Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ed Markey to unveil 'Green New Deal' bill

[Sparko]

Switching to electric cars is going to happen naturally, and as fast as they can bring the cost down and install charging stations across the country, AND come up with a reliable FAST charging system so you don't have to wait hours to recharge. There is no need to legislate it into being.

I think a good clean energy production method that hasn't been exploited well yet is wave power. Using turbines set in oceans to capture the power of waves and the tides. It takes up no land area either and could be set up along coastlines where there are no public beaches. And if they ever perfect fusion power, we won't need anything else. It is clean, and can produce all the energy we need.

All this stuff will happen as fast as they can perfect the technology and make it commercially viable. Trying to force it into being won't make it happen any faster. Perhaps instead of giving deadlines, they should give grants and prizes to the people and companies that can make these technologies economical and viable.

I don't have any problem with the Green New Deal having goals. I have problems with them trying to force innovation even at the expense of our economy to the point it is hurting people.

[Bill the Cat]

Dec 12: More than 80 percent of registered voters support the Green New Deal proposal being pushed by progressional Democratic lawmakers, a new poll found.
The survey conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication found that 92 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Republicans back the Green New Deal plan.

Feb 2: Overall, 43 percent of voters supported the measure and 38 percent opposed, with 10 percent neither supporting nor opposing and 9 percent responding that they were “unsure of their opinion.”


That's a pretty substantial drop from when it was just an idea to after the reveal.

[One Bad Pig]

star's obstinate refusal to accept incontestable facts here will come back to haunt him when he starts insisting on something in the future. He has wandered off deep into little jimmyL territory and refuses to get out.

Oh ye of little faith. I'm confident he'll cope just fine.

[Bill the Cat]

Switching to electric cars is going to happen naturally, and as fast as they can bring the cost down and install charging stations across the country, AND come up with a reliable FAST charging system so you don't have to wait hours to recharge. There is no need to legislate it into being. .

As long as there is a substantial interest in classic collectible cars, they will never do away with gasoline.

[Sparko]

As long as there is a substantial interest in classic collectible cars, they will never do away with gasoline.

Well considering about 80 or 90% of an electric car is made of plastic compounds which are mostly petroleum based, even switching to electric vehicles is not going to stop oil production. Petroleum is used in a lot of industries and for a lot of things besides gasoline. Gasoline is a small byproduct of petroleum so as long as petroleum is in use they will still be making gasoline too.

[guacamole]

Switching to electric cars is going to happen naturally, and as fast as they can bring the cost down and install charging stations across the country, AND come up with a reliable FAST charging system so you don't have to wait hours to recharge. There is no need to legislate it into being.

I think a good clean energy production method that hasn't been exploited well yet is wave power. Using turbines set in oceans to capture the power of waves and the tides. It takes up no land area either and could be set up along coastlines where there are no public beaches. And if they ever perfect fusion power, we won't need anything else. It is clean, and can produce all the energy we need.

All this stuff will happen as fast as they can perfect the technology and make it commercially viable. Trying to force it into being won't make it happen any faster. Perhaps instead of giving deadlines, they should give grants and prizes to the people and companies that can make these technologies economical and viable.

I don't have any problem with the Green New Deal having goals. I have problems with them trying to force innovation even at the expense of our economy to the point it is hurting people.

An interesting point here about cars. This is my first upper midwest winter in my Prius. That sucker slides around on the road like crazy. Most electric cars must be lighter than my Prius. There's a definite safety issue there, at least here in the upper midwest and northeast, where there are other concerns than just pollution or even fuel efficiency (the reason I bought the car). I know a lot of compact and subcompact gasoline engine cars do the same, but in moving down from a full size sedan to a compact, I feel like I've traded away a good portion of my safety. I don't know if I would get another hybrid or full electric compact or sub compact unless it's ability to drive in adverse conditions got better.

[Sparko]

Indeed you do seem to do that.

Do you need help understanding why the words "takeover" and "intervention" don't mean the same thing? And why someone might be fine with one and not the other?

When Starlight starts his smiley parade and mocking instead of posting endless charts, you know he has nothing of substance to refute the claims.

Starlight, in the video the context of her words, she was talking of the very same thing so "takeover" and "intervention" both refer to the government massively stepping in to control the private sector in order to accomplish the goals she proposes. How else do you see her eliminating air travel or building a nationwide rail way system, or outlawing combustion engines, or switching to entirely renewable energy sources in 10 years? It will require massive intervention and control by the government.

[Sparko]

Sounds great to me. I too would like to see where Dem Senators stand on the subject. It will usefully torpedo the 2020 chances of any centrist or right-leaning Democrats who aren't prepared to sign onto it.

The exact opposite, Starlight. Watch and see.

McConnell obviously cynically thinks it will be politically useful to do this. I think he's miscalculating in the extreme, and apparently not paying any attention whatsoever to the polling data. His base might cackle madly at him for trolling the libs. But he's underrating just how utterly popular action on climate change is among millennials. If he wants to make every single millennial turn out to vote democratic in 2020, then the single easiest way to do that would be to have Republican senators vote against action on climate change, and Democratic senators vote for it, and then trumpet that result. So his choice here pleases me.

Once again you make a great political thermometer. Whatever you believe is happening or going to happen, we just have to expect the opposite.

[oxmixmudd]

An interesting point here about cars. This is my first upper midwest winter in my Prius. That sucker slides around on the road like crazy. Most electric cars must be lighter than my Prius. There's a definite safety issue there, at least here in the upper midwest and northeast, where there are other concerns than just pollution or even fuel efficiency (the reason I bought the car). I know a lot of compact and subcompact gasoline engine cars do the same, but in moving down from a full size sedan to a compact, I feel like I've traded away a good portion of my safety. I don't know if I would get another hybrid or full electric compact or sub compact unless it's ability to drive in adverse conditions got better.

There are larger, safer hybrids, and more will soon be available. For not too much more, Toyota also offers the Camry (51/53) or RAV4(34/30), or even Highlander(30/28) might have been a better fit for your location - if you have the $$.

Jim

[guacamole]

There are larger, safer hybrids, and more will soon be available. For not too much more, Toyota also offers the Camry (51/53) or RAV4(34/30), or even Highlander(30/28) might have been a better fit for your location - if you have the $$.

Jim

I'll check those out. Thanks. The RAV4 would be a huge improvement for me.

[Mountain Man]

When Starlight starts his smiley parade and mocking instead of posting endless charts, you know he has nothing of substance to refute the claims.

For that matter, even when he posts his endless charts, there is rarely anything of substance in his commentary.

[Cow Poke]

The Green Red Deal

watermelon.jpg

Watermelons: green on the outside, red on the inside.

Leftist environmentalists hate that. And yet, they do little to eschew the label. Quite the contrary, they earn it in spades.

They have from the outset. Whether sheer coincidence or because the Devil has a sense of humor, Earth Day always marks Vladimir Lenin’s birthday. The first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, just happened to be the centennial of Lenin’s birth.

Given that interesting confluence of dates, it seems more than ironic that so many former communists, when the Cold War ended, ran for the woods. It was the ideal ideological refuge. Rocks and frogs cannot tell the commie “environmentalist” to go jump in a lake. They can’t tell the central planners to take a hike back to their air-conditioned offices in Manhattan or coffee shops in Berkeley. Thus, for socialists, here’s the perfect constituency to wield government power and manage people and property.

If Marx and Engels were alive today, they would be writing manifestos on ecological “social justice” at some silly university. Today, their disciples at People’s World urge left-wingers everywhere to “Get on board the… Climate Train.” The head of Communist Party USA hails modern ecological warriors as “climate justice activists” battling for a crusade of “green socialism.”

That brings us to, obviously, the latest manifestation of socialist ideology cloaked in green environmentalism: the so-called Green New Deal uncorked last week by its new champion in Congress, America’s “democratic socialist” star, Miss Socialist USA, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The entire spectacle was stunning to behold. And since the announcement at the end of last week, conservatives everywhere have teed off, taking their whacks at this ill-begotten creation.

Amid the many reports, one of the best distillations of this environmental swill was done by Americans for Tax Reform, which posted a PDF of Ocasio-Cortez’s talking points prior to the press conference for the February 7 morning launch. If you haven’t seen it, read it and weep. Actually, read it and laugh. It reads like something out of The Onion or The Babylon Bee......

[Bill the Cat]

Her answers to Anderson Cooper on "how are you going to pay for it" were epically stupid.

[Sparko]

An interesting point here about cars. This is my first upper midwest winter in my Prius. That sucker slides around on the road like crazy. Most electric cars must be lighter than my Prius. There's a definite safety issue there, at least here in the upper midwest and northeast, where there are other concerns than just pollution or even fuel efficiency (the reason I bought the car). I know a lot of compact and subcompact gasoline engine cars do the same, but in moving down from a full size sedan to a compact, I feel like I've traded away a good portion of my safety. I don't know if I would get another hybrid or full electric compact or sub compact unless it's ability to drive in adverse conditions got better.

I had a compact back in the 80s. One of those hatchback Dodge Chargers. It was front wheel drive but it too slid all over the place in winter, plus just sitting in it felt unsafe. Not enough metal around me. And today, most cars are more plastic than metal and I think it can only get more so as they try to lighten them up for energy/fuel efficiency.

[One Bad Pig]

An interesting point here about cars. This is my first upper midwest winter in my Prius. That sucker slides around on the road like crazy. Most electric cars must be lighter than my Prius. There's a definite safety issue there, at least here in the upper midwest and northeast, where there are other concerns than just pollution or even fuel efficiency (the reason I bought the car). I know a lot of compact and subcompact gasoline engine cars do the same, but in moving down from a full size sedan to a compact, I feel like I've traded away a good portion of my safety. I don't know if I would get another hybrid or full electric compact or sub compact unless it's ability to drive in adverse conditions got better.

My aunt had a Prius for a while in western Pennsylvania. Her main gripe was that, if it snowed more than 4 inches, she couldn't get out of her driveway.