Green Raw Deal

Four out of five people in a recent survey expressed support for the Green New Deal environmental/economic program  sponsored by U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and U.S. Senator Edward Markey (D-MA).  Numerous Democratic presidential candidates have also expressed some level of support for it.  Its goals are quite popular.

So why have the Republicans been able to turn it against the Democrats and use it as an issue to ensure a GOP election victory in 2020?

I'll give you a hint: Six-letter word for the program's sponsors, rhymes with "Cupid."

Not since Franklin Roosevelt's original New Deal had there been a more important program proposal in Congress than the Green New Deal, which seeks to encourage the creation of new middle-class jobs and switching to renewable energy while combating a pattern of climate change that has brought heavy snow to Arizona and may bring a severe windstorm to Pennsylvania and New Jersey.  Never has such an important program proposal been so thoroughly botched in its rollout that politicians who should be for it are fleeing it like vampires from a cross.   Ocasio-Cortez and Markey blew a great opportunity to move the debate over the environment and the economy forward and turned the very phrase "Green New Deal" into a punchline.

The trouble started when, as noted earlier on this blog, an early draft of the proposal suggested developing sufficient high-speed passenger rail service to the point where airplanes would no longer be necessary, a condition even high-speed rail advocates know is impossible in America even without having a state out in the middle of the Pacific.  Some Democratic presidential candidates backtracked on their support for the proposal and insisted that they had no problem with air travel - they loved it, in fact.  Left unmentioned was the fact that the airlines want more passenger trains to alleviate congestion in the skies. 

Then there was the provision about working with cattle ranchers to reduce methane emissions in the beef industry, caused by the overpopulation of livestock.  Although this is a serious concern, the emphasis on the cause of methane - the cows themselves - led to talk about "farting cows," which provided more laughs and snickers from the Republicans.  No one who wrote up the Green New Deal was apparently smart enough to deal with the methane issue in ranching in a way that wouldn't produce a surefire set-up for Dennis Miller.

The guts of the proposal place a good deal of planning and regulating in Washington, not in state local governments.  Rather than appearing to be a program designed to encourage an environmentally sustainable economy, the Green New Deal has been cast as a program designed to exert government control over the American people, which jibes nicely with some of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's stands as a Bernie Sanders-type socialist - but not so much with the less extreme liberal pragmatism Americans prefer.

Needless to say, critics have pounced on the Green New Deal, a proposal that has become so disrespected people keep transposing the words in its name ("New Green Deal").  Conservative columnist David Brooks of the New York Times has dismissed it as a centrally-planned economic system that has no chance of working, and Mark Shields - no conservative like his pal David Brooks - called it a classic case of Democratic overreaching.  Others have cited the cost involved in retrofitting existing buildings and infrastructure to make them more environmentally friendly by the Green New Deal's 2030 target date for implementation.  And Senate whip Dick Durbin, the second-most powerful senator of his party, dismissed it with this comment on MSNBC - "At this point, I would be - I can't tell ya, to be honest with you. I've read it, and I've reread it. And I asked Ed Markey what in the - what in the heck is this?"

Durbin is the Senate Democratic, not Republican, whip.

Representative Ocasio-Cortez carries a lot of blame for this foolishness.  She's a freshman congresswoman with no prior experience in government who went to Washington hoping to hit the ground running but ended up hitting the ground - because she forgot to learn the rules of the House first and failed to understand the need for building consensus. And Markey is no genius either, having developed a reputation when he was in the House to rush headlong into something without considering the risks.  In the 1984 elections, Markey encouraged Democrats to campaign on the nuclear freeze issue, a proposal to halt the manufacture and testing of nuclear weapons outright, but he also discouraged them to get into the specifics of the proposal.  "Don't bother with the complicated details," he told them.  "The issue is hot and it's ours."

And, it went nowhere.

I hate to bring up Martin O'Malley again - no, actually, I don't - but when he proposed a similar program in his 2016 presidential campaign, he was more measured and pragmatic about how to support an environmentally friendly economy. For one thing, he proposed that the U.S. economy go completely carbon-free by 2050, a more realistic target date than 2030 (though it still would have made serious inroads by 2030, when climate change is supposed to go full tilt boogie on us), and he presented climate change as a business opportunity rather than a problem only government can solve.  Had O'Malley run for President in 2020 - and dammit, I wish he had - he would have presented a Green New Deal that would have been more politically palatable and more pragmatic than the Green New Deal that's out there now.  He could have sold it.  But without O'Malley's restrained temperament and cool-headed thinking (the sort of qualities you want in a leader), we instead have jokes about banning airplanes and flatulent cows. And we have Mitch McConnell planning a vote on the Green New Deal in the Senate to make Democratic senators running for President choose between voting for it and alienating centrist voters or voting against it and angering their base.

Nice going, Alex and Eddie.

I give up. The planet is dying, we need a strong, workable plan to fight climate change, and Washington Democrats have just poisoned the well of the environmental policy for several election cycles to come with a proposal that was not entirely thought out.  I still support the idea of the Green New Deal - it's "aspirational," we are told - but I no longer have confidence in anyone involved in it.  And to think I believed in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and thought she knew what she was doing. And this is what happens?  And I put her on my beautiful-women picture blog?

Alex, I am as of now withdrawing my marriage proposal.