One of the new Far Left Democratic Party’s proposals that has been rapidly gaining establishment media support (beside getting rid of President Trump by any means necessary) is the so-called “Green New Deal” proposed by Democratic Socialist Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) and her fellow travelers.

Here are the highlights according to our friend Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute:

First, keep it in the ground by halting all fossil fuel leasing on federal lands and offshore areas; halting all permitting of fossil-fuel power plants, pipelines, and other infrastructure projects; banning fossil-fuel exports; and ending “massive, irrational subsidies” for fossil fuels and nuclear energy, waste incineration, and biomass energy.

Second, “the United States must shift to 100% renewable power by 2035 or earlier.” Large-scale hydro-electric power, biomass, and waste-to-energy do not qualify.

Third, public transport using renewable power only must be vastly expanded; sales of vehicles powered by gas and diesel engines must be banned as quickly as possible; and all such vehicles must be off the roads by 2040 at the latest. Of course, “federal credits for electric vehicles must be expanded.”

Fourth, Congress should “harness the full power of the Clean Air Act.” I’m not sure what more can be done to turn the economy upside down, but I may be missing something.

Fifth, this must be a “just transition.” This will require “support for communities who (sic) have historically been harmed first and most by the dirty energy economy,” as well as “retrofitting millions of buildings to conserve energy” and “actively restoring natural ecosystems.”

Sixth, the rights of indigenous peoples must be fully protected, although it’s not clear whether Native Americans will be allowed to develop coal, oil, and natural gas resources on their lands. My guess is they’ll be able to apply for compensation.

Finally, the Green New Deal must not protect fossil fuel producers from legal liability and cannot include “market-based mechanisms and technology options such as carbon and emissions trading and offsets, [or] carbon capture and storage.”

As Ebell correctly observes, this Green New Deal should be called the Back to the Dark Ages Manifesto.

And as such one would normally conclude that no responsible environmental organization or mainstream Democratic Party politician would embrace it, but alas these are not normal times.



The summary above was embraced by six-hundred twenty-six organizations, some of them major environmental groups, that formed a coalition behind a letter sent to Members of the House of Representatives on January 10th detailing their demands for what must and must not be included in a Green New Deal.

Many conservative observers have focused on the Green New Deal’s massive estimated cost, such as the eye-popping PJ Media analysis based on a new report from Power the Future, the Green New Deal proposed by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez would cost more than 8,000 times as much as President Donald Trump's border wall.

The Green New Deal will cost approximately $49.109 trillion in the first ten years, enough to fund Trump's border wall 8,616 times over. The president is requesting $5.7 billion for the wall.

PJ Media calculated the cost of the Green New Deal by integrating each of the cost aspects involved in a Power the Future analysis and calculating their cost for the U.S. over about ten years.

The staggering cost is certainly one reason to oppose the Green New Deal, but there is also the staggering social dislocation that would be created by such a society-wide experiment in social engineering.

You can’t run a steel mill with a windmill, nor can you guarantee that the projected Green New Deal jobs would be created where the old fossil fuel-dependent jobs were located.

Think about it: If fossil fuels are outlawed, then the vast regions of the Appalachian coal belt, the oil fields of Texas and Louisiana, the oil fields of North Dakota and the western coal fields would lose their economic underpinnings.

The heavy industry-dependent areas of the Midwest and what’s left in the Rust Belt that stretches from the East Coast around the Great Lakes to Minnesota would likewise be devastated.

The only way such a massive project as the Green New Deal could be accomplished would be through the forced relocation of millions of workers and their families in a massive societal restructuring akin to the forced collectivization of Russian agriculture after the Soviet Revolution of 1917 or Chairman Mao’s Great Leap Forward economic restructuring of Communist China.

Both of those society-wide socialist restructurings were economic, cultural and humanitarian disasters that killed millions in the name of creating a more equitable society and were eventually abandoned when they didn’t work and left millions of their intended beneficiaries starving and without employment.

That the Green New Deal would be embraced by naïve millennials should surprise no one, but that it is getting traction with mainstream Democratic Party leaders and established environmental groups shows just how quickly and shockingly far Leftward the Democratic Party has moved in the Age of Trump. Serious people can and should debate and strive to achieve a healthy environment for all Americans. However, embracing the errors of the Communist Russia and China in the name of a Green New Deal is not serious because the coercive measures necessary to make it work will never be accepted by the vast majority of Americans.

The toll-free Capitol Switchboard is (1-866-220-0044), we urge CHQ readers and friends to call their Representative and Senators – especially Democrats – to tell them to say NO to the Green New Deal and its devastating economic consequences.