But even if money were no object the total commitment required by the Green New Deal incurs the opportunity cost of not pursuing an alternative strategy based on cheaper energy and climate adaptation -- or even doing nothing. The Green New Deal for example rules out clean nuclear power. It can brook no rivals because solving Global Warming requires every resource we can muster. If we spend trillions on the GND we've no money left for anything else if it bombs.
Organisms in nature typically undertake multiple parallel strategems in order to survive. "The Red Queen hypothesis, also referred to as Red Queen's, Red Queen's race or the Red Queen effect, is an evolutionary hypothesis which proposes that organisms must constantly adapt, evolve, and proliferate not merely to gain reproductive advantage, but also simply to survive while pitted against ever-evolving opposing organisms in a constantly changing environment.
Nature attacks and defends on many fronts. But a giant ideological bureaucracy can do what Darwin can't: embark on a single strategy to the exclusion of all else. Nature hedges its bets but only socialism can bet the farm.When I was AOC's age, I was pretty certain about many things, but in the 25 or so years that have followed, I've been disabused of many notions. The World Wide Web was, in 1993, still in its infancy. Amazon, the company that has essentially taken over vast sector of retailing in this country, had not yet opened its portal, so to speak. The term "brick and mortar," to the extent it was a term, was not a pejorative. I was working for a large retail organization then and hardly anyone there could have envisioned what has come to pass since then.
Perhaps events will unfold as AOC envisions. But are you willing to sign up for her vision?
3 comments:
If AOC has visions, it is from too many funny cigarettes. The difference between intelligence and stupidity is that there is a limit to intelligence. AOC is the proof.
I am inclined to be a little bit harsher than my host on this proposal, as there comes a point where physics and chemistry get in the way of modern environmentalism. Making any metal requires fossil fuels, lithium is found in diffuse ores and is extremely difficult to extract, the sun only shines during the day, storing electricity requires a LOT of energy itself, etc..
I'm all for reasonable measures to encourage us to use fuels efficiently so we have a better chance when climate changes (not if, when), including a fossil fuels tax that would incentivize efficiency (balanced by a cut in income taxes), but what AOC is doing here is proposing to spend trillions without any real technical feasibility for success.
I will not only second the idea of "reasonable measures to encourage us to use fuels efficiently" but I will propose a HIGHLY effective means of doing it. That is, let us have a free market in energy where PRICE is the dominant consideration. I have long found and believed that anything which saves me money is probably also a good thing for the environment. I save money when I use fewer resources, and using fewer resources is good for the environment.
Now IF AOC and her fellow science deniers want to propose a new source of energy that is cheaper, more reliable and readily available than what we have, we will all happily buy it, and no subsidies, mandates or regulations will be required! if, by chance, it produces less CO2, most of us will not care, or should we. ANY money going to an attempt to "stop global warming" by altering our energy choices is stupid beyond belief. There is ZERO scientific evidence for a future man-made climate catastrophe, so why are Idiots like AOC acting as if there is?
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