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Green New Deal Bill Aims To Move US To 100 Percent Renewable Energy, Net-Zero Emissions (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Thursday morning, NPR posted a bill drafted by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) advocating for a Green New Deal -- that is, a public works bill aimed at employing Americans and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the face of climate change. A similar version of the bill is expected to be introduced in the Senate by Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.). The House bill opens by citing two recent climate change reports: an October 2018 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a heavily peer-reviewed report released in November 2018 by a group of U.S. scientists from federal energy and environment departments. Both reports were unequivocal about the role that humans play in climate change and the dire consequences humans stand to face if climate change continues unchecked.
The bill lists some of these consequences: $500 billion in lost annual economic output for the U.S. by 2100, mass migration, bigger and more ferocious wildfires, and risk of more than $1 trillion in damage to U.S. infrastructure and coastal property. To stop this, the bill says, the global greenhouse gas emissions from human sources must be reduced by 40 to 60 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, and we must reach net-zero emissions by 2050. [...] The Green New Deal specifically calls for a 10-year mobilization plan that would "achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers" by creating "millions" of high-paying jobs through investment in U.S. infrastructure. Specific kinds of infrastructure aren't listed, but general categories or works projects are outlined. Adaptive infrastructure tailored to communities, like higher sea walls and new drainage systems, would be included. NPR notes that the language is classified as a non-binding resolution, "meaning that even if it were to pass... it wouldn't itself create any new programs. Instead, it would potentially affirm the sense of the House that these things should be done in the coming years."
Surprisingly, the bill doesn't mention fossil fuels at all. "In a draft version of the Green New Deal that had been circulated in December, a Frequently Asked Questions section did not preclude eventually calling for a tax or a ban on fossil fuels, but it noted that this was not what the bill was about," notes Ars Technica. "Simply put, we don't need to just stop doing some things we are doing (like using fossil fuels for energy needs)," the FAQ notes under the Green New Deal draft language. "We also need to start doing new things (like overhauling whole industries or retrofitting all buildings to be energy efficient). Starting to do new things requires some upfront investment."
The bill lists some of these consequences: $500 billion in lost annual economic output for the U.S. by 2100, mass migration, bigger and more ferocious wildfires, and risk of more than $1 trillion in damage to U.S. infrastructure and coastal property. To stop this, the bill says, the global greenhouse gas emissions from human sources must be reduced by 40 to 60 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, and we must reach net-zero emissions by 2050. [...] The Green New Deal specifically calls for a 10-year mobilization plan that would "achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers" by creating "millions" of high-paying jobs through investment in U.S. infrastructure. Specific kinds of infrastructure aren't listed, but general categories or works projects are outlined. Adaptive infrastructure tailored to communities, like higher sea walls and new drainage systems, would be included. NPR notes that the language is classified as a non-binding resolution, "meaning that even if it were to pass... it wouldn't itself create any new programs. Instead, it would potentially affirm the sense of the House that these things should be done in the coming years."
Surprisingly, the bill doesn't mention fossil fuels at all. "In a draft version of the Green New Deal that had been circulated in December, a Frequently Asked Questions section did not preclude eventually calling for a tax or a ban on fossil fuels, but it noted that this was not what the bill was about," notes Ars Technica. "Simply put, we don't need to just stop doing some things we are doing (like using fossil fuels for energy needs)," the FAQ notes under the Green New Deal draft language. "We also need to start doing new things (like overhauling whole industries or retrofitting all buildings to be energy efficient). Starting to do new things requires some upfront investment."
This could be a revolutionary leap forward in several technologies, job creation and American infrastructure. Shave off a fraction of that bloated military budget to pay for it. It'll be worth it
I'm assuming you've run the numbers on this, since you state that the solution is really simple.
So, just out of curiousity, how much money does the Federal govt make every year due to tax exemptions, tax incentives, and tax depreciation on all fossil fuel infrastructure every year?
Oh, and how much money does the Federal government lose due to the loss of taxes from the fossil fuel industries, since it'll pretty much evaporate if this does what you expect it to do?
Alas, this "bill" is no such thing, really. It doesn't include spending, or any details on how it's to be spent. It's just a feel-good-about-ourselves post-it note, really....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Actually the green new deal should not be just about renewable energy but zero waste cities. So fully sealed sewerage, where the gases are pumped out of the system and the methane extracted and burnt to generate energy, the carbon being the lessor evil versus methane and energy provided. The sewerage should then be properly processed, digested slowly over a thousands years, 'er', days to break it down and release more methane to be collected and burnt as energy. The final waste, steam sterilised (waste heat from the gas turbines) and packaged as sterile fertilizer. It is more than just renewables.
That is one waste stream, now the hard wastes, they should be processed as well, right back down to the natural resource, ready to be sold back to manufacturers and that will take a lot of energy, which renewables can not supply, so they have to be nuclear. Nuclear energy is a requirement of renewables because renewables are high risk with regard to extreme events, being earth quakes, hail storms (solar panels) and other extreme weather. So a major hail storm could take out the majority of a cities solar panels and that would take months to repair, no alternate energy, then those cities are dying, literally, the economy and the people, so you absolutely need back up energy, nuclear, for renewable energy sources.
So the Green New Deal should have zero waste cities as it's aim, not just renewables.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
What is the USA going to do at night, every night?
Stop all its export industry for the night?
Turn off a power plant and tell an industry that needs low cost power 24/7 to "move" to a state with hydro, nuclear?
Give US industry what it wants, 24/7, low cost power that stay on at a much lower price.
Not the solar cycle of light and dark to factor in as a price to pass onto people paying for the product/service.
Mass migration is easy to not worry about. Build a wall and count every approved person with a real passport in and pout out the USA.
No cost to the USA of supporting generations of illegal migrants.
Who is going to pay for a "just transition" so all the workers can learn to code?
Infrastructure spending needs engineers and skilled workers. Most of that would need merit and skill.
Thats not new jobs for people expecting a "just transition" to a profession that needs a lot of university education.
The US tax payer is expected to cover energy? Illegal migrants needs in the USA and chain migration.
Have US tax payers support learn to code projects for many people with few and no skills?
Then pay for education, health care for US citizens too?
Not much of a wage to use after the gov has taken it all.
Welcome to full US Communism.
Tailored to making US communities pay tax.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Actually, converting military bases to renewable energy is a great way to build resiliency from attack
Cool. I can't wait to see what VT mortars can do to the solar panels at an Afghan FOB.
bills like this are specifically to soak up (there's a pun there somewhere) folks put out of work in coal and oil.
Natural gas is pretty much eating those sectors alive. Yeah, we need oil to move cars & planes, but we're not using it for electricity anymore. Same for coal. And electric cars are getting damn good. They're still expensive, but cars are rapidly getting too expensive anyway...
The green new deal is how the Democrats plan to respond to the GOP's "Clean Coal" nonsense where they promise the coal minors their jobs back. The GOP is lying, but the minors will vote GOP because a promise is still better than Hilary's policy of "Fuck you, go back to college, and no, I won't pay for your tuition".
TL;DR; put out of work folks to work building wind and solar plants. Kill two birds with one stone.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
No Cortez is a dingbat. I was curious about her when she won the primary so I watched some of her interviews. The gaffs were amazing. She has no understanding of economics and this is despite having a degree in it. She screws up things that are just common sense.
Her own party hates her and I won’t be surprised if they try to run someone against her in the next election. Maybe you mistake the media coverage she gets for something it isn’t. Of course Fox is going to pillory her, but the rest of the coverage of her idiocy is to get people to toss her out. Of course the media made the same mistake with Trump, so I’m sure the Democrats will have this blow up in their face again.
Cortez is still an idiot though.
There's no point in crippling the United States' economy when India and Asia are going to make CC happen anyway (seriously, go read BP's energy outlook 2018 for different scenarios of various levels of CO2 reduction). If going from 50% renewable to 100% renewable costs an extra $10 trillion (made that number up), maybe that money is better spent getting other parts of the world off of coal.
I don't want to hate on the GND but this is really poorly thought out, and reads like it was written by people that have no serious understanding of the actual issues.
Actually, converting military bases to renewable energy is a great way to build resiliency from attack
No, it doesn't. I heard such from an Army general.
The Army wants diesel generators for power because those they can put in an underground bunker to protect from attack. They might use solar panels on some tents or something but that's a last ditch, all else lost, kind of power. The US Navy is working on making jet fuel from nuclear power, using seawater as the raw material. Sounds like they've been quite successful too. Get that working on a ship at sea and it can work along any coast, or river bank, as well. Nuclear power is nice too because we've proven it can work without being out in the open, in fact they work quite well under several hundred feet of water and sealed inside a steel armored vessel.
The military might be playing around a bit with solar power but wind power is not even on the table. They tried wind power and they found the spinning blades messed with the radar they need to track threats. Solar power needs to be out in the open and takes a lot of man power to protect and maintain for the little energy they produce. This brings me back to this...
and this reduces the actual operating cost of the military at the same time.
Nope. Solar panels took so much man power that existing projects were abandoned. Oh, and the panels reflected sunlight into the eyes of aircraft pilots, can't have that near any base.
While in the Army I recall the trucks on base ran some mix of petro-diesel and bio-diesel. That's fine when there is a supply line but no base is going to be growing their own soybeans to make that fuel.
There are a number of mil programs in action doing just this. Just accelerate it.
With the exception of the Navy program to make jet fuel from nuclear power these programs were imposed on the DoD from above. The military isn't all that interested in bio-diesel or windmills. They might have some interest in small scale solar but that's again a last ditch kind of power for being small and quiet for long periods, not to power a base.
The military is quite vocal on what they want but few seem to listen. They want nuclear powered ships, such as icebreakers and cruisers, but Congress won't fund them. They want nuclear power on bases, but again Congress is not listening. What Congress wants is, apparently, a navy that is powered by sails and an army on horseback.
The US Navy used to have nuclear powered cruisers before but they were retired in the 1990s. This is not something new the Navy is asking for, just restoring capability that was lost decades ago. Nuclear powered icebreakers aren't a new idea either, the Russians have been building them since 1975.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
In contrast to most other fields of study, economics stands out, for producing legions of educated idiots, who, on average, have less understanding of economics than those with no formal training. The number of actual economists who truly grasp how economies in reality, vs. theory, actually work, is so small that they should be on the endangered species list.
For most of the 20th century a degree in economics signified literally nothing more than ideological indoctrination in dogma, that had no social scientific basis whatsoever, which proved wonderfully immune to any actual empirical research, which understood itself completely a-historically and which proffered self-justifying theories with a level of theoretical sophistication appropriate to third graders. As a field of study, economics, as taught in most universities in the west throughout most of the 20th century was simply put the absolute least critical field of study in existence, critical thought being somewhat incompatible with mere regurgitation of ideological dogma and the mental mastubatory mantras of free markets.
Your average economist has zero understanding of how money is created. Zero understanding of how banks work. Zero understanding of the relationship of credit and debt. No comprehension whatsoever of the most basic elements of anything which could be considered an economy. As the most intellectually bankrupt field of study in existence, economics, truly does stand out.
Most economists believe everything is a market. They believe Markets are nature(al). They believe Markets naturally tend towards perfect competition, in which information and knowledge is equally present for all actors, at all times, and thus natural markets are by their nature, perfect. They believe any failure of markets is due to intervention, usually attributed to government regulation. They believe Markets always seek equilibrium and that equilibrium is qua definition just distribution. You might be inclined to call economics a bad religion, but Bad Religion, at least produced some really good music, in contrast to economists, who missed every significant ongoing in the actual economy, until after the fact, and then misdiagnosed what had happened.
If you think that Alexandria Occassio-Cortez doesn't understand economics and that she's a dingbat, chances are your understanding of economics is based on mere regurgitation of ideological dogma, void of any critical thought. But hey, don't take this as a personal attack, the real goal of most economists has been to indoctrinate the entire population with their braindead propaganda. As with any generalization, there are exceptions, and perhaps your critique of her understanding of economics is founded in something, if that's the case please excuse my little rant here, but go ahead and explicate exactly what her economics misunderstanding supposedly is.
As a non-economist I would eat most economists for breakfast if it wasn't for the bad digestion which follows.
Look, I can totally understand your scepticism, and will freely admit that at first glance her proposition seems rather pie-in-the-sky. Now people can and do have totally different understandings of what politics is about or about the best way to go about achieving something.
I honestly do not care about the supposed time-frame that is being talked about. Rather the questions for me are a) is this the right direction b) is it a direction people could rally behind c) is it significant enough for politicians to use as a policy platform around which to elect candidates. Our current representatives will not do anything of significance, but that does not mean that we could not elect politicians that someday will.
Right now the biggest problem is we the people. We, as a society, are incapable of articulating anything that we commonly want. So first up there needs to be a building of the "we": what speaks to the values that most Americans would like to hold, not what we already do hold, but that we could aspire to. The only majority that counts in a democracy is a majority that is built around consensus, but for their to be a majority one must first build such a consensus, one does this proposing ideas around which people can rally.
Trump is attempting to do this with the wall right now, luckily he cannot possibly achieve this because the vast majority of Americans do not aspire to being chickenshits who are terrified of immigrants. But a lot of people could aspire to to a vision of Americas future where instead of being impotent and doomed we could see ourselves as agents of positive change, effecting a future which we want to have- a future where we adequately address climate change fears, where we make profound investments in our own infrastructure and technologically lead the world in addressing a whole host of issues, while pursuing a goal that we agree is a good goal.
If a "we" can be constituted around positive goals and politicians are then elected who represent that "we", damn near anything is possible, not necessarily in 10 years but over the course of a generation profound changes can and do happen. Right now "we" want to argue, fight, bicker and complain, right now "we" can't agree as to whether or not the sky is blue, when it is. This has been true for a friggin generation, at least since Bill Clinton became president.
One of the primary reasons our political system is so completely broken is that our politicians have fundamentally failed to do their most basic job which is to build consensi around issues about which people care and to do so in such a fashion that people feel empowered to participate/be part of. Most people feel impotent to do much of anything about much of anything, most people feel that politics is nothing more than a spectator sport or really bad entertainment. In the absence of things, which we can aspire to achieve, around which we can build consensi, we devolve into fearmongering, othering and cowardice-we become our own worst enemies.
I understand scepticism, I get it, it's healthy in certain doses, but the question really is not whether this New Green Deal is something that can be passed as a bill, which it is not, currently by this house and this senate with this president, but rather is it a direction we could and more importantly should be headed in? Do you actually oppose what is contained in the New Green Deal?, do you feel that these lofty goals are going in the wrong direction? Or simply that such is not simply possible right now?
Everyone has a right to be completely jaded right now in regards to our politics, completely justified, in fact optimism at this point in time would appear to be completely delusional, but can you really say no to a prospect where we might be able to actually say yes to the goals of our politicians and feel part of some positive grand ambition which we can aspire to achieve? And just remember this the scale of problems we are confronting require nothing less than a g