TEDy: Severity meets immaturity

Ted Yarmoski, Opinion Editor|February 20, 2019

Yes, climate change is relevant and climate change is real. But don’t put your faith and trust in ideals. Be skeptical about the “Green New Deal.”

The plan proposing “World War II-scale” mobilization to reduce U.S. carbon emissions to zero within only ten years is a undeniably ridiculous goal, only gaining traction because newly elected Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is one of the sponsors. If her goal was to get people seriously working on the issue, she has failed miserably.

In this new deal, “all existing buildings” are to be upgraded for energy efficiency, every single American is to be guaranteed a job, everyone will be provided with health care and we must provide “universal access to healthy food” produced without pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. These ridiculous and unachievable expectations create one case where calling a Democrat a communist may actually be justified.

The first problem with a plan like this is how immature and unrealistic it sounds. A job, health care and nutritious food for all Americans while becoming 100% carbon-free? Really? Although I’m sure we all understand how impossible these goals are to even come close to achieving, don’t take it from me. Jesse Jenkins, a postdoctoral environmental fellow at Harvard, admits that even in 30 years, the carbon part of the plan alone would be “an enormous challenge and will require reductions in carbon emissions much faster than have been achieved historically.”

With these exaggerated goals, it would be difficult to get people onboard both nationally and globally. Anyone supporting this plan would obviously be labeled as ignorant by anyone with any sense at all. Political figures would not want to risk the support of their constituents in order to back this radical plan. Not to mention the misinformation spread to massive amounts of Americans due to the words of President Trump and his supporters claiming that climate change isn’t a problem, making it even more unlikely for voters to place any trust in the “Green New Deal.”

Globally, if we did all we could to achieve the outlined goals, other countries would see our debt growing by trillions of dollars, people being displaced from jobs due to the changes and many other negative effects of pushing for green communism. They would surely not want to follow suit.

Besides the fact that this is simply impossible, even if we fully mobilized every citizen to work night and day on these goals, we would just be falling behind other countries in many aspects. Countries such as China would surely surpass us in many regards as they push toward technological and economic progress without devoting massive amounts of resources to meeting green standards.

The “Green New Deal” as it stands is a blatantly poor and idealistic solution to a dire problem. When tackling global warming, we must set realistic goals that take reality into account.