For many years, the Democratic Party has talked about fighting climate change. Sure, there was the Clean Power Plan, but there was nothing on a grand scale...at least not until last week when Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) released the Green New Deal (GND), as well as the FAQ that has since been archived on the Internet before Ocasio-Cortez took it down from her website. For Ocasio-Cortez, addressing climate change is a major issue. She said that the world will end in twelve years, although the UN report from which she pulled that assertion stated that we have twelve years to limit its effects and keep it in check, not that twelve years was when the world was going to end. She feels so strongly about it that she called climate change "our World War II."
I understand that what was released was a non-binding resolution, as opposed to a formal piece of legislation. At the same time, the GND struck me as peculiar. Yes, there were ideas to address environmental issues. However, there were also elements seemingly having nothing to do with climate change or the environment, including "safe and adequate housing," racial justice, creating "millions of good, high-wage jobs," and an economic environment free of monopolies. NPR stated that the GND "combines big climate change-related ideas with a wish list of progressive economic proposals." The GND has many vague, far-reaching goals, but is short on details of how to accomplish its goals. In spite of this major shortcoming, we're going to make do here and do the best to analyze the feasibility of some of the GND's goals that are directly related to climate change and the environment.
Shift 100 percent of national power generation to renewable resources: Part of what makes this untenable is that the GND has this shift taking place by 2030. As of 2017, 11 percent of U.S. energy consumption and 17 percent (7 percent of which is hydroelectric) of electricity generation came from renewables (EIA), which is a far cry from 100 percent. The Union of Concerned Scientists are hopeful that we can reach 80 percent by 2050. A study from the National Academy of Sciences predicts that we cannot reach 100 percent renewable energy until 2059 (Clack et al., 2017).
Removing nuclear power from the equation: The GND is not simply about shifting away from fossil fuels. As the GND's FAQ section stated, the GND will not consider nuclear power as an option. If your goal is to have zero-carbon energy, removing nuclear power is unwise. Why? For one, nuclear power currently accounts for 20 percent of U.S. energy (EIA). Two, as I brought up before, nuclear power is the only zero-carbon energy source with high enough capacity and scale to meet demand for energy. Any realistic plan of zeroing out carbon requires more nuclear power, as a 2018 study from MIT argues. If Ocasio-Cortez truly viewed climate change as an emergency or as catastrophic, she would not want to remove nuclear power from the energy portfolio.
Eliminate air travel with high-speed rail. The resolution calls for overhauling the transportation system, which includes high-speed rail. The GND's FAQ calls for removing air travel, even though it admits that it might not be possible in ten years. Let's forget about Hawaii and Alaska or the need for international air travel for a second. A high-speed rail system sounds fine in theory. At least in Europe and East Asia, they have high-speed rail systems that compete with airplanes. Why can't the United States do that? After all, China is larger than the United States, although China racked up massive debt to pay for the high-speed rail system, not to mention China's population density per square mile is over four times that of the United States (United Nations).
The thing with comparative politics is that what might work in one country may or may not work in another country. Replacing air travel with high-speed rail would mean ensuring that major cities are connected. Let's take a look at an example of a Left-leaning state that has tried to implement high-speed rail: California. California has been trying to build a high-speed rail route from Los Angeles to San Francisco since 2008. As of last year, it could end up costing anywhere between $77.3B and $98.1B. It is a project of a decade's worth of delays and rising costs (L.A. Times), and I say that because the initial cost was supposed to be $33B. Even better is that the Governor of California abandoned the project today, thereby illustrating how difficult it is to implement a high-speed rail system, regardless if it is in a state that is strongly supportive of the idea.
What's even more worrisome is that assuming medium ridership, it would take 70 years to offset the greenhouse gas emissions because high-speed rail is an energy-intensive undertaking (Chester and Horvath, 2010). One study found that for high-speed rail to work, it needs average of 10 million one-way trips, and needs to divert the ridership mostly from airplanes (Westin and Kågeson, 2012).
I wouldn't expect the Green New Deal to replace all 5,000-plus of the U.S.' public airports. At the same time, it is not unreasonable to assume that such an endeavor would cost trillions. I think high-speed trains have the potential to replace airplanes in shorter trips, and I think it makes more sense to try high-speed rail in areas with higher population density (e.g., the Northeast). But trying to develop a nationwide high-speed rail system is not realistic or sensical.
Upgrade buildings to be energy-efficient. Nearly half of commercial buildings in terms of floorspace were built prior to 1980 (EIA). According to the latest American Housing Survey from HUD, the median year in which a residential home was built is in 1977. I point the age of the housing out to show that the prevalence of older buildings will either make it more challenging to upgrade the buildings or would mean knocking down old buildings and replacing new ones. It is difficult to comment without further details, but it is not hard to imagine an astronomical price tag. Plus, if the GND were successful, Ocasio-Cortez would still have to contend with the reality that land-use and zoning regulations are done at the local level.
A word about cost. Yes, this was a resolution, but the lack of details on the authors' part is a letdown. Even so, let's try to estimate costs of some of the initiatives. When running for President in 2016, Green Party candidate Jill Stein had a much less ambitious Green Deal, and she estimated that her plan would cost $700B to $1T a year. This figure could be used as a low-bound estimate, but we know that it would be an unrealistic cost expectation given what the GND has covered.
Engineers from Stanford calculated that meeting power demand through all renewable energy would have capital costs of $14.6T (Jacobson et al., 2015), although another study figures it would be more expensive (Clack et al., 2016). If we take the costs from the study that is more flattering for the GND and spread them out over ten years, that would amount to $1.46T a year. It would be difficult to determine the cost of high-speed rail because, as previously discussed, it costs significantly more than initial cost projections.
If we were to add in the GND programs having nothing to do with reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the cost of the GND would be even higher. Investment management firm Bridgewater estimates that a universal basic income would cost $3.8T a year. The Mercatus Center found that a national single-payer healthcare system would cost $3.26T a year, which is not far off from the Urban Institute's estimation of $3.T. If we use Bernie Sanders' College for All Act as a proxy for the cost of free college tuition, then it would cost $47B a year. Providing affordable housing is tricky to measure. The Left-Leaning Center for American Progress estimated that "Homes for All" would cost $20B a year, but that was only for construction costs.
Just using the cost estimates provided above that are most favorable to the proponents of the GND, the GND would cost no less than $8.53T a year. This does not even factor in the cost of the other initiatives, including sustainable farming, making buildings energy-efficient, and replacing combustible-engine vehicles with environmentally-friendly ones. Given what we have already, the annual cost for such the GND would be easily over $10T annually, and could feasibly reach the equivalent amount of the U.S.' GDP. Compare this to the cost of the original New Deal of $653B [in 2009 dollars] (or $777B in current dollars) that took place over six years, and the New Deal pales in comparison to the GND. And while we're on the topic of the New Deal, when FDR passed the New Deal, the debt-to-GDP ratio was only 40 percent. As of 2018, the debt-to-GDP ratio was at 104 percent, and it is only projected to get higher.
A word about burden of proof. If the United States government was even beginning to consider spending this much money, it better do what is intended in terms of bringing the global temperature. It was not something that the Clean Power Plan could do since it was only projected to reduce the global temperature by 0.2ºC. A similar issue with the Paris Agreement. What would happen if Ocasio-Cortez got her wish, and the United States ceased emitting greenhouse gases? How much would it reduce the global temperature? The Heritage Foundation estimates it at 0.13ºC, which would be consistent with what other estimates show for comparable GHG reductions. Another study estimated that the world would need to reduce oil consumption by a third, natural gas reserves by half, and coal reserves by 80 percent to reach the 2ºC benchmark (McGlade and Eckins, 2015). The burden of proof is on the proponents' side. Since past climate change initiatives could not adequately reduce the global temperature (even if implemented perfectly), it will be more difficult for Ocasio-Cortez to illustrate how implementation of her plan would succeed in reducing the global temperature, even if that is in conjunction with other countries' plans. We cannot simply say "doing something is better than nothing" because that is how we got Obamacare and the damage it caused the U.S. healthcare system.
Postscript. Instead of detail, the GND provides false hope and blind optimism. The truth is that the GND is no plan at all because it is not a remotely actionable blueprint. Additionally, the fact that it adds provisions having nothing to do with reducing greenhouse gas emissions further minimizes the seriousness of the resolution. If the Democrats could take the House, the Senate, and the White House in 2020, there would still be the reality that many politicians come from states that are dependent on oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear power. The probability that this would become a resolution, much less actual legislation, is low. Senator majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is going to bring the GND to a Senate vote in the near future, so we'll get to see shortly just how unlikely it is.
If it is not going to pass, why talk about it? Because it shows how the political Left is shifting in this country. The fact that there are already 60 Democratic co-sponsors in the House shows just how much this shift is taking place. Much like I have been perturbed by the Republican's populist shift on such topics as trade or immigration since Trump was elected, I don't like how the Democrats are shifting further to the Left in a populist bent because it will lead to further polarization in this country.
You don't have to lean hard to the Left to care about the environment. I have called for a modest carbon tax to fund research on renewable energy as a solution. If the GND were simply about lowering greenhouse gas emissions, that would be one thing. I would happily have a conversation about that policy goal. But that is not what the GND is. The GND simultaneously is pie-in-the-sky utopianism while playing the fear card by saying "we need to work on this fast or the world is going to end." Yea for false dilemmas! The GND is less about saving the environment and acts as a pretext for shoving progressivism down the throats of the American people. It is a guise for an unprecedented amount of government intervention in the lives of Americans, as is illustrated by the number and types of initiatives listed in the GND, not to mention the amount of government intervention that would be required to make the GND work. Based on the cost and implications of the GND, the GND is the very sort of resolution that embodies the aphorism of "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."
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