neither understands national security issues.
Both are primarily reality TV stars. Both have avoided military or national service, and both selfishly promote polarizing ideologies instead of an adaptive path toward a better future state.
Trump is a threat because he is the President; Ms. AOC is rapidly becoming Vito Marcantonio, a non-factor.
11
Gender and age and race and intelligence. Otherwise twins!
1
@Mack
AOC has ideas that help the country, DJT has ideas that help DJT.
2
As usual gender is the determinant in criticism- your comments comparing Ocasio Cortez to Trump are ridiculous. First: since when has running an organization that produces necessarily been a good background for governance? The history of titans of industry in government is spotty....and I remind that voters went for Trump because they perceived him to be one. Second: there is a huge difference between avoiding a draft and just not signing up to go into the military. There are a whole lot of congresspeople who are neither from industry or the military. I suspect your dislike of Ocasio Cortez is primarily of the “whippersnappers on my lawn again” variety.
1
Give Tom Cotton, Mitch McConnell et al a lump of coal. Let them burn it and breathe it in. They are anti everything that might be good for us and the planet. It boils down to the money they get from the fossil fuel and coal industries which we all know are being replaced. Replaced slowly because of their stubborn resistance but replaced none the less because individuals are converting to alternative energies as much as they can. I am looking for property that I can build on and use solar energy as much as I can. It ain't that hard, and it's cleaner and safer.
35
@linda fish
Remember, Tom Cotton drafted a letter to Iran, signed by 46 other senators, sent to the government of Iran to undermine the President of the United States. Violation of the Logan Act?
No one should give him a platform.
@linda fish: Yes, Tom Cotton. Further proof that an Ivy League education confers no knowledge or wisdom.
Times are hard, things are getting worse, and people feel that something has to change. And I'm sure that they will change. Things always change. But, frankly, problems are just too great to fix. The reason? The majority of America's wealth and virtually all of its heavy productive capacity are in the hands of a few who want to control them to enrich themselves.
Can you imagine any scenario whereby the People step in and confiscate the ill-gotten gains of decades of wealth distribution? The top 400 riches people in America own more than 150 million of the people at the bottom end.
And nobody I know has a problem with having more money. I don't, my wife doesn't, my kids don't. The rich don't and the poor don't. We respect property and money in this country, and those that have it the most are using it against us, against the country, and it will create its own weather.
People don't just decide to fix things under conditions like this.
9
Back in the 1960's I read Buckminister Fuller's "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth" wherein he said there were two kinds of energy resources: finite and infinite. We need to use the finite ones like gas, coal and oil for building the capabilities to harness the infinite ones, i.e., wind, water and solar power.
So yes, the answer has been blowing in the wind for a really long time.
Thanks for reminding people how Trump famously hates dogs! That just about says it all.
16
Republicans hit on a way to move the country to the right. Outrageous proposals that were out of the mainstream came first and then public relations campaigns designed to make them more acceptable. The result has been a radicalization of a lot of policies in ways that hurt many people even when those policies were not as extreme as initial proposals.
It worked so well that I'm surprised that Democrats haven't tried to replicate it before. No, they aren't going to abolish air travel this time and perhaps there will be some high-speed trains to link some cities after the dust settles.
8
@Betsy S
Trains, yes. But the devil and expense is in the linking.
Dear Gail. as always I love your column, but in this case a little homework might have been in order. Wind power is only "green" in the sense that it doesn't produce carbon dioxide like say coal (though the build-and take-down cycle will inevitably need messier energy sources). the big "but" however is the impact of wind turbines on birds and bats. Canada admitted last year that their turbines had a major impact on bat mortality, and off-shore wind will be placing turbines in the flight paths of many many seabirds, some of whom are already endangered. before anyone says "but cats kill millions of birds" remember 1) nobody is giving up their cat for wind power, so deaths are additive & 2) the majority of cat-killed birds include starlings and house sparrows -both introduced invasive species. Off-shore wind will kill gannets, gulls, eiders, terns... This isn't a solution, it is simply putting a mess conveniently out of sight.
10
If we have to pick between using dirty and diminishing fossil fuels and killing some birds with windmills, I vote for the windmills. Those birds and their descendants will be doomed anyway if we don't get climate change under control.
In the far future it would be fine if you or your descendants continue to criticize humans. That would be wonderful, because it means humans still exist.
Give Americans more credit. Yes, they voted Trump in but by the hair of his skinny skin balding head but I think Americans are waking up to this threat and realizing something radical must be done.
I do agree it'd help if the message were streamlined, catchier, and less socialist sounding, but I, for one, will be only voting for the candidate who sets fixing climate change, assuming there's still time, as the number one priority and communicates a grand vision, á la Kennedy's "flight to the moon" initiative, which was also widely disparaged as unrealistic.
It'd sure help too if media spent considerably more space explaining and re-explaining our greatest existential threat so it might eventually sink in, even to the most dense audiences.
How does an 8:2 ratio sound?
18
@R1NA
I think we may have to spend some time teaching them how to read without illustrations first.
1
@Allan docherty
Sadly I agree, and the bible doesn't count.
1
It would be nice if we didn't have extreme voices controlling the debate. AOC is rapidly progressing to a status similar to DJT. Her entry into office is tracking similarly as she assumed office without the requisite experience and depth of understanding about how the political system works. Similarly too, she believes her ideas are marvelous because they are hers and views them as more than equivalent to those senior, experienced people who hold ideas which disagree with her. Her self-assurance and positive self-regard clearly goes beyond any basis in achievement. She also makes provocative and attention seeking tweets that separate people. She consequently alienates a large section of the country. She is a liability to the democrats if thye desire to get red state voters who value self-reliance and are frightened of socialism. While the republicans may come under attack for giving huge tax cuts the democrats seem blind to the fact that the complaints about "income redistribution," the tax code results in almost half the country paying no federal income tax whatsoever. The democrats have a problem as their candidates who advocate for more income redistribution are not as viable in red states, despite the evidence that the top ten states whose state budgets rely on federal monies. Politics is perception however, and while they may take medicaid and other "entitlement" monies, they view themselves as valuing self-reliance and they find AOC revolting.
14
@Zinkler - AOC might have as little experience in politics as Trump, but she is young, and he is old. If both of them would try to set up a NAS on their home network, I know who my money would be on. There is something to be said for experience, but if you have to learn a new trade, younger people usually do better
3
All the vitriol aimed at AOC reassures me that we're on the right track. She wouldn't be getting all this hate if there weren't some fear behind it.
Any political party needs people who are at the leading edge of its policies. For Democrats that means progressives like AOC. We need these ideas in the party, even ones that look a little crazy, because they don't look so crazy when we pursue them, and we're going to need some of them to rescue our environment and social institutions.
People like you seem to want Democrats to shut up, accept election fraud by Republicans that delay the natural demographic turnover in the electorate, and stop talking about the aspirational policies the Democrats have been known for. Remember weekends? The 40 Hour work week? Social Security? Those are democratic ideas.
8
@just visiting, Her youth and exuberance is noted and is reminiscent of many young rookies who are just flashes in the pan, polarizing people and getting burned by their efforts in the end. Personality traits such as narcissism become evident in one's 20's and remain the directing the forces of action. I am sure that DJT didn't just wake up the way he is at age 60. Make the lyrics of Billy Joel's song Angry Young Man female in gender.
There's a place in the world for the angry young man
With his working class ties and his radical plans
He refuses to bend, he refuses to crawl
He's always at home with his back to the wall
And he's proud of his scars and the battles he's lost
And he struggles and bleeds as he hangs on the cross
And he likes to be known as the angry young man
Give a moment or two to the angry young man
With his foot in his mouth and his heart in his hand
He's been stabbed in the back, he's been misunderstood
It's a comfort to know his intentions are good...
4
My feeling is that this problem is best managed by public policy that supports individual action. Imagine if 80% of homeowners installed solar power--the combined reduction in dirty energy production would be profound. Imagine if 80% of homeowners started raking instead of blowing with dirty (and noisy) two stroke engines that lack emissions regulations. Imagine if 80% of drivers bought hybrid or electric cars? I know it will never happen because American culture has become inseparable from the values intrinsic to advanced stage capitalism (individual over common good, materialism, competition, short-term goal setting, etc.), but it can still be an aspirational goal.
11
Shouldn’t something be done ASAP about carbon emissions? And doesn’t the energy we use directly connect to the jobs we do, food we eat, cars we drive—pretty much everything we do as humans in our man made world? I’m unclear about why it’s so hard to connect the dots between standards for living and the environment. They do go together. I’m disheartened so many see the green new deal as some sort of fantasy. If we don’t make major changes, and fast, what will become of us?
12
Interesting--the point about Trump not having a dog. I once saw a documentary profiling some of the world's most famous-murderous-thug-leaders--Stalin, Mao, Hitler--and how none had dogs or dog shrank away from them. Made a lot of sense.
12
@Ann - Sorry, Hitler had a dog. German shepard, of course, named Blondie. And I don't think that Trump has that much in common with Stalin, Mao or Hitler. All of these men wanted to be on top. Trump seems to have ended up there as some sort of narcissistic accident
@Ann. Hitler did have a dog. She was a German Shepherd. No joke.
Why can't we build covers with solar panels on them for large parking lots in areas of the country that don't get heavy snows?
Wouldn't it be nice to walk out of the mall in shorts, and walk to your car in the shade, NOT a parking lot so hot the asphalt is bubbling, then open your car, and NOT get burned when you sit down? (Solar panels on top of the mall to pay for the AC wouldn't hurt, either.)
12
Can we just have solar panels on top of everything?
Small ones on car roofs and our back packs to charge our devices. Bigger ones on planes and on top of buildings.
There must be a way to harness the sun so we could have clean air. And certainly wind can be used all over the world to create electricity.
This isn't not rocket science.
11
@BSR, we can use as much wind solar power as we like, on whatever surface we find. But as long as we don't change our overindulgent extravagant wasteful ways of lifestyle, our planet earth cannot keep providing us inexhaustibly. We are spoilt, we want to keep our wasteful habits, we want to consume till we explode of obesity and chronic diseases, we want to consume red meat and pigs till their blood streams like bloody rivers flowing through our veins...we won't be able to save the planet for our children and grandchildren.
1
@BSR
Many countries are way ahead of the U.S. & are already doing this. In Wuhan, China there are solar panels & wind vanes on top of street lights on major roads. China and Norway have plug-in stations for electric vehicles everywhere. Germany has vast areas of solar arrays & wind farms. Norway has a goal of eliminating fossil fuel-based cars by 2025.
Unfortunately, many of our citizens have no idea how other countries are already attempting to deal with climate change & are way ahead of the U.S.. We no longer think big, but for some reason we still consider ourselves "exceptional". The Green New Deal may be vague & sound too ambitious, but at least it's a start.
1
Lyndon Johnson was arguably the most masterful politician of my lifetime, and can you imagine what he would have accomplished in civil rights had he put his manifesto out as a document in, say, 1960?
Zero.
AOC and her cohort of newbies have much to contribute, but they also have a lot to learn and so far they are making more mistakes than progress.
9
Let us not fool ourselves: the game is up. We have set the wheels in motion and they won’t stop for centuries or millennia. The process of the fraying of the various feedback loop strands that make up the climate system won’t stop when we stop turning up the thermostat.
The challenge left is deciding whether to eat, drink and be merry or to worry about karma’s catching up to us in the next life and continuing to fight the good fight, doomed as it is.
4
Don Quixote and Donald Trump both tilt at “windmills” - perhaps we should not talk about windmills but talk about wind power.As unthinkable as it is , some folks are terribly allergic to ,”GREEN “ - they don’t eat green vegetables and the color makes them nauseated.So, let’s take out the windmills and the designation “green” and have a real conversation about threats from extreme climate events. The problem is that we urgently need some remedies and do not have the time to educate the “ flat earthers”.The coal and oil lobbies are just as fierce as the tobacco lobbyists were when people wanted to ban smoking.Smoking was greatly lessened-Hopefully oil and coal was also meet that fate.
11
Ovsdio-Cortez and Markey must not understand the seriousness of climate change.
It is the primary thing that needs to be resolved. Without climate change "economic security for all people of the United States" and "repairing historic oppression" will not matter. There will be no healthy people that will need "economic security", and "repair of historic oppression."
Without serious attention soon to repairing the damage humans have caused by gas house emissions none of us will be around to worry about anything else.
Single bill, please dealing ONLY with climate change. It is too serious to tack on other stuff that WILL destroy the bill.
11
@esp The bill is symbolic. It won't be passed at this time, but it might move the country a step in the direction of better climate policies. Mitch McConnell is pushing a vote on the bill with the goal of embarrassing the Democrats. I hope the results will be years of attack ads pointing out which politicians are too compromised to do what's right for the USA and the world.
3
The ants are still blowin' in the wind and blowin' wind in our sails. AOC is one of those ants.
2
Hopefully included in the Green New Deal is installing gas lines where there are none. When I call the utility, they laugh at me. Meanwhile it costs $3000 per year to heat 2,000 square feet.
3
@Deirdre - Replacing the delivery tanker with a gas line does little for the amount of green house gases. Maybe there are other alternatives to look into. Would a heat pump be an alternative for your house? It could run on green electricity (or maybe your own solar panels).
In some respects, I think that green technologies can be a great solution that don't necessarily demand expensive infrastructure like your gas lines
3
Not that anyone cares about my plan but transportation is one of the largest sectors. Tax new gas vehicles. Give tax breaks on new purchasing new or used all electric vehicles and give tax breaks on gas vehicle trade ins that must be properly destroyed.
On the electricity front, provide better tax incentives on renewables.
Provide grants to companies that can come to market with carbon sequestration technology.
On the manufacturing front, provide tax cuts to install carbon sequestration equipment.
US government to use sequestration equipment to remove carbon already in the atmosphere.
Yes, this plan likely increases IS debt, however, we keep hearing that debt levels are ok if they are below rate of growth so an incentive based plan should keep growth going.
2
Green also included a gabby, rather unfortunate memo that explained the goal of zero greenhouse gas emissions in 10 years had to be tweaked a bit because “we aren’t sure that we will be able to fully get rid of, for example, emissions from cows or air travel before then.”
It is hard to believe the writers of the memo weren't having fun writing that. They know that politicians and columnists alone would more than make up the difference if cows somehow would stop emitting.
7
Look. I don't care if they add a 16th point calling for NSF funding of perpetual motion machine research. (Heck, the GOP loves anti-science stuff, maybe that would be the deal-maker.) The point is FINALLY somebody put something on the table that attempts to aggressively address climate catastrophe in a way that will immediately improve the lives of millions of people in the U.S.A.
Let's take the resolution, beat it up, beef it up, overhaul this, tweak that and come up with something that will work well. This is a first step. But as Thomas Jefferson said, a journey of 1000 li starts with a single step. Or was that Mao? Whatever.
109
Climate change is the issue of the century. Where have the Dems been on this issue, not to mention the Republicans? Exactly nowhere. I care more about the Green New Deal than anything else coming out of Washington. The scope of the proposal is so vast that it actually comes close to what's necessary.
25
@Brian Holmes
Where have the Dems been?
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/climate/
https://democrats.org/about/party-platform/#environment
We need voters and pundits who pay attention to substantive proposals, not press release/counter press release cycles
2
@Brian Holmes It contains too much that has nothing to do with climate change.
I play golf. I'm good. Whenever I have a match with the trumps of the world, they want strokes. Based on their handicap. To "level" the match. If that ain't Socialism, I don't know what is.
68
@Howard Clark
I play golf, I'm bad. And I know another lousy player when I see one! But their scores never show that.
6
Maybe, every once in a while, our reach *should* exceed our grasp.
54
Gail, all this talk about wind, solar, hamsters on a wheel and other non-fossil fuel energy production misses the key point. The key to green energy is the ability to store it and use it on demand. If you can only have energy when the sun is shining, or when the wind is blowing, it is not a consistent or a reliable source.
This is the true promise of technology companies like Tesla. Anybody can build a car. The magic is the energy storage system that allows the car to go further and further on a charge. Energy strorage is the Big Thing a number of companies, big and small, are working on.
We can generate energy in a bunch of different green ways once we can store the electricity for long periods of time. Then every home and business can be independent of power plants and any energy grid, save perhaps for back up power.
Once the storage problem is solved, the Green New Deal will be completely doable.
25
@Jack Sonville Solved...its called a pump.
Pump water into a reservoir during power producing periods; and let the water gravity flow through generators during non-production times.
And its Green.
17
@Fred Armstrong--Three comments:
1. That is not energy storage. That is hydro-generation of power.
2. Many areas, especially in the West, have water shortage problems and don't have the capabilities to do hydro-generation.
3. Successful hydro-generation systems generally require dams to harness and direct the water to power the turbines. Enviros and others hate these dams because they impact the ecosystem, so they have generally fought to have them removed. That's why they don't generally like hydo power.
4
@Jack Sonville: The storage capability is there. The tech is on the cusp of being ready to roll out in mass manufacturing style. You alluded to it with the comment about Tesla.
It's the political courage to implement it in broad fashion that seems lacking. A consequence of the self-interests who have bought the majority of our leadership class, now have them in their hip pockets, and see their interests being threatened by such as this proposal.
It's the same old story told again and again in Capitalism. Entrenched, embedded, old-school tech and/or production techniques along with concomitant self-interests striving mightily to deny a future that has no use for them any longer.
But history reveals what happens next. Ultimately either those vested interests get run over or, what is more likely in this case, they jump on board once it is recognized how valuable the profits (for them) truly can be. It's why alternative energy generation, transmission and storage in all its guises are moving up the "fastest growing jobs in America" chain after all.
My bet is current self-interests are even now finding religion and moving this way. Which is a good thing. Judging from how the planet is reacting to all that we have been doing to it these past 100 years we need this program. In fact...we need a focused, moon shot-styled, program to change the progress from tortoise to hare. There is no time to waste.
John~
American Net'Zen
22
"a 15-point proposed House resolution . . . super idealistic . . . All good thoughts, but maybe too much of an agenda for one press release. . . . How about just one really important climate-control thought?"
That might be true in normal times. These times are not normal. They are not normal on either side.
Republicans are prone to offend, and this whipped them into a frenzy to offend absolutely every group and every project, all at the same time. It plays to their vulnerability. They can argue about this or that, but the real vulnerability is that they are against everything.
Democrats for far too long failed to inspire. As a group, they are a party of people who long for inspiration, long for eloquence, indeed for charisma. They want Camelot. They want someone like Jack Kennedy or Bobby Kennedy. They want Fireside Chats that help everything make sense, by someone they trust.
It is long past time for Democrats to do as Martin Luther did, nail a list to the door of the Church, to stand and fight for it all. All of it. Camelot or bust.
That might make no sense in another time or place, but here and now it makes all the good sense in the world. AOC has it exactly right. Nail it to the door. Fight.
52
The Extreme Right seems to equate every idea for change to the evils of "Socialism".
Perhaps we should talk Socialism to Southerners like Tom Cotton in terms they better understand: College football. I will use Alabama football as my example (despite the fact that Cotton is from Arkansas).
Nick Saban runs the most Socialist program in the State of Alabama. How do I come to that conclusion?
He convinces people with great individual talents to put them to the good of a team, so the team can win and everyone in the state can be happy. Sure, some of them will get to the NFL. But most of them won't play nearly as much as they would on another team and, therefore, will see their individual talents wasted and their dreams denied, all so the team and the State can win.
Nick Saban and Alabama football operate a team for the collective good, so ergo, Saban is a Socialist and Alabama football is a Socialist program. And since Nick Saban is a government employee (and by far the highest paid one in the state), that would make Alabama politicians supporters and funders of Socialism.
So here is the new Democratic Talking Point: If you support Alabama football, you're a Socialist, so you should also support the Green New Deal,
43
@Jack Sonville That employee is paid a lot more than the other socialist employees. And, with no plan to change that, Alabama football continues a program of income inequality. Roll tide.
1
@Jack Sonville, socialism is preferable to republicanism. When did the Republicans ever do anything to support the constitutional goal of promoting the general welfare?
2
@Mike Agree. Putin leads a Socialist Republic, at least in name. He has billions stashed away, stolen from privatizing the State's businesses. Nick Saban has been given tens of millions to run a Socialist program. Ergo--Nick Saban and Vladimir Putin both enrich themselves from Socialism.
I can do this all day :)
1
I'm a loyal reader of Gail Collins and like her work. I'm troubled, though, by the tone of this piece. It doesn't underscore the gravity of climate catastrophe, the fact that we have precious little time to reverse things in time to avert global disaster. Any discussion of the climate needs to remind readers this is no laughing matter, as we face a potential species-destroying reality.
31
Being reminded of Republican intransigence driven from their instinctive fear of science makes one despair and angry at the same time. We have a gun pointed at our head and they are telling us to sell the gunman more ammo. Or they tell us the gun is empty when all indications are present that he will indeed pull the trigger.
These comments by McConnell and Cotton are more of the same.
Doing the right thing by showing concern for people other than their wealthy donors is not in the GOP's DNA. They want to sell the gunman more ammo and have him feel good as he is pulling the trigger. After all, it is not Republicans who will clean up after the trigger is pulled and the bodies are lying around. New Orleans and Puerto Rico are evidence of that.
The Republicans are the party of pollution, corruption, regression, avarice and racism. If it is more than a trifecta they are aiming for then they have more than earned the prize.
68
@tom-Indeed. Republicans are spending down the planet's future. And it doesn't make sense. We can't look through the lens of yesterday and imagine everything will work the same. The way we live now basing our economy on heavy consumption with pollution as a byproduct is not sustainable. The Chinese get it, and so do other countries. Does America want to be left in the dust?
8
@tom Which Republican governor wears blackface? Which Republican Lt. Governor sexually assaults women, then does not step up?
Just keeping it real, homie.
The existential threat of climate change resulting from human activity is real and clear. What is less clear at this point is the effect that an inadvertently self-mocking fantasmagoria like the Green New Deal will have on the super-human efforts necessary to confront that change.
8
The humorous part of this is that most of the hard right has never been exposed to socialism; probably could not define socialism, and would not know it if it came up and introduced itself.
27
@PB
The hard right has indeed been exposed to socialism - and they are everyday in our society. They just need to be educated and hear it called by a different name. And figure out a way to monetize it.
3
@PB
Public schools, public streets and highways that don't have tolls, public parks, fire departments, police departments, Social Security, non-profit hospitals, Medicare and Medicaid, even the military that theoretically protects us all! I'm sure there is more.
I miss trains. I have to go to South Carolina twice a year, for Christmas and my mother's birthday (she'll be 99 in May), and every time I trudge through the air travel routine, I think about the laid-back comfort of the train. Britain manages to move people efficiently by rail (I used to use up whole rolls of film on the stretch between York and Edinburgh), just as it manages to get air travelers from the London airports to mid-city quickly by rail. All that, and it also offers medical care to all its citizens. Too bad the USA lags so far behind the rest of the world.
176
@carrobin - For example, try to take a train from one of these two state capitols to the other - Boston and Albany
Re-enter the 19th century.
Or to truly discover ancient America take a Greyhound bus that is falling apart, has an outhouse style toilet, no seat belts, and that is just the beginning.
I am forced to do that once a year when I leave my other country, which is pretty much in the 21st century.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
4
@carrobin
Too bad, indeed! In the US we are all drinking the corporate koolaid packaged and made on Madison ave. One party is completely drunk on it.
The younger generation is realizing it is their life that is in jeopardy and these old GOPhers don't care!
4
@Larry Lundgren
There are some public transit systems that do work. I now live in Concord, NH and when I need to fly somewhere, I simply drive a mile to the free park and ride lot, get on a very nice Concord Bus Lines bus with TV and a bathroom and 1 1/2 hours later I'm dropped off at my departure terminal at the Boston Airport. From there I can fly to Europe and most American cities. Even my 90 year old husband can manage with this system. Cost: $38 round trip per person. This bus system operates throughout much of New England but evidently not into New York.
2
“Solar energy will not pollute our air or water. We will not run short of it. No one can ever embargo the Sun or interrupt its delivery to us. But we must turn our vision into a solar reality. ...I dedicate, this afternoon. this solar heater, harnessing the rays of the Sun to the benefit of those who serve our country at the White House.”
-President Jimmy Carter, June 20, 1979
I was reminded of Carter’s visionary approach to renewable energies, when I saw the film “Vice” yesterday, and I swear there was a collective groan from the audience during the scene where the solar panels on the White House installed by Jimmy Carter were unceremoniously dumped on the orders of Ronald Reagan.
Maybe, just maybe, if America had gotten serious about renewable energy 40 years ago we would now be a world leader in the fight against climate change; Instead we elected a president who denies global warming took us out of the Paris Climate Accords, lowers the bar on land, air and water pollution, and vaunts “clean coal.” This isn’t just sad, it is suicidal.
406
@Susan Renewable resources are not compatible with the Reagan Restoration. They aren't controlled by the plutocrats and kleptocrats. And, after all, "energy conservation just means you'll be hotter in the summer and colder in the winter" and "you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all." Such was the benevolent wisdom of Daddy Ronnie. (Who, incidentally, is revered by Barack Obama. Tellingly. The Rockefeller Republicans in drag we've had as "Democratic" presidents since Reagan have been enablers of inequality and reckless deregulation, too.)
15
@Susan you wrote the comment I was composing in my head. Imagine if we had listened to President Carter how different our country would be. Imagine all the solar powered homes and business that would have been built in areas of explosive growth like the Sun Belt. Imagine not having to worry about using foreign oil and the wars we may have avoided, imagine how much further along we would be technologically and imagine cleaner air. But the Republicans were true to form then as now. Torpedo any good idea if it comes from a Democrat, undermine their presidencies and do anything that their wealthy and powerful donors demand from them despite the harm to our nation.
37
@Susan
There’s no reason homes and businesses across the south, where everybody goes for the sunshine, shouldn’t have solar panels. Why should we be burning fossil fuels to aircondition the South when the sun is a major resource for them?
Oh yeah, Duke Energy and those oil jobs in Texas.
7
Clean energy is the future; America could be a leader but there's too much corruption. Clean energy could create more jobs, jobs that will last longer than jobs in dying old industries.
130
The existing energy-consuming infrastructure is already slated to emit another one trillion metric tons of CO2 over the next 25 years. One can only guess at the energy cost of replacing it.