{"id":68503,"date":"2019-02-26T06:42:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-26T06:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/organicconsumers.org\/?p=68503"},"modified":"2019-02-26T06:42:00","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T06:42:00","slug":"climate-change-scary-not-green-new-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/organicconsumers.org\/climate-change-scary-not-green-new-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Change is Scary – Not the Green New Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s very clear that conservatives have one plan for dealing with the popularity of the Green New Deal: scaring the hell out of people<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Myron Ebell of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, the man who led the drive to pull America out of the Paris climate accords, said the other day that the Green New Deal was a \u201cback-to-the-dark-ages manifesto.\u201d That\u2019s language worth thinking about, coming from perhaps the Right\u2019s most influential spokesman on climate change.<\/p>\n

Ebell\u2019s complaint (and that of the rest of the Right) is that the set of proposals to address climate change and economic inequality put forth last week by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey would do too much, and cost too much. Indeed, he describes the Green New Deal this way: \u201cIt calls for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in 10 years, \u2018upgrading all existing buildings\u2019, and replacing our vehicle fleet with electric cars and more mass transit. And turning our energy economy upside down must be accomplished while ending historic income inequities and oppression of disadvantaged groups.\u201d All of which sounds good not just to me, but to most people: Polling for the Green New Deal is through the roof<\/a>, especially among young people<\/a> so ably organized by the Sunrise Movement.<\/p>\n

But even if ending historic oppression doesn\u2019t catch your fancy, it\u2019s not a return to the Dark Ages.<\/p>\n

A return to the Dark Ages is what happened in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit: Survivors dying in the convention center of a modern American city, locals organizing a makeshift \u201cnavy\u201d to try to pluck people from rooftops after levees collapsed.<\/p>\n

A return to the Dark Ages is what happened in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, when most of the island was literally dark for months as workers struggled to rebuild power lines.<\/p>\n

A return to the Dark Ages is what happened in California last fall, when old people burned to death in their cars while stuck in traffic jams trying to flee deadly wildfires.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s just the United States. Around the world now we\u2019re seeing climate change help ignite diabolical civil war in places like Syria, where the fiercest drought in the history of what we used to call the Fertile Crescent has driven millions of farmers off their land. We\u2019re watching the rapid spread of diseases such as zika via the wings of insects whose range expands as climate warms. Studies have demonstrated that, after years of decline, starvation and child labor are now on the rise as the result of climate stress.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what a modern Dark Ages looks like.<\/p>\n

What the future looks like is electric cars, to use one of Ebell\u2019s examples. They outperform internal combustion vehicles by every metric: They move more nimbly, they cost less to own and operate, they break down less often because there are fewer moving parts.<\/p>\n

What the future looks like is mass transit. Visit Europe and ride on the trains for a few days and then explain how much more modern it is to sit in traffic jams in American exurbia.<\/p>\n

What the future looks like is \u201cupgrading all existing buildings,\u201d because it\u2019s now easy to do. Example after example shows that technology like, say, air-source heat pumps don\u2019t just cut carbon, they cut heating bills, making them affordable from day one.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re against these things because\u2014why again?<\/p>\n

That better future doesn\u2019t come for free\u2014but it costs pennies on the dollar compared to the future Ebell and his Beltway ilk apparently accept, the one where you have to start moving all the residents of Miami, the one where fire season never stops, the one where growing wheat becomes a chancy proposition. And if you think these political conservatives prefer a less costly plan, think again: When Barack Obama proposed the mighty-modest Clean Power Plan to reduce the use of coal-fired power plants, Ebell called it \u201cillegal.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Ebell and his colleagues prefer is\u2014nothing. It\u2019s sticking with coal and gas and oil while the global temperature rises another degree and another and another. Forget the Dark Ages merely 1,500 years ago\u2014Ebell would set Earth back to the interglacial Eemian era, 130,000 years ago. Or maybe the Eocene-Paleocene Thermal Maximum, 55 million years ago.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very clear that conservatives have one plan for dealing with the popularity of the Green New Deal: scaring the hell out of people. And it\u2019s very clear that they have one big problem: The hell they\u2019re building through inaction is a lot scarier than \u201cupgrading all existing buildings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Posted with permission by Common Dreams<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Myron Ebell of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, the man who led the drive to pull America out of the Paris climate accords, said the other day that the Green New Deal was a \u201cback-to-the-dark-ages manifesto.\u201d That\u2019s language worth thinking about, coming from perhaps the Right\u2019s most influential spokesman on climate change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":68504,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[3,9],"organicbytes":[],"countries":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nClimate Change is Scary - Not the Green New Deal - Organic Consumers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Myron Ebell of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, the man who led the drive to pull America out of the Paris climate accords, said the other day that the Green New Deal was a \u201cback-to-the-dark-ages manifesto.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/organicconsumers.org\/climate-change-scary-not-green-new-deal\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Climate Change is Scary - 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