What is your opinion of the proposed Green New Deal from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?

I like some aspects.

I don't know about 'guaranteed jobs'. I'm probably ignorant to the details of that proposal. I have a couple of direct reports that are only working to collect a paycheck and are doing just enough to not get fired. It's like pulling teeth to get them motivated.

I don't know the details of this particular proposal, but I know it won't pass. The said, we seem ripe for some kind of new "New Deal" proposal in the next couple presidential cycles, and I''m fairly sure something along those lines will pass in that time frame.

Farting cows are a legit problem. In the US they are responsible for about 36% of human caused methane emissions. Fortunately, this can be greatly alleviated by mixing some seaweed into the cow's feed. People make fun of AOC only because they have done no research on the matter.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-eating-seaweed-can-help-cows-to-belch-less-methane

I think an bill supporting roads, buildings and other necessities would be more effective in Congress that Trump promised but is not doing anything about it.

"A huge criticism from the GOP is how much it may cost; it is estimated to cost as much as 13.4 trillion dollars by Forbes."

The US found a way to gather, what was it? 4 trillion? to spend on killing middle easterners. I'm sure they can find some money for saving the world.

but the sad thing is it could pass tomorrow and it still would be too late.

But they need that money for more donor tax cuts!

Or they could just pile even more on the debt. It only matters when Democrats are in power anyway.

It's true, the climate is going to change. There's no stopping that now. But anything we do now can still cause it to change less than it would have otherwise.

TBH I don't know too much about it, but I skimmed over some it, and it seems a little out there at times.

Which is fine; when negotiating, you always start high :D

Ultimately I'd say I am in support of it.

I think an infrastructure bill made in the spirit of the original New Deal with an emphasis on doing things in a "green" fashion would be the best thing.

• Take all the unemployed people that want jobs, and tell them "We aren't going to pay you a lot, but we will shelter, feed, and train you."
• Focus on rebuilding bridges, roads, and anything else that is decaying in the US at an alarming rate.
• When rebuilding it, use renewable materials.

Everyone wins.

I'd need to read a full analysis before I make a judgement. That being said, anything that says 'Climate Change' will be shot down by the GOP. We've got a political party in power that actively denies objective reality.

Once you get through to reading her proposal, you'll see that it also denies objective reality.

Even the media is having a hard time not deriding this. Thank God this is a non binding resolution.

Economic security for those unwilling to work!

I don't think getting rid of nuclear power is necessary.

The bill might aim a little to high and to the side. Focusing on improving infrastructure costs money, but private companies will over time earn a lot more money from it.

How many are actually unwilling to work? If the number is significant, you have a cultural problem in US.

Most of the ideas in there are good.

There are a few provisions there that seem more idealistic however.

@horgen: " I don't think getting rid of nuclear power is necessary. "

That's actually dumb, imo. Nuclear power is one of the better power sources.

Yup

Nuclear Power is THE best transitional power source we have while solar and whatnot have a few quirks to still work out.

@Maroxad: Are there reputable numbers for this? Every graph I’ve ever seen that breaks down power by KWH per dollar spent has nuclear as expensive.

The fact is renewables benefit the most from technological R&D money spent. You don’t have to dig wind and solar out of the ground and the tech continues to make huge improvements through engineering.

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-2017/

I cant find them, since they are pretty old, but I remember nuclear being roughly 75% the price of coal KWH. Another thing is the lower ammount of greenhouse gases and how... safe it is compared to other power sources.

That siad, renewables do benefit the most from R&D, and hydropower may already be the most cost effective energy source out there. Solar is catching up EXTREMELY fast. But the issue here is storage and should the need arise getting rid of excess energ. And this is why Nuclear would be a good transitional source. in the meantime.

I think it's ambitious and proposes a lot of things we will eventually need anyway.

Which is why it will never pass in it's current form.

Anyone who thinks high speed rail in the United States is viable alternative to flying... Needs to look at California's joke of a process of our "high speed rail". Tens of billions of wasted money.

@Maroxad: @Baconstrip78: Nuclear's primary strengths over renewables is in scale/density and storage. In terms of cost it's cheaper than coal, but more expensive than solar and wind. Nuclear provides more energy per acre though, and doesn't require additional storage systems.

Renewals at the point of consumption are probably ideal, but we're not there yet.

I'm sure there's some stupid crap in there. But there's a difference between idealistic goals and obvious denial of reality. e.g. Democratic vs Republican objectives.

That's what I meant. Did I word myself poorly?

Some places I assume it will be the back bone, providing some stability to the power grid.

She’s an idiot and should be ignored full stop.

I recall solar being less cost effective than nuclear, but my data is a bit old so solar may have surpassed it now (in terms of cost efficiency, solar is improving so fast so it wouldnt surprise me tbh).

But yeah I do not disagree with the flaws of solar energy you mentioned. Of course... there a big difference between having flaws, and being unviable (someone thought that just because I mentioned that solar isnt perfect, means I somehow thought it was unviable).

No, I was agreeing with you. I just threw my weight behind you with some stronger wording (as I believe it's not only unnecessary but counterproductive).

I find it amazing that so many environmentalist are willing to listen a bunch of climate scientists, but not the nuclear physicists who say nuclear should be the way of the future.

From what I've read so far, my impressions are:

-Actually addresses emissions, so yeah! At least it's better than nothing.

-Invests in high speed rail (FINALLY!)

-Completely ignores nuclear, so she's basically following Bernie's nonsensical "nuclear isn't green" BS.

Actually, renewables are more expensive than nuclear when measured by Kwh. It's just that nuclear plants themselves are incredibly expensive to build and maintain. Oh, and you get nutters like Bernie who oppose projects to build reliable waste storage facilities and then go around lamenting the state of our nuclear waste storage facilities as a reason to not invest in nuclear.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/02/08/the-only-green-new-deals-that-have-ever-worked-were-done-with-nuclear-not-renewables/#b54eefb7f61c

The landscape has changed fairly substantially since 2016-ish. While solar PV (solar thermal still sucks out loud) has fallen ~20% in those two years, the cost of nuclear has actually risen ~20% in those two years.

I looked up the numbers a couple months ago because a family member who moved to Carmel was telling me how awesome it was that Indiana was drafting plans to build a new coal power plant in the state.

Should we not be using the LCOE metrics for cost comparisons?

Not to mention they can just look at the French and German versions and see that it does not remove people´s comfort in flying.

Also, it´s always interesting to follow the nuclear debate, those for seem to miss the main issue and that is the waste product and the risks involved.

As to this proposal, well it´s from some random new congressperson who have zero chance of getting it passed.

@Jacanuk: To my knowledge, Pelosi isn't behind it, so it's dead in the water. Even if it did pass, it's non-binding, there is no plan of any kind..it's a bunch of nice words that, most importantly, sticks it to bad orange man.

It would be like how Dems felt really good about themselves for passing a concurrent resolution that does nothing more than wags a collective finger at Bush in 2007.

Nuclear has an image problem. Doesn't help that we don't have a proper way to deal with waste.

I do wonder why more isn't done to test thorium (I think) based reactors.

Well, that is at least something

And yea you are right, a non-binding agreement is as useless as the Paris accord.

I'm not sure that really applies to this particular debate. If anything, LCOE tends to favor baseload power sources like nuclear, gas, and coal over intermittent ones like wind and solar. What I really took away from the article was that even with storage technology, even with selling electricity to other grids, you're still looking at a cost per Kwh that's higher than nuclear, and at best only keeps emissions flat. That's because storing and selling energy make energy more expensive, whereas if you can build a plant that can generate energy anywhere you need it (à la nuclear) then you don't need an advanced grid like you do when you can only generate energy in certain areas and need to sell off the excess when you're generating more than you need. The part about emissions is maybe even more pertinent, because in every single country where they've scaled back nuclear and ramped up renewables, emissions have risen or stayed flat. That's because they simply can't keep up with baseload power sources in 98% of the circumstances, and when they can it takes a massive investment. You have to have a LOT of wind/solar plants to generate the same amount of power as a nuclear plant. And most of the time those countries, municipalities, etc. just go to natural gas plants because they're fairly cheap and gas is dirt cheap right now. It's not a choice between rewnewables and nuclear, it's a choice between nuclear and gas. Renewables, at this point, are almost exclusively used to reduce baseload power generation when it's convenient.

And screw the high speed rail haters. We'll get it eventually, like every other developed nation and some of the less developed ones. Jesus, remember when Russia reaching a technological milestone ahead of us was a collective insult to our national pride? Now China's got more renewables, is catching up on nuclear, and has a high speed rail that puts anything we're even close to building to shame, and what do Americans say? "Pffft, who wants that stuff anyways?" Me, I want that stuff.

@theone86: If wind and solar is connected with hydro power, the dam could act as a battery to take away when energy produced by wind and solar reaches above current usage.

I dont want a high speed rail,

I would rather my yearly budget go to locking people up for tweaking their consciousness (50 Billion dollars), wars in the middle east only worsening the situation (120 billion dollars), a pointless wall that will only keep illegal immigrants in, not out and do environmental damage and hurt tourism (estimated to go for a few billions every year), give welfare an obsolete energy industry that keeping around does more harm than good (4 billion).

Edit: I forgot about mass incarceration which has an annual tab of 180 billion dollars. Granted, unlike the others this shouldnt be at 0. But the US should work to reduce its incarceration rates, which would drop tremendously by ending the war on drugs and ending the 3 strikes and you're out policy.

Prisoners are in high demand. Legal slavery.

Dams are hugely expensive as well, and not so great ecologically speaking. I'm not saying it couldn't work in specific scenarios where the circumstances are right, but nuclear is such a better option as far as widescale deployment goes.

Oh, and don't get me started on the damn wall. All through the Obama administration they scream and scream and scream about how much stuff costs (not to mention executive overreach) and now they want to hand a peachy government contract to their buddies in the wall-building business (see: Netanyahu and his cronies) and they NEED six billion dollars. They just HAVE to have it, or the entire world will ABSOLUTELY self-destruct. So much so that they'll completely circumvent Congressional appropriations in order to get it, that's how imperative it is they spend six billion dollars. But start talking about public transportation or healthcare and it's all "oh, we don't have money! Rabble, rabble, socialism, rabble, rabble!" Seriously, **** them. **** every conservative on the face of the earth, voter and politician alike. They're complete hypocrites who will scrap and fight to get everything they want, then try to flay us alive just for saying out loud what we want. I'm done with it. They can find money for their tax breaks, they can find money for their wars, they can find money for actually improving and investing in this country too.

Kinda neat that you have family in my state. Carmel's largely considered a ritzy place to live, but if it meant having to deal with Indy traffic on a regular basis you couldn't pay me to live there.

Communism disguised as combatting climate change?

What’s wrong with the Left? Are you really that blind?

I've always been curious, what state are you from?

@blackballs: That’s none of your business.

So, Yakutia then?

@Vaasman: Naturally.

That isnt communism, it isnt even socialism.

@Maroxad: It is the building blocks of communism. I suggest you look up the word and this so-called policy and match the overwhelming similarities.

While I can't comment on the amount of people that are unwilling to work, if the option to get money without working for is given there is no guarantee that more people will take advantage of it than anticipated, which may upset some people or even significantly effect tax revenue. There are already complaints about people on entitlement programs even when the person may actually need it such as disabled people or single parents that can't afford daycare and aren't getting child support from the other parent.

I'm surprised that particular portion of the proposal wasn't bought up here more since it was in the original FAQ that was taken down, but at the same time I didn't include it in the original post because the only sources I could find that even mentioned it were Fox News and other news outlets that are de facto banned as sources on this forum due to their political leanings.

So I haven't really looked into this proposal very much, but I googled it and found an NPR article that lists the bullet points that I have copied below.

• "upgrading all existing buildings" in the country for energy efficiency;
• working with farmers "to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions ... as much as is technologically feasible" (while supporting family farms and promoting "universal access to healthy food");
• "Overhauling transportation systems" to reduce emissions — including expanding electric car manufacturing, building "charging stations everywhere," and expanding high-speed rail to "a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary";
• A guaranteed job "with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations and retirement security" for every American;
• "High-quality health care" for all Americans.

https://www.npr.org/2019/02/07/691997301/rep-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-releases-green-new-deal-outline

Here's what I propose, lets look at these bullet points individually consider the reasons we think each of these are something people might have a desire for and what caused that desire. Here's my list of reasons.

1. With the exception of suppliers, energy efficiency saves everyone money and makes the country more self-sufficient. This means less reliance on other countries, and decreases C02 output reducing the effects of climate change. I think this one has the least amount of desire to achieve among people making it difficult to enforce.

2. This one appeals to parents who want their kids to have access to healthy foods. It also appeals to people who want to do something about climate change. People want access to healthy food is the main reason I can see people getting behind this.

3. More car manufacturers in the US seems to be right up republican's alley if they can get over the electric part. Seems to fit in with the "America First" motto the president always weaponizes. The desire for more manufacturing jobs seems to be fueled by the loss of manufacturing jobs in the country.

4. Whoo boy, yeah, people are tired of having to work 2-3 jobs to make ends meet without and still having no benefits. People will bitch about having to fund good paying jobs, but the "Gig-economy" is screwing people over big time and wearing out large parts of the country. People are tired of being exhausted, and they want a single full time job that they can count on to pay their bills.

5. People have recognized that everyone needs healthcare and healthcare bills are out of control. Capitalism in healthcare isn't providing, and in some big ways, is directly opposed to providing what people really need.