Dr. Martin Capages has written an excellent new book entitled Why the Green New Deal is a Bad Deal for America. He very effectively deconstructs the “Green New Deal.” He kindly asked me to write the Foreward for the book, so I am posting a slightly revised version here.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is only the latest, in a long line of politicians, to use climate change as an excuse for world government and global control of production, distribution and exchange of goods and services, aka socialism. The global warming (or climate change, if you prefer) scare has been inexorably tied to socialism since it was conceived in the late 1980s by Maurice Strong (see the details of what Strong did in Christopher Booker’s article on him in the 5 December 2015 issue of The Telegraph, link). In short, he became the founding director of the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) and later, in 1992, he created the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has dominated (some would say “dictated”) the global climate change agenda ever since. In 2015, the then Executive Secretary of the body, Christiana Figueres, said this:
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.” (link)
Christine Stewart, the Canadian Minister of the Environment said to the editors and reporters of the Calgary Herald in 1998:
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony … climate change [provides] the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” (link)
Former Senator Timothy Wirth, who later became the Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs in the Clinton-Gore administration, said the following in 1992 at the UN Earth Climate Summit in Rio de Janeiro:
“We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.” (link)
Thus, global warming/climate change is not a scientific issue, it is an economic and political one. By speculating that climate change is man-made, through our carbon dioxide emissions, and dangerous, the politicians can claim that to save the planet we must form a global governmental body to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and “save the planet.”
However, whether climate change is mostly natural or mostly man-made, is less important than the rate of the change and whether it is dangerous. The rate of global warming over the past 150 years is less than one degree Celsius (1.8°F) per 100 years, this is not alarming and, if anything, it appears to be slowing down in recent decades (Fyfe, et al., 2016) and Javier (2019). Further, our oceans, which cover 70% of the Earth’s surface, provide an upper limit on the Earth’s average surface temperature of around 30 degrees C according to studies by MIT atmospheric physicists Newell and Dopplick(Newell & Dopplick, 1979).
So, a climate catastrophe is not headed our way anytime in the next few hundred years, we do have plenty of time to study the matter. According to a study of the Earth’s climate history by Christopher Scotese and the Paleomap Project, at the University of Texas (Scotese, 2015), the average global surface temperature of the Earth over the past 500 million years is about 20 degrees C (68°F). This is over five degrees warmer (9°F) than today, thus we are in an unusually cold period in the Earth’s history. In the past, the Earth’s average surface temperature has been as warm as 28 degrees C (82°F), during these times dinosaurs roamed over the continent of Antarctica and palm trees grew on the North Slope of Alaska, while equatorial temperatures remained about the same as today.
Characterizing the current warming as an urgent and impending crisis is silly considering the scientific evidence we have today. There is no need to remove national boundaries, form a global government and abandon capitalism to “save the world.” Climate changes, we all accept this, perhaps it is mostly man-made, perhaps it is mostly natural, we don’t know. What we do know is that many communities may be affected by climate change. Sea level is rising, the best long-term estimates are that it is rising between 1.8 and 3 millimeters per year. This is not a large rate, perhaps seven inches to a foot in 100 years, much less than the daily tides. But, if it causes problems, seawalls can be built, people can move from dangerous areas or elevate their houses, it is a problem that can be dealt with locally, as it has been for thousands of years. Why use a global solution?
With fossil fuels or nuclear power, which the climate change alarmists want to eliminate, we can cool or heat our buildings if a community gets too cold or too hot. If we get more rain, we can improve our drainage or move out of flood plains. If it gets too dry, we can drill wells for water or move water via aqueducts. The point is, each community needs to deal with its own problems. Climate change is not a problem that must be dealt with globally, the people affected and closest to the problem will deal with it in the most effective and efficient manner, as they always have. You don’t swat flies with atomic bombs.
So, consider Dr. Capages arguments carefully. Capitalism built our current affluent society and lifted billions of people out of abject poverty. Do we really need to throw all of this away and turn all our businesses and property rights over to a world government to fight a possible climate change problem that is hundreds of years away, if it exists at all?
You can order Dr. Capages book on Amazon here.
Works Cited
Fyfe, John C., Gerald A. Meehl, Matthew H. England, Michael E. Mann, Benjamin D. Santer, Gregory M. Flato, Ed Hawkins, et al. 2016. “Making sense of the early 2000s warming slowdown.” Nature Climate Change 6: 224-228. http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/Mann/articles/articles/FyfeEtAlNatureClimate16.pdf.
Newell, R.E., and T.G Dopplick. 1979. “Questions Concerning the Possible Influence of Anthropogenic CO2 on Atmospheric Temperature.” J. Applied Meterology 18: 822-825. http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0450(1979)018%3C0822%3AQCTPIO%3E2.0.CO%3B2.
Scotese, Christopher. 2015. Some thoughts on Global Climate Change: The Transition from Icehouse to Hothouse. PALEOMAP Project. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Christopher_Scotese3/project/Earth-History-The-Evolution-of-the-Earth-System/attachment/575023e708aec90a33750af1/AS:368505070342144@1464869863189/download/Some+Thoughts+on+Global+Climate+Changev21ar+copy.pdf.
There is no way to achieve prosperity under a socialist system. All of the discoveries and innovations which have lead to our current prosperity have accumulated over time through mostly individual efforts, many of which were fortuitous, accidental discoveries. A centrally planned, socialist system has no mechanism with which to “capitalize” on such discoveries, so stagnation and poverty is the inevitable result.
When a central feature of your socialist plan is to discard the most important elements of our prosperous economy, the failure will be even more dramatic than the usual failure of socialism!
Ms O-C has done conservatives a great favor by exposing in no uncertain terms the agenda of the Left’s Climate Change policy.
Yep, clearly Nannee Pelosi was not in command of this operation.
The issue is not how right or wrong AOC and crazy Bernie are but how ignorant the choir to which they are preaching happens to be. It goes back to the average IQ, the MSM , and educational system we have here in the U S of A. The fact that somewhere around 50% of people pay no taxes and want free stuff so vote Democrat is a scary situation. A workers’ party in a workers’ state where people don’t have to work sounds great to a very large part of our population.
Yep,… it’s for this reason that Democrats are pushing for an abolition of the EC system for electing the POTUS, in direct opposition to the Constitution and founding principles. The FF’s KNEW that they would have to create a system that would hinder the wannabe aristocracies from leveraging the stupidity of the people via “democracy” … ie mob rule. The sewer rats have had a lot of success in destroying the US of A …. they abolished the election of Senators by the State Government, they took control of the Money via the third attempt to implement a central bank, the Federal Reserve (Thank You WWilson – Democrat), bought off large swaths of the public by revisionists interpretations of the Constitution by the fraudulent FDR (Democrat) courts … who gave us Social Security, then created a centralized education system to indoctrinate the masses, …. etc etc …. all implemented by the Democratic Socialist Party of America. ….. now they want to control energy, how u travel, and what you’ll eat.
It’ll be a miracle if the Constitution survives another 10-20 years.
Will this really create a Paradise for Parasites?
It won’t. But the parasites are determined to try.
A cancer is too stupid to understand that by killing the body it itself will be eliminated.
Usually most of the parasites die when they kill their host. Same outcome here.
AOC must get all of her ideas from the movies.
Train travel only, buy and work locally, limit your footprint and energy use, no citizens with guns.
Sounds like “Hunger Games” to me
When it comes down to it, it’s the Warmists against the rest. The Warmists are globalists, socialists, communists, SJW’s, anti-capitalists, Gaics, pagans and other dirt worshipers and “scientists”. The other side is notorious for its majority status…and its silence. It’ll take a Tea Party style movement that is large, loud and consistently turns out in sufficient numbers to scare politicians.
With all due respect for the great fight being put here, there is a fallacy of composition running through the campaign.
1)Karl Marx was trained under David Urquhart of the British Museum, one of Bentham’s and Lord Palmerston’s zoo. So “socialism” is from the British East Indie Company, CEO Adam Smith, defeated in 1783 for a republic, if you can keep it as Benjamin Franklin noted.
2)Right now it is interesting that HRM Chatham House, Royal Institute for International Affairs, expert opinion on Jan 30 on how to bring the Dems to flout Trumps Paris policy touts a photo-op of AOC. The Green New Deal , from RIIA, would indeed destroy their former colony. No doubt they estimate Germany on-board with the phase out of nuclear and coal. Corbyn has not endorsed it despite a twitter phone-op by AOC (his brother is a serious climate activist).
3)Dr. John Schellnhuber the decarbonizer of the Potsdam Climate Institute, PKI, was awarded his CBE personally by HRM at the Berlin Embassy in 2004 for his outspoken population target of 2 billion. Only just this month was revealed who signed the crazy diesel limits into law, none other than Chancellor Merkel, then Environment minister in 1998 – even before Gore’s farce. Gore endorsed AOC’s GND – the Dem hopefuls are too fogged to realize it.
4)Trump is getting in the way of this – no wonder London’s still trying to topple a US elected president.
In short, as a keen economist noted, the Dems have been Germanized, Green is the new Brown. The GOP couldn’t parody this craziness.
Marx was a socialist long before he ever wrote for Urquhart’s “Diplomatic Review” from 1866. Karl wrote the “Communist Manifesto” in 1848 and “Das Kapital” in 1867, based upon previous “work”.
You could more credibly attribute Horace Greeley to his mentorship, since Marx wrote for “NY Daily Tribune” before the DR.
The GND would reduce America to a pre-civilization Stone Age society.
Don’t they realize how many would outright DIE under this regime?
Killing 90% of the population is their goal.
Worse. In the Neolithic, our ancestors had cows. Not allowed on Planet Ocasio, because methane.
But with about seven billion fewer humans, our CO2 and methane emissions would also be reduced by ~7/8.
How un-PC of this author to mention only the benefits of domesticating cattle:
http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2016/02/cattle-domestication-from-aurochs-to-cow/
The end game appears to be the destruction of the USA. That is the result if the GND was ever voted into existence.
First, taxes would skyrocket.
Next, when taxes were not enough saving/investments would be confiscated.
Next, when that money ran out more and more money would be printed.
Finally, massive inflation would follow bankrupting everyone.
At that point everyone would be equal (or dead).
Several Democrats are already on record saying that there is nothing wrong with big deficits.
Why the Green New Deal is a Bad Deal for America
Or
“A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.” —Dr. Paul Ehrlich, Anne Ehrlich, and Dr. John Holdren, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, 1970
Or
“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” —Dr. Paul Ehrlich, Anne Ehrlich, and Dr. John Holdren, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, 1970
There isn’t much new under the Sun.
The Socialist Insanity of a Green Utopia
https://youtu.be/b-s6Nr1-R-w
Peter Schiff
Anything that stops progress to regress to earlier technology is inhumane and cruel. Capitalism has driven the innovation that has lifted billions out of poverty and disease. Consider the railroad tycoons in the early to mid 19th century. They were wealthy with the same kind of wealth gap we see today. But despite that, they lived without indoor plumbing, air travel, air conditioning, automobiles, cell phones or internet. Compare how they lived against the poorest of their time. Compare them to the poorest of today – the poorest today have indoor plumbing, air conditioning, mass transit, refrigerated food, hospitals, etc, etc, and live better than those wealth railroad tycoons. And those tycoons and the ones that followed are the people responsible for this massive increase in wealth. Despite the increase in population, we all enjoy more comfortable and leisurely lives, better healthcare, healthier and more abundant food.
It is a huge mistake to turn the clock back to the 18th century. It’s a huge mistake to take the resources away from tycoons and billionaires to essentially try to erase a wealth gap that in 150 years will not be recognizable. Capitalism has allowed a 10x growth in population with improved lifestyle for everyone. No one would think to give up indoor plumbing or even delay it so a fraction of the people in 1850 could put a tiny bit of money in their pocket. What would an 1850 tycoon give for a car, a coach class plane ticket, a refrigerator and any number of conveniences and necessities we now consider a right?
Let the billionaires keep innovating, so in 150 years we aren’t viewed as the most selfish and short-sighted generation in history. Billions would have died if we acted this way in the 1850’s and we can’t justify killing billions by stopping innovation simply because of a contrived wealth gap. Generationally, we are all richer.
A young socialist once told me that if you take away half a man’s income, that man will respond by working twice as hard in order to earn the same standard of living.
Yes, socialists actually do think that way.
Green deal? The World Is Getting Greener Thanks to Rising Carbon Dioxide Levels
All set, thank you.
That’s the Green Old Deal …. sounds like a nice acronym. We need a set of politicians pushing GOD.
The truth in this is that this trilliondollarbusiness is good for most billionaires. Thats why they all attack against Trump. Only gambling casino billionaires don’t care what happens, and they’ll give support to trump. This matter does not have anything to do with socialism, those idiots are only pawns in this teather.
To “Win this Battle ” .we must recognise that it is a propergaanda war, and they are doing a very good job.
For example their approach of going up tom a politician and saying “What are you going to do about Climate Change” is very clever. So how does your average politician answer that. Lets face it, your average politician is not all that bright, so we need to prepare them for such a question before hand.
The same as when they promise lots and lots of “Free Stuff”. So you say “Where is the money coming from. And their answer is the Super rich or the Banks. “So again try to prepare the politician as to how to answer that. Perhaps explain that society is like a pirymide , with the very rich being just the tip, and if we take a few million from that tip, by the time it gets to the bottom its just a few cents per person. By all means try to make the taxation system fairer, but lets not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
And I say yet again , we must “Prove “to the general public, that the gas CO2, and remember its not carbon, its two parts of Oxygen to one part of gaseous carbon, is not able to “Store”heat, but to simply to pass it on as a different frequency .
CO2 is the card at the bottom of this incredible “House of Cards” and removing it will cause the whole pile of rubbish to slowly collapse. But there is now a Green Industry out there, and a bit like Enron” its too big to be allowed to fall over, situation. That is how a lot of Politicians appear to view this whole matter.
So the EPA must first issue a lot of Properganda about CO2 being essential to all life on this planet. Then take it to Court. Then and only then will we ever “Win” this battle for our Way of Life.
MJE
Yeah, getting rid of 95% of energy production, citizen mobility, food production, . . . Yeah, I’d say that would be bad for any country. Plenty of examples to choose from.
I guess we can all starve to death together.
They are getting the Green New Deal in the Seattle, WA area, and it will continue this week!
Or is it the White New Deal ?
The “Earth Charter” Is the work of Steven Rockefeller, Maurice Strong, and Gorbachev.
Interview: Maurice Strong on a “People’s Earth Charter”
But, let us be very clear, the UN action is not going to be the only goal. The real goal of the Earth Charter is that it will in fact become like the Ten Commandments, like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It will become a symbol of the aspirations and the commitments of people everywhere. And, that is where the political influence, where the long-term results of the Earth Charter will really come.
http://tinyurl.com/ygq9maj
Rebutting Rockefeller: the chairman of the Earth Charter drafting committee takes issue with this magazine’s expose, “The New World Religion.” The facts show that his objections are not sustainable. (Earth Charter).
Professor Steven C. Rockefeller has objected to my critique of the Earth Charter, “The New World Religion,” in the September 23rd issue of THE NEW AMERICAN. (See his full letter on page 3). The article, he says, “contains some misunderstandings” about the Earth Charter Initiative which he then purports to correct. Below is my response to a number of his points.
Rockefeller: “The Earth Charter is the product of a worldwide, cross-cultural, interfaith dialogue on common goals and shared values that has been conducted as a civil society initiative.”
Response: The global campaign for the Charter is not a grass-roots, bottom-up effort, but a closely controlled, top-down operation masquerading as “dialogue.” The Charter was cobbled together under the leadership of Dr. Rockefeller, former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev (representing Green Cross International), Earth Summit I Secretary-General Maurice Strong (representing the Earth Council), and representatives from the government of the Netherlands.
snip
Maurice Strong opened Earth Summit I with a “Declaration of the Sacred Earth,” accompanied by “indigenous” animist Earth worship ceremonies — standard practice at UN convocations. The Charter says protecting Earth is our “sacred trust.”Dr. Rockefeller is a leading advocate of the radical “biocentrism,” under which, he says, “the rights of nature are defended first and foremost on the grounds of the intrinsic value of animals, plants, rivers, mountains, and ecosystems” against “human oppression.” Biocentrists believe that humans are no more important than other life forms or natural objects. Of course, rocks, trees, and ecosystems speak in words only understood by enlightened souls like Rockefeller and company, who have assigned themselves the noble task of defending these “rights of nature.”
http://tinyurl.com/qhebu9d
Live & Learn: Maurice Strong
I never aspired to be in business. I went into business because I only have a high-school education, and I couldn’t get jobs that required higher qualifications. I went into business quite reluctantly, because it was the only place I could get a job.
http://www.canadianbusiness.com/business-strategy/live-learn-maurice-strong/
Maurice F. Strong Is First Non-U.S. Citizen To Receive
Public Welfare Medal, Academy’s Highest Honor
WASHINGTON — The National Academy of Sciences has selected Maurice F. Strong to receive its most prestigious award, the Public Welfare Medal. Established in 1914, the medal is presented annually to honor extraordinary use of science for the public good. The Academy chose Strong, a Canadian and the first non-U.S. citizen to receive the award, in recognition of his leadership of global conferences that became the basis for international environmental negotiations and for his tireless efforts to link science, technology, and society for common benefit.
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=12032003
They are alredy running away from it:
“The mysterious case of AOC’s scrubbed ‘Green New Deal’ details” by Susan Ferrechio | February 09, 2019
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/congress/the-mysterious-case-of-aocs-scrubbed-green-new-deal-details
On Feb. 5, the congressional office of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted a new blog entry under “energy issues” detailing her “Green New Deal” proposal and answering “frequently asked questions.” …
By the afternoon of Feb. 7, Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., removed the document from her website without explanation but following backlash and even ridicule over the radical plans outlined within it, including a call to “eliminate emissions from cows or air travel” — which would functionally ban the latter — and to provide “economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work.”
But on Saturday morning, chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti tweeted that the FAQ page was indeed posted by the Ocasio-Cortez staff but was done so in error. He called the page “an early draft of a FAQ that was clearly unfinished and that doesn’t represent the GND resolution got published to the website by mistake …”
As for the blog post, it has not been restored to her congressional website as of Saturday morning but is available via archive:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190207191119/https://ocasio-cortez.house.gov/media/blog-posts/green-new-deal-faq
and its text saved online:
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5729035/Green-New-Deal-FAQ.pdf
As a resident of Venezuela for 17 years up to recently, I fully agree that socialism is the best way to implement the Green New Deal, witness an oil country without gasoline, people walking and slimming because of the shortage of food, industrial output practically nil, power system functioning intermittently, etc., Venezuela is a precursor and shows the way to go.
Perhaps AOC could make a start on the GND by living up to it. So :
– no flying to Washington DC,
– cars, buses, trains only if produced by green energy, therefore she is wallking to DC because even bicycles are produced mainly be non-green energy.
– Lose the computer and phone – not sufficient green energy to produce them
By the time she has done this , she will be lost somewhere on the way to Washington and we wont be able to contact her anyway.
I was very surprised by the fact that some of the Americans connect the false theory of global warming in general and the Green New Deal in particular with socialism.
I am a Russian communist who is convinced that the future belongs to communism (socialism is the first least mature stage of communism, which is characterized by the socialization of the means of production, the organization of production based on long-term planning and the distribution of social wealth exclusively according to the measure of labor invested by each individual in creating this wealth). Communism can only be built on a scientific basis Therefore, neither socialism nor communism have anything to do with stupidity, which the theory of global warming is.
Maybe it will be interesting to you, for this very reason supporters of socialism and communism are in the front ranks of people in Russia, who categorically reject this stupid theory. The stupidity of the so-called global warming is supported here by the most conservative, reactionary circles.
Perhaps you should think that the promoters of the Green New Deal are probably not potential socialists at all, but the hirelings of one of the big business factions that are not seeking socialist, that is, fair equality, but more of transnational monopolies’ total control over Americans and all of humanity for the sake of a more sophisticated and deep explotation of human labor and the intellect and to extract much more profit. We, the Russian Communists, think that way.
“I am a Russian communist who is convinced that the future belongs to communism” That tells the world all it needs to know about you. Bye, Felicia.
Stupid politicians making stupid statements designed to fool stupid people into thinking they will get more than they do currently if stupidity prevails over not-so-common sense.
The problem with all of the Green Deal plans is that they rely on people acting in ways that are not in their own best interests.
If the Green Deal was in my personal best interest it would not require Big Brother to force it on me. I would do it gladly and willingly, because I would benefit from doing it.
Most of the economic problems in the US stem from the current application of these stupid policies that isolate the payer, from the consumer, and the final recipient of payment. These systems are always unstable, because they tend toward inflationary spiral, until most consumers cannot or will not continue to buy them. A market based system will pull back until the value vs. cost equation is more in line with buyers expectation, if that is economically possible for suppliers to do, or else they will die on the vine, and become a niche product for the wealthy. No government program is going to supply us with flying cars, that the middle class can afford. It would be a great value to the consumer, but the suppliers could not produce them in sufficient numbers at that price level. It is a limitation based on what is economically viable. If anyone could do it, they would be doing it without a government program.
The market is efficient because the buyer has control over the perceived value of the product, and the choice of many suppliers, AND the choice to forgo ANY purchase and go without, or create it themselves.
In a Capitalistic system the buyer has control, and the suppliers compete for his money. In a Socialistic system the government has control, and there is no “legal competition”. But there will obviously be black-market competition, because the system is so pathetic at producing what people want and at a price that they think is “fair value”.
Socialist systems always fail because the suppliers are not in active competition for consumers. And the suppliers try to provide the goods and services, but the incentives are not clear and present in the continued receipt of a paycheck. A good example in the US is the VA medical system. It is not the people in the system that fail the Veterans. It is the way the system is financed and run. And it will be still worse for us, if we choose Medicare for all. Medicare currently pays less than half of the cost associated with the medical care it approves. The rest is paid for by those with private health insurance, being charged more than they would be, if Medicare paid the full cost of the care delivered.
Our current socialist systems are eating into the American Dream. We need to find ways to lessen that, not expand it into other areas. The Green Deal is the War on Fossil Fuels. It is meant to distract from the failures of the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs. It will actually be less successful than the previous Wars, if that is possible.