Basically, op-ed writer Jedediah Britton-Purdy, professor of law at Columbia and is the author, most recently, of “After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene” exposes that ‘climate change’ is all about politics, and the Green New Deal is the ultimate extension
The Green New Deal Is What Realistic Environmental Policy Looks Like
Everyone is lining up to endorse the Green New Deal — or to mock it. Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand have all endorsed the resolution sponsored by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts.
Conservative critics predictably call it “a shocking document†and “a call for enviro-socialism in America,†but liberal condescension has cut deeper. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, essentially dismissed it as branding, saying, “The green dream, or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it, right?†Others have criticized it for leaving out any mention of a carbon tax, a cornerstone of mainstream climate-policy proposals, while embracing a left-populist agenda that includes universal health care, stronger labor rights and a jobs guarantee.
What do these goals have to do with stabilizing atmospheric carbon levels before climate change makes large parts of the world uninhabitable? What has taken liberal critics aback is that the Green New Deal strays so far from the traditional environmental emphasis on controlling pollution, which the carbon tax aims to do, and tries to solve the problems of economic inequality, poverty and even corporate concentration (there’s an antimonopoly clause).
But this everything-and-the-carbon-sink strategy is actually a feature of the approach, not a bug, and not only for reasons of ideological branding. In the 21st century, environmental policy is economic policy. Keeping the two separate isn’t a feat of intellectual discipline. It’s an anachronism.
Every once in a while, a Warmist will let the cat out of the bag as to what they really want to do. The Green New Deal itself was a big reveal as to what they really want, and Britton-Purdy continues that. Basically, it involves everything. Implementing controls and changes in terms of fossil fuels and EVERYTHING that is touched by it (which is a goodly chunk of our lives), refitting buildings, retooling transportation (meaning you may not have your own private vehicle), the entire jobs policy of Government, farming, ranching, and energy, among others, are linked to the economy, which, in Warmist World, is controlled by the Central Government.
The Green New Deal isn’t the only approach, of course, but its broad ambitions mark out the ground where future climate fights will happen. Because reshaping our environmental impact means reworking our economy, there will inevitably be competing visions about who deserves to benefit and what kind of economy we should build. Centrist proposals will concentrate on promoting investment in new technologies, with profits going, pharma-style, to private researchers and manufacturers.
And this means Government dictating what it looks like. Funny how it always comes down to institution greater and greater government power.
