Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the surprise winner of the NY-14 Primary upset has just proven that the problem with establishment Democrats is they just aren’t committed enough.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is the Climate Change Hardliner the Planet Needs
Becky Ferreira
Jun 28 2018, 1:01amOcasio-Cortez upset the NY-14 primary with a progressive agenda that included transitioning the US to renewables by 2035.
Progressive challenger Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won the Democratic primary in New York’s 14th district (Bronx/Queens) on Tuesday, beating out her incumbent opponent Joe Crowley, who has been a member of Congress since 1999. The victory was a surprising upset and a key victory for progressives, who are eager to pull the Democratic Party left in spite of hand-wringing from its current moderate leadership.
“This is the start of a movement,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in response to her win. “Thank you all.”
…
Cleverly branding her plan to confront climate change as “a Green New Deal,” Ocasio-Cortez set an ambitious goal to fully transition the United States to renewable energy sources by 2035. Crucially, she spotlighted the economic and social justice impacts of climate change, and warned of the “worldwide refugee crisis” that will result from continuing to marginalize the issue.
“Right now, the economy is controlled by big corporations whose profits are dependent on the continuation of climate change,” her platform reads. “This arrangement benefits few, but comes at the detriment of our planet and all its inhabitants.”
…
From Alexandria’s campaign website;
Mobilizing Against Climate Change
In order to address runaway global climate change, Alexandria strongly supports transitioning the United States to a carbon-free, 100% renewable energy system and a fully modernized electrical grid by 2035. She believes renewable fuels must be produced in a way that achieves our environmental and energy security goals, so we can move beyond oil responsibly in the fight against climate change. By encouraging the electrification of vehicles, sustainable home heating, distributed rooftop solar generation, and the conversion of the power grid to zero-emissions energy sources, Alexandria believes we can be 100% free of fossil fuels by 2035.
Furthermore, Alex believes in recognizing the relationship between economic stability and environmental sustainability. It’s time to shift course and implement a Green New Deal – a transformation that implements structural changes to our political and financial systems in order to alter the trajectory of our environment. Right now, the economy is controlled by big corporations whose profits are dependent on the continuation of climate change. This arrangement benefits few, but comes at the detriment of our planet and all its inhabitants. Its effects are life-threatening, and are especially already felt by low-income communities, both in the U.S. and globally. Even in NY-14, areas like Throgs Neck, College Point, and City Island are being affected by erosion and rising sea levels. Rather than continue a dependency on this system that posits climate change as inherent to economic life, the Green New Deal believes that radically addressing climate change is a potential path towards a more equitable economy with increased employment and widespread financial security for all.
Climate change is the single biggest national security threat for the United States and the single biggest threat to worldwide industrialized civilization, and the effects of warming can be hard to predict and self-reinforcing. We need to avoid a worldwide refugee crisis by waging a war for climate justice through the mobilization of our population and our government. This starts with the United States being a leader on the actions we take both globally and locally.
Read more: https://ocasio2018.com/issues#mobilizing-against-climate-change
I agree with Alexandria that the current Democrat leadership, whoever they are at this point in time, don’t seem to be taking climate change seriously.
Imagine for a moment that you truly believed anthropogenic global warming was an imminent deadly threat. If climate change really was an existential crisis, it simply wouldn’t make sense to campaign for or support the adoption of half measures. If you truly believed the future of your children depended on giving up your car, that your kids would all die if you and your neighbours continued to use fossil fuels, wouldn’t you demand everyone immediately give up their car? Wouldn’t you feel anger and frustration towards the self serving complacency of establishment politicians who kept trying to buy you off by offering tiny upward increments to their unambitious renewable targets?
The obvious explanation for mainstream Democrat moderation on climate issues is that most Democrat establishment politicians don’t really believe climate change is a serious issue. They offer a few token measures to win the votes of climate believers, while trying to avoid frightening off rich industrialists who are attracted to some of their other policies.
But hardcore climate fanatics aren’t complete fools. They might be wrong about climate change, but people know when they are just being used by politicians who don’t really care about their concerns.
It was inevitable that someone like Alexandria would arise – a true believer, someone who speaks to the hearts of fellow climate true believers, people who are fed up with being lied to and betrayed by the establishment.
Since what she wants cant be done with all the will to do you can marshal, its plain naivete. Do these people not know that to even get started, we would have to burn 100s of Gt more of coal, all the oil and gass you can produce to make these fantasy renewable electrical generators?
You cant make aluminum, steel and glass using windmills and solar panels. You cant open a new mine for coal, mines and concentrators and chemical plants and refineries for lithium, rare earth metals, iron aluminum, silica, etc in less than ~ten years. Ditto for manufacture and installation.
Financing would be in the 100s of trillions. A lithium mine and chemical plant to produce only 30,000t of lithium hydroxide or carbonate costs 3/4 of a billion bucks. Tufting the globe with windmills and glazing it with solar panels, would require increasing capacity of all these sectors by a factor of millions . Insufficient labor is available for all this. Engineering the worlds mega project would use up more than the 15 years to target date before we could get started.
So where is the cash going to come from is the first giant hurdle to clear? Never mind the other hurdles until you solve this one.
It’s very difficult to cure stupidity.
Or, as we in the South say, you can’t fix stupid.
She seems to be interested in electricity, rather than all forms of energy.
She has a lot of learning to do as she, with advisers, try to formalize here ideas.
She is mad, or a huge liar on all scores.
“the economy is controlled by big corporations whose profits are dependent on the continuation of climate change,” wtf?? She must mean wind and solar companies😁
Exactly how are Wal-Mart’s profits propped up by climate change?
Sooooooo……
What does she drive?
How often does she fly?
How does she heat her house?
How does she cook her food?
How is her electricity generated (is she connected to the grid)?
Does she wear synthetics?
Does she take pharmaceuticals?
Has she totally eliminated the fossil fuel footprint from her life?
Is she simply JAGH?
JAGH … Just Another Green Hypocrite
Have you ever watched Soylent Green? This is the “utopia” the elite want for us.
Bryan A
Try her pension contributions. I doubt there’s more than a handful of pension funds that don’t invest in fossil fuel.
I’ve had several greenies tell me that unless everyone does it, it makes no sense for just one person to do it.
Of course these same people will turn around and declare that the US must adopt these policies, even if no other country does.
Folks I found another great site.
http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock/env3/
This site I found must drive the greenies crazy foaming at the mouth. I luv it. I guess the totals start all over again each January 1. Visiting this site on December 31 each year is going to be an absolute must on my calendar.
The following one is neat as well and even the greenies wont get upset with this one.
http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock/env4/
However something doesnt compute here. On the Guardian site that has the CO2 countdown clock or CO2 emmissions clock the rate is about a 1000 tons per second which works out to 31.5GT per year. However on the Poodwaddle site above, it also has a CO2 emissions clock and since almost exactly 1/2 of the year is gone it shows only a little over 4 GT. So at the end of the year that would be only 8GT. I understand it now. The Poodwaddle site is in error by labeling it CO2 when it should be labeled just C. This mistake is made so many times because 1 carbon = 3.66 CO2 So comparing the 2 sites if you multiply the Poodwaddle figure (4.04) by 3.66 = 14.786 and then by 2.02 to complete the year you get 29.867 CO2. Okay close enough because both clocks will change rates during the year and maybe they take different sources. So rounding we get ~30 to 31 GT CO2 per year that mankind is putting out. Then of course there is the Global warming potential of methane versus carbon and the whole thing gets messy. Not to mention that places like China lie all the time about their figures and they have to constantly correct them. A very inexact accounting exercise. A perfect one for all the governments in the world . Their bureaucracies love inexact accounting endeavors. I actually think it will be harder to get rid of all the Carbon bureaucracies of all the governments than it will be to overturn the global warming hoax itself.
“Socialist” is just a misleading word for “communist”, she’s a communist. “social justice” ugh, another cancerous ideologue.
“100% renewable by 2035”.. “social justice” ugh.. this is why socialists will never have any power in the US, their ideas are toxic to 75% of the population.
The only reason she even got in, is because of how bad the Dems are.. the party is disintegrating. But even with the Dems being as bad as they are, even still, this is far as the socialist wing will get.
What are the odds this lady will deny that socialism destroyed Venezuela.. I’d say 1\1000 odds
I say let her rant, because Trump2020 will be even more likely, Communism will just never be popular in the US
Obviously she’s educated but not that intelligent, only an idiot would even consider 100% renewable by 2100.. and she says 2035 😀 So we can assume she is completely illiterate on economics and science\tech
I agree with you Mark. Nowadays, we no longer label this woman’s bizarre statements for what they truly are – “batsh!t crazy”. Instead, there are support groups that encourage this sort of insane radicalism, which causes enormous destruction to individuals and society.
The political left has many causes that are utterly foolish and destructive to society and the environment – global warming alarmism and green energy scams are prime examples.
Witness the energy idiocy of recent politicians in Western Europe, Britain, Canada, the USA, and Australia. These idiots have squandered tens of trillions of dollars of scarce global resources on costly, intermittent green energy schemes that are not green and produce little useful (dispatchable) energy, all to save us from imaginary catastrophic global warming – all in a (probably) cooling world.
Fully 85% of global primary energy is still generated from fossil fuels – oil, natural gas and coal. The remainder is largely generated from nuclear and hydro. Hardly any useful energy is generated from green sources, despite tens of trillions in wasted subsidies – enough money to buy too many corrupt politicians, civil servants and academics.
Anti fossil fuels, anti pipelines, anti fracking, anti oilsands, pro green energy, etc. etc. – these scams are all promoted by the same people, all deliberately harming our economies while wrapping themselves in the cloak of phony environmentalism.
These people are not pro-environment – many of their programs such as clear-cutting of tropical rainforests to grow biofuels, draining the Ogallala aquifer to grow corn for fuel ethanol, clear-cutting eastern US forests to provide wood pellets for British power plants, erecting huge wind power towers to slice up birds and bats, etc are ALL anti-environmental.
The popularity of global warming mania in the media and the general population is explained by the Dunning Kruger effect, as defined below.
THE DUNNING–KRUGER EFFECT – DEFINED
By Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people of low ability have illusory superiority and mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is. The cognitive bias of illusory superiority comes from the metacognitive inability of low-ability people to recognize their lack of ability; without the self-awareness of metacognition, low-ability people cannot objectively evaluate their actual competence or incompetence.[1] On the other hand, people of high ability incorrectly assume that tasks that are easy for them are also easy for other people.[2]
As described by social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger, the cognitive bias of illusory superiority results from an internal illusion in people of low ability and from an external misperception in people of high ability; that is, “the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.”[1]
By George Carlin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyifuNC0MT8
“Think of how stupid the average person is; and then realize half of them are stupider than that!”
A Green New Deal? she does understand how the original New Deal turned out doesnt she?
Yes. But would you also not demand that the world’s largest emitter also reduce or eliminate its emissions? I mean, you claim to believe that the future of you children depends on reducing emissions, but its not New York State emissions that have to be reduced, but global emissions.
So if you really believed it, you would be outside the Chinese embassy demonstrating and demanding it start reducing its 10 billion tons a year. Its one third of the global total, and its double the next largest emitter.
So the question to ask the lady is: does she believe China has to reduce its 10 billion tonnage of emissions, and if so, by how much, and by when?
If the US has to get to zero by 2035, what does China have to get to by that date? Why not zero, too, if global emissions are so catastrophic?
I guarantee you that if you ask this question of people who accept the claim that the US has to do this, you will be met with a chorus of abuse, and a bunch of shouting about per capita emissions, emissions for export, installation of wind and solar, and historical emissions.
And a resolute refusal to admit that if they are right, China has also got to get to zero by 2035. Because what they want is for the US to go to zero and China to keep right on emitting and growing its emissions.
Now, ask yourself. Why?
Re “installation of wind and solar”: About a month ago, China announced it will stop subsidizing installation of domestic solar PVs, because it was costing $15 billion per year. So that argument is off the agenda.
I say give her a megaphone. A very big megaphone. That’s so middle America can see where the looneytune Left has pulled Democrats further left and what they’ll do to the US if given the chance.
Venezuela and even Ms Ocasio-Cortez own Puerto Rico disaster is a great civics lesson in the destruction that socialism brings.
And BTW: Ms. O-C is an avowed hard core socialist.The only thing missing from her campaign is the hammer and sickle flag backdrop.
What, they weren’t cold enough last winter?
When an entire country goes insane, the army is the last resort of reason.
A military coup is evident if these ideas of ms. Ocasio materialize.
It’s not the entire country, just liberals. That is why we have and must defend the 2nd Amendment. It is also the reason the liberals constantly mount assaults on the 2nd Amendment.
From Tyranny 101:
First you take their money, then you take their guns, then you take their freedom.
Is there any way to expel NY and CA from the union?
NYC ghost city 2036.
I started to read the IPCC Climate Change Synthesis Report of 2015. They have a diagram pg. 48 of Contributions to observed surface temperature changes over period 1951 to 2010. The observed warming according to the IPCC has been 0.64 C or about 1.1 C per century . In the graph they give range estimates of all the different factors that could have caused this based on degrees C. Of the non human causes they give two. 1) Natural forcings and 2) Natural internal variability However they give each one of those two factors exactly the same range of -0.1 to +0.1 C. This shows me that they did not do any science What they did was calculate the pause rate of warming from 1998 to 2012 as 0.15C and prorated the pause length of 15 years to the total period of 60 years and observed that without the natural causes of pause the rate of warming would have been 0 .15C. Since it showed 0.05 C according to their combined sea and temperature data; so that the difference is 0.1 which is what they say the natural forcing is. They don’t even bother to combine the two natural causes into 1 temperature range unlike what they did for the different AGW forcings.
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/SYR_AR5_FINAL_full_wcover.pdf
Another gem in the report is on age 73. I quote
“Warming will continue beyond 2100 under all RCP scenarios
except RCP2.6. Surface temperatures will remain approximately constant
at elevated levels for many centuries after a complete cessation
of net anthropogenic CO2 emissions (see Section 2.2.5 for the relationship
between CO2 emissions and global temperature change.). A large
fraction of anthropogenic climate change resulting from CO2 emissions
is irreversible on a multi-century to millennial timescale,….”
Did they have a time machine to find this out? Oh I forgot the computer model says so. The IPCC is a junk body practicing junk science with junk scientists.
..The U.N. liberal / communist / socialist “Agenda 21” is taking it’s last, desperate, dying breath ! …Finally..!
This young example of magical thinking is kooky enough to possibly actually lose the election.
Even in a democrat stronghold.
When people display such huge gaps in their reasoning, it is not unusual for those gaps to manifest in different areas that alienate many.
Socialism dies when they run out of “Other Peoples Money” *see Venezuela / Cuba / South Africa ….etc” . The money makers / job creators don’t stick around when they are being pissed on..
The problem is that lots and lots of real people will die before socialism finally collapses.
Interesting. We have a similar politician here in the Netherlands. Marianne Thieme from the animal party. As a mother of 4 I really think she does a convincing job. Pity those climate projections have nothing to do with reality or I’d vote for her.
She does not realize that climate change has been going on for eons. Based on the paleoclimate record and the work done with models, the climate change we are experiencing today is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rational to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is really zero. So conserving on the use of fossil fuels may have benefits but climate change is not one of them. If she wants climate justice for the wrongs done by climate change then the responsible party to sue would be Mother Nature. Lots of luck on collecting on a judgement against Mother Nature.
I’m going to put her platform in the ‘good luck with that’ box.
muppet!
Pulling the Democratic party left is REgressive, not progressive. Cavebound, as I like to put it. I shan’t tell you again.
I’m overjoyed she has been elected. I look forward to her driving millions of voters into Trump’s arms.
Talk is cheap. Typical politician. Always the moral superiority and empty promises. Let me guess: When this doesn’t happen by 2035 she will just blame everyone else.
Promise them anything, give them Arpege.