Thursday, February 7, 2019

There's nothing cute about AOC's schtick anymore; she's a monster; she's the enemy

The "details" - still short on the matters of implementation and cost - of the Greet New Deal are now available:

Rebuild every single building in the U.S.

“Upgrade or replace every building in US for state-of-the-art energy efficiency.”
Will end all traditional forms of energy in the next ten years.
The Green New Deal is “a 10-year plan to mobilize every aspect of American society at a scale not seen since World War 2 to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.”
Plans to ban nuclear energy within 10 years if possible.
“It’s unclear if we will be able to decommission every nuclear plant within 10 years, but the plan is to transition off of nuclear and all fossil fuels as soon as possible.”
Build trains across oceans and end all air travel!
“Build out highspeed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary”.
Don’t invest in new technology of Carbon Capture and Storage, just plant trees instead!
“We believe the right way to capture carbon is to plant trees and restore our natural ecosystems. CCUS technology to date has not proven effective.”
Mandates all new jobs be unionized.
“Ensure that all GND jobs are union jobs that pay prevailing wages and hire local.”
May include a carbon tax.
“We’re not ruling a carbon tax out, but a carbon tax would be a tiny part of a Green New Deal.”
May include cap and trade.
“…Cap and trade may be a tiny part of the larger Green New Deal plan.”
How much will it cost?
No estimate of the total cost of implementing the Green New deal is offered by Ocasio-Cortez.
However, as Ocasio-Cortez admits, “even if every billionaire and company came together and were willing to pour all the resources at their disposal into this investment, the aggregate value of the investments they could make would not be sufficient.”
She does provide one estimate that the cost to “repair and upgrade infrastructure U.S. infrastructure” alone will cost “$4.6 trillion at minimum.”
How will it be paid for? Don’t worry about that.
Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t provide any insight into how the trillions of dollars in spending will be paid for other than claiming, “The Federal Reserve can extend credit to power these projects and investments and new public banks can be created to extend credit”.
Bus as Ocasio-Cortez says, “the question isn’t how will we pay for it, but what will we do with our new shared prosperity”.

As I say, she's a monster, but she's not a particularly smart one. That last line makes that clear. Also, I doubt that an architect's kid from Westchester County  has the resolve to do what's necessary to implement this. I just don't think she's quite got the ruthlessness of a Stalin, Mao, Castro or Pol Pot, and given the resistance she's going to encounter, starting this afternoon, nothing short of that is going to get her plan over the finish line.

2 comments:

  1. Maybe she should include a proposal for Unicorn farms in the green new deal too?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Full of passionate vacuity--even worse than intensity.

    ReplyDelete