Not just for energy, but for every aspect of our lives, living standards, culture and freedoms
David Wojick and Paul Driessen
Kamala Harris co-sponsored the Senate resolution to support the Green New Deal. Now Joe Biden has endorsed the plan. Naturally, people want to know what the GND will cost – usually meaning in state and federal government spending. But that is the wrong question.
The real question is, how much do Green New Dealers expect to get out of it, at what total cost? Mr. Biden says he wants the feds to spend nearly $7 trillion over the next decade on healthcare, energy and housing transformation, climate change and other GND agenda items. But that is only part of the picture.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who has a degree in some socialist version of economics) and the folks who helped her write Biden’s so-called Climate Plan have a clear idea of how much money they want, and pretty much know where they expect the money to come from. Here it is in its clearest form, as stated by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s then chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti:
“The resolution describes the 10-year plan to transform every sector of our economy to remove GHG [greenhouse gases] and pollution. It says it does this through huge investments in renewables, at WW2 scales (which was 40-60% of America’s GDP).” [emphasis added]
World War II was a time of great sacrifice and hardship, as part of a dramatic and historic mobilization to win a horrific global war. However, that hard reality doesn’t matter to these folks. They say we are now waging a war to stop catastrophic climate change. So money, sacrifice and disruption are irrelevant.
Our nation’s GDP is around $20 trillion a year, or $200 trillion in ten years. 40-60% of that is $80-120 trillion. For simplicity, let’s call it an even $100 trillion to finance the Green New Deal utopian dream.
$100 trillion! The ways and means of raising this stupendous sum are also clear in their minds. It will be done the same way WW2 was financed, however that was. To them, it’s obvious that we can simply do this, because we did it before. The specifics don’t matter. Government elites will figure them out.
But even this arrogant, cavalier attitude is only part of the picture.
If you read what Green New Dealers say, confusion arises because people think the GND is an ordinary policy proposal: “Here’s what we want done, and this what it should cost.” It is nothing like that. The Green New Deal is more along the lines of, “Here’s the level of effort we require to transform our entire economy, and this is what we should be able to do with that much money.”
People tend to interpret Green New Dealer talk of a WW2-like mobilization as a simple metaphor. But these folks mean it as an actual measure of what they are determined to do. So far they have glossed over and ignored the extreme hardships of mobilization. Here’s just one example – not from front lines mayhem, but from the United States home front during World War II.
Gasoline, meat and clothing were tightly rationed. Most families were allocated three US gallons of gasoline a week, which sharply curtailed driving for any purpose. Production of most durable goods, like cars, new housing, vacuum cleaners and kitchen appliances, was banned until the war ended. In industrial areas housing was in short supply as people doubled up and lived in cramped quarters. Prices and wages were controlled. [Harold Vatter, The US Economy in World War II]
No doubt the Green New Deal mobilization would impose different hardships. But all mobilizations are oppressive. You can’t commandeer half of the GDP without inflicting severe disruption on people’s lives.
The argument is sound in its way, provided there is a need for all-out war – which there is not. The minor to modest temperature, climate and extreme weather changes we’ve been seeing (in the real world outside computer models) explain why most Americans see no need for a painful war. So does the fact that China, India and other emerging economies are not about to give up fossil fuels anytime soon.
In fact, polls show that roughly half of Americans do not even believe in the idea of human caused global warming, much less that it is an “existential threat,” as Senator Harris claims it is. The latest Gallup poll found that only 1% of US adults consider “climate change/environment/pollution” to be “the most important problem facing this country today.” That’s down from a meager 2% in the May 28-June 4 poll.
Even more revealing, a 2019 AP-NORC poll found that 68% of adult Americans were unwilling to pay even an extra $10 on their monthly electricity bill to combat global warming. Indeed, 57% of them would not be willing to pay more than $1.00 in added electricity charges to fight climate change!
Just wait until they see what the Biden-Harris-AOC-Democrat Green New Deal would cost them.
And it’s not just that their costs would likely skyrocket from an average US 13.2¢ per kilowatt hour (11.4¢ or less in ten states) to well beyond the nearly 20¢ per kWh that families are already paying in California and New York, or the 30¢ that families are now paying in ultra-green Germany. Or that factories, businesses, hospitals, schools and everyone else would also see their costs escalate – with blue collar families, the sick and elderly, poor and minority communities hammered hardest.
It’s that the GND would force every American to replace their gasoline and diesel cars and trucks with expensive short-haul electric vehicles; their gas furnaces and stoves with electric systems; their home, local and state electrical and transmission systems with expensive upgrades that can handle a totally electric economy. They’ll see their landscapes, coastlines and wildlife habitats blanketed with wind turbines, solar panels, transmission lines and warehouses filled with thousands of half-ton batteries. Virtually every component of this GND nation would be manufactured in China and other faraway places.
The cost of this massive, total transformation of our energy and economic system would easily reach $10 trillion: $30,000 per person or $120,000 per family – on top of those skyrocketing electricity prices. And that’s just the intermittent, unreliable energy component of this all-encompassing Green New Deal.
These are stupendous, outrageous costs and personal sacrifices. Every American, at every campaign event and town meeting, should ask Green New Deal supporters if they think America needs to – or can afford to – cough up $10 trillion or $100 trillion over the next ten years. And not let them get away with glib, evasive answers, or attempts to laugh these questions off as meritless or irrelevant.
The American people are not about to be mobilized into an all-out war against dubious climate change, with price tags like these coupled with repeated blackouts, huge personal sacrifices, and massive joblessness in every sector of the economy – except among enlightened government ruling classes.
They’ve already seen news stories about the latest rolling blackouts in California (here, here, here and here) – resulting from one-third of that state’s electricity coming from “renewable” sources, and with another third of the state’s electricity imported from other states that also get heat waves. They should ponder what their lives, livelihoods and living standards would be under 100% wind and solar power.
And yet, once again, even all this insanity is only a small part of the picture.
Remember, the Green New Deal is also about government run healthcare – and an economy and nation where “progressive” “woke” legislators, regulators, judges and activists tell companies what they can manufacture and sell … and tell us what we can buy, eat and drink; how and how much we can heat and cool our homes; and what we can read, hear, think and say, as they “transform” our culture and traditions.
The GND is being promoted by politicians, news and social media, “educators” and “reformers” who also want to eliminate free enterprise capitalism; have totally open borders, even for criminals and people who might have Covid and other diseases; and want to defund the police, put anarchists, looters and arsonists back on our streets, and take away our right and ability to defend ourselves, our homes and our families.
The time to think long and hard about all of this is NOW. Not sometime after the November 3 elections.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues. David Wojick is an independent analyst specializing in science, logic and human rights in public policy, and author of numerous articles on these topics.
Cost is secondary to the fact that it cannot work, and California is a prime example. Let AOC, Biden and Harris invest their own money on high speed trains to Hawaii and come back to us when their success is obvious.
Enormous disruption, yes. An expenditure so great that it will make the US a second class power.
But the main criticism ought to be that, despite that huge spend, despite all that disruption, it will have no measurable effect on global temperatures.
Even assuming that the theory of CAGW is correct. If they are, the GND will have no effect, because they will not lower CO2 emissions sufficiently.
The question to ask is why the Greens are always demanding we do things which, if their theory is correct, will have no effect on the supposed problem.
Why do they want us to do things which they themselves do not believe will make any difference?
“Remember, the Green New Deal is also about government run healthcare – and an economy and nation where “progressive” “woke” legislators, regulators, judges and activists tell companies what they can manufacture and sell … and tell us what we can buy, eat and drink; how and how much we can heat and cool our homes; and what we can read, hear, think and say, as they “transform” our culture and traditions.”
You are describing Fascism. The government telling private companies what, when, and how much to manufacture. The end result is tailor made for authoritarian government and ultimately a Dear Leader.
Sounds like a recipe for a civil war, if this is imposed arbitrarily and the majority don’t support it. Just how does a bar waitress from New York City elected to Congress impose this type of will on the USA and the world? Are we in a horror movie gone amok?
“Kamala Harris co-sponsored the Senate resolution to support the Green New Deal. Now Joe Biden has endorsed the plan. Naturally, people want to know what the GND will cost”
People also want to know whether climate science has yet figured out exactly what the warming effect of fossil fuel emissions is; or whether they are still wrestling with uncertainty and emergent constraints. The GND has no basis without that information.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/08/22/emergent-constraints-on-ecs-tcr/
They want a civil war, Americans should give them one. It will disrupt far less than their stupidity is disrupting society now.
The resolution describes the 10-year plan to transform every sector of our economy to remove GHG [greenhouse gases] and pollution. It says it does this through huge investments in renewables, at WW2 scales (which was 40-60% of America’s GDP).
Lofty sights. Sounds amazing doesn’t it? “We can change the world using what we’ve already done! See? During WW2 we recovered greatly from this massive expense, we did it once, we can do it again!”
Except………….we can’t. Not with 45 million people out of work already, massive businesses in bankruptcy, and millions of people divided and pissed off with everything because they have nothing to do and nowhere to go.
In my cynical opinion this election is going to be more about putting people BACK to work and rebuilding our economy and infrastructure which has been crumbling due to no maintenance. The time of lofty goals of spending WW2 funds are mislaid, for we have already spent that which we can not afford and it’s time to stop with the childish ideas and get back to reality. The Green New Deal will stay as a proposal at best, because quite frankly when people are hungry and winter starts, they will happily burn that proposal for warmth and if it’s in place, they’ll burn the infrastructure surrounding it. Mark my words, we are heading for a revolution and if those indoctrinated in this Green New Deal don’t pull their heads out of the sand and look around, they will be buried. Now is not the time to push an agenda that costs more money, now is the time to rise up and say, “HEY, lets get back to work! We can worry about an imaginary catastrophe later, when our bellies are full and our feet are warm.”
Michel:
“the GND will have no effect, because they will not lower CO2 emissions sufficiently”
I totally agree, but could you, or someone, give an estimate as to how much CO2 emissions would have to be lowered to have any measurable effect?
For example, if the CO2 tonnage in the atmosphere were reduced by, say, 10 Million tons, how much of a temperature decrease would be expected?
Among the millions of bad things that socialists do, they eliminate arbitrage and spot markets and replace them with “scientific” project planning so that resources can be delivered with a eyedropper — never too much, but just enough. The resulting economy works only rarely and by accident. Within a year of the start of this new green deal (I refuse to call it a GND), a combination of inflation, shortages and outright bureaucratic intereference would probably reduce the real economy by a third. All problems plaguing the Soviet and Eastern block economies would be ours to experience first hand; shortages, poor quality materials, lousy goods, incompetent management chosen through politics, exhortations from the industrial committee to work harder, black markets, universal theft, and finally the gulags I am sure.
A favorite story of an acquaintance was when he was asked to come to the USSR in the mid 1980s to help advise on improving herd genetics for dairy and meat production. He spent days at some little crossroads awaiting a consignment of fuel. He was there with a growing number of others who had made it to the little town only to find there was no fuel. Among these others were fuel trucks with loads consigned to other places, and which required quite a lot of red tape to switch delivery point.
I am looking forward to it.
It might be added that WWII came on the heels of the decade-long Great Depression. In raw numbers for the U.S., that meant Industrial production down 46%, Wholesale prices down 32%, Foreign trade down 70%, and Unemployment up 607%. So 40-60% of the U.S. economy to fight WWII translated to misery on top of the misery of the Great Depression. Any of us whose parents or grandparents lived through that era as adults need only ask them what life was like in those days. Even people who did not directly fight in the war suffered permanent PTSD from those economic hard times. Were it not for Roosevelt’s ill health and death while in office, the U.S. came very close to losing the republic to a dictatorship. Voluntarily subjecting us to such misery is nothing that any sane person should consider. Of course, who would suggest that the green lunatic fringe, AOC and Joe Biden included, are sane?
Truth in advertising: it should instead be referred to as the WRD: Watermelon Raw Deal.
Two impacts of the GND to consider in addition to the prohibitive cost, societal upheaval, and communist-style control already mentioned:
1). It would destroy about 75,000,000 jobs in the US.
2). Approximately 750,000,000 people would flood into the US by removing border restrictions.
Obviously, the US would no longer be the lone superpower and no longer would we have our current constitution and the level of guaranteed freedoms we enjoy.
Our country and economy would collapse; Cloward and Piven’s dream of overwhelming the system and society would become reality.
China would become the lone superpower and the CCP would fulfill their dream of global domination. The picture that shows the US looking like a city in Germany destroyed during WWII is accurate and Globalists everywhere would be celebrating.
Sadly, the climate has become the biggest excuse and the fattest red herring for this colossal mistake they call the Green New Deal! It has nothing to do with being Green; the plan has been around for quite a while so it’s nothing New, and the traditional definition of Deal becomes a farsical lie.
AOC admits the technology to transform our country into an environmental nirvana doesn’t even exist yet, but that doesn’t seem to slow them down.
We truly face an existential threat worth opposing to the death!
To the electricity prices: Currently in Germany the average electricity price is 0,36 USD per kWh, and the price will be increased at least one time per year.
Taking 10 Trillions out if the economy every year for ten years could not happen as the law on diminishing returns would hold: as the GND got started the GDP would fall year by year and there would be less for the GND in the pot.
I’m amazed how many American citizens want to see their country destroyed and put under the aegis of China.
Additionally to calculate the costs of the GND-horror, it would be interesting to see a calculation an estation of the extrapfit of the GND-beneficiaries.
Fascism works well in China (productivity wise) where as communism worked well nowhere. Communist China is much more fascist than communist in reality. One can split hairs but allowing some level of free enterprise does provide a level of incentive not available under most forms of communism irrespective of who owns the land and businesses. Of course one must be willing to put up with pretty much a complete lack of other freedoms, disappearing people, etc. Large corporations hand in hand with government is bad in the long run, even here in the USofA! China is finding out that giving folks some economic freedom causes them to want more freedoms! We are finding out that fear causes people to willingly give up their freedoms.
“Mr. Biden says he wants the feds to spend nearly $7 trillion…”
But, no Congress will vote for that- and Biden knows it- so meanwhile, he can say anything he likes.
But what’s going to keep him from winning is his latest speech saying if Covid picks up again- he’ll shut the economy down again. I’m surprised he’d say anything that stupid- because clearly, few Americans want to see that again- even at the risk of more people getting Covid. That statement will turn off more people than his climate fantasy.
What the people want is of no consequence to these elitists.
Once they seize power, you will accept what they give you and you will praise them for being so generous. If you don’t, it’s the gulag for you.
These doomsters may have committed a fatal error in assuming the electorate won’t want to know where the money is coming from. The last election in Oz when Labor was expected to romp it in the question was asked about of Bill Shorten how much would all this climate changing cost and he answered- You can’t put a price on the climate. He was wrong and the electorate priced him out of the market just as they always have whenever you ask them to cough up more taxes instead of getting some solar panel subsidies free light globes shower heads and draught stoppers etc.
Dear Mr. Moderator,
Please, would it be possible to delete my comment “Additionally to calculate the costs of the GND-horror, it would be interesting to see a calculation an estation of the extrapfit of the GND-beneficiaries.” due to typing errors, and to change the text to the following (without typing errors):
“Additionally to calculating the costs of the GND-horror, it would be also interesting to see a calculation to estimate the extraprofit of the GND-beneficiaries.”
Many THX.
How many dollars worth of War Bonds did the government sell to its citizens?
Perhaps the celebrities will get on the road with climate changes heroes to promote similar bond selling campaigns, showing their actual commitment to the cause.
Could it be in the billions?
Other parts of the world have already delivered much of what the US green deal envisages and have much more modern infrastructure as a result.
I have posted this more than once before and I apologize to those who may be tired of seeing it, but it is simply the most important thing there is to know about the Green New Deal. The following is an excerpt from an article in the Washington Post Magazine, June 10, 2019. Mr Chakrabarti was AOC’s chief of staff at the time:
Chakrabarti had an unexpected disclosure. “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal,” he said, “is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.” Ricketts greeted this startling notion with an attentive poker face. “Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Chakrabarti continued. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”
What else need be said?
I read somewhere once that the goal of advertising is to create discontent. No matter how good things are, no matter how well your laundry detergent works, someone wants you to believe that he can sell you a better detergent.
And then there is the creation of new reasons for you to be unhappy. Ever seen those ads for cures for toenail fungus? We have to be worried about toenail fungus now? My own cure for unsightly toe discolorations is to wear socks, but apparently there are millions of people who will buy some kind of pill that makes toenail fungus go away.
And that’s what climate change is like. When people ask me why I don’t care about the climate I tell them that the climate is fine where I live. (That would be Western Canada.) I literally never think about the climate and am amazed that there are people who do. If you really don’t like the climate where you live, if it really is making you miserable, move to where the climate is more to your liking. Too hot? Move three hundred miles north. This would be quite a bit easier than changing all your energy sources, and paying $70,000 for a new car that you can’t recharge in under an hour, and might not be able to recharge at all because there are no chargers.
The Green Raw Deal is just another in the long line of ruling elite attempts to destroy the fighting men and women of the US military! There is NO OTHER force on Earth that they fear!
The real divide in this country is not so much Red/Blue as it is urban/suburban plus rural! The city dwellers are, sadly, among the most brainwashed and indoctrinated people in modern history. Just look at all the media that they are subject to; it’s all FAKE NEWS! This is a major force behind what we are seeing in cities across the country as Communists and anarchists Burn, Loot and Murder! When these mobs of rioters try leave the city for suburbia they generally get handed their heads, and they don’t even try to go to rural areas!
As V.D.Hanson so aptly describes in his book, “The Soul of Battle,” the fiercest fighting force this world has ever seen is an army of free farmers! Whether it’s defeating the fascist Spartans, Confederates or Nazis; no one has ever equaled their successes in fighting to liberate oppressed people throughout history! Thus the elites around the world who see the possibility of the masses arising against their control want to sap the strength of America by implementing the Green Raw Deal to decimate our economy while they get richer!
The British and the Australians have already been pretty much neutralized and Canada isn’t far behind; that leaves the US and some Eastern European countries as the only forces able to counteract the push for worldwide socialism, or neo-feudalism, if you prefer!
This election is not just for the survival of the US as we know it; it is an existential battle for human freedom and against a new Dark Age that could make the first one look like child’s play!