House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) disagrees with the overwhelming majorities of both parties who support increased investment in clean energy.

On the same day Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) introduced a Green New Deal resolution to address the climate crisis and create millions of high wage jobs, McCarthy took to Twitter to say, “‘The green dream’ is actually a nightmare.”

“Green dream” is a term House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) used to refer to the Green New Deal in a Politico interview Wednesday.


McCarthy’s tweet includes videos of Pelosi and President Barack Obama explaining that investing in clean energy is critical for a variety of reasons, including maintaining U.S. technological preeminence, national security, and boosting the economy.

These are the same reasons that increased federal support for clean energy has such broad support across the political spectrum.

McCarthy’s video then proceeds to rehash the misguided and misleading GOP attack on the Department of Energy’s loan program, which funded a great many technological winners — like Elon Musk’s Tesla — and a couple of unsuccessful companies, most famously the solar energy company Solyndra.

What’s bizarre about this is that the loan program was wildly successful, earning a $5 billion profit. The many winners paid taxpayers back vastly more money than was lost by the few unsuccessful companies.

McCarthy’s attack also fails to mention that the DOE loan program was actually started by President George W. Bush and his administration pushed the Solyndra loan for two years.


Objectively, the DOE’s investment in renewables under Obama (and other presidents) must be considered a tremendous success. After all, the cost of such core technologies like solar, wind, and batteries have dropped sharply in the past decade while the use of clean energy has soared.

Finally, asked whether or not they would support a Green New Deal to “generate 100 percent of the nation’s electricity from clean, renewable sources within the next 10 years,” Republicans across the political spectrum said “yes.”

Yale-GMU climate change poll shows 64 percent of Republicans support to 100% renewable electricity over 10 years.

So the Green New Deal is only a nightmare to the extreme conservative Republicans in Congress who are in the pocket of fossil fuel companies and who refuse to support what their constituents — and all Americans — support so strongly.