Okay, I’m managing to stifle my non-stop laughter at the “Green New Deal,” sobered partly by the realization that our coveted Green Weenie Award is not big enough to cover the serial madness that will be the Green New Deal once the specifics of it start to take shape in actual legislative proposals. Right now it is at the vague generalization stage.
Except that environmentalists are making clear what they don’t want, and it turns out to be just about anything that might actually work as scale to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. From Grist:
Congress is currently preoccupied with a fight over Trump’s plan for a $5.7 billion border wall, but hundreds of environmental organizations are laser-focused on defining the Green New Deal. And they think it’s time Capitol Hill got on board with their plan.
On Thursday, 600-plus groups including 350.org, Greenpeace, and the Sunrise Movement sent members of the U.S. House a letter with a list of carbon-cutting steps. . .
Wait—stop the tape! Did you say “600-plus [environmental] groups”? (Actually the letter lists 626 in all.) I didn’t even know there were that many environmental groups. Isn’t that a hugely wasteful and duplicative use of scarce resources? (Swap out “recycled” for “duplicative” and problem solved—ed.)
But that’s not the most amazing part. This is, from the actual letter itself:
We will vigorously oppose any legislation that: (1) rolls back existing environmental, health, and other protections, (2) protects fossil fuel and other dirty energy polluters from liability, or (3) promotes corporate schemes that place profits over community burdens and benefits, including market-based mechanisms and technology options such as carbon and emissions trading and offsets, carbon capture and storage, nuclear power, waste-to-energy and biomass energy.
As Roger Pielke Jr. comments, this is like wanting action on disease but opposing vaccines.
In fact, this and other features of the letter went too far for the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, which did not sign it. So make that 628 environmental groups, if you’re keeping count.
By the way, if you want to get a good laugh, read the whole letter. It’s bonkers. And savor the complete list of the 626 environmental groups at the end. They’d fit in well at the Mos Eisley cantina.
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