Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has released his most comprehensive green plan yet, which echoes the “Green New Deal” popularized by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez last year.
Sanders, who claims the world is in imminent danger, is planning to get $16.2 trillion in funding to help adapt to sea-level rise, and the plan calls for electricity and transportation to run on 100 percent renewable by 2030.
“The climate crisis is not only the single greatest challenge facing our country; it is also our single greatest opportunity to build a more just and equitable future, but we must act immediately,” states an overview of the program on Sanders’ campaign website.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
The doomsday rhetoric continues: “The scientific community is telling us in no uncertain terms that we have less than 11 years left to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy, if we are going to leave this planet healthy and habitable for ourselves, our children, grandchildren, and future generations.”
Similar to Vermont’s push to have 90 percent renewable by 2050, Sanders wants ambitious national goals for cutting carbon emissions by large percentages in the coming decades.
The Democratic presidential candidate also plans to have the U.S. sign back on to the Paris Climate Accords and prosecute the fossil fuel industry.
“These corporations and their executives should not get away with hiding the truth from the American people. They should also pay damages for the destruction they have knowingly caused,” Sanders’ website states.
Under a Sanders presidency, America could potentially see a “climate score” to ensure that all new legislation passed out of Washington addresses the threats of climate change.
“In order to ensure our lawmakers keep us on the right path, we will require the Congressional Budget Office to coordinate with the EPA to provide a ‘climate score’ for legislation, similar to the budget score legislation currently receives,” the website states.
Sanders also wants to make sure that all new energy production to come from green technologies such as wind power and solar power.
As far as the hefty $16.2 trillion price tag, Sanders claims the plan will pay for itself in 15 years through a combination of green energy revenues, payments from the fossil fuel industry, and tax revenue from 20 million new green jobs — jobs that may be subsidized at the expense of other job sectors.
Sanders foresees young teenagers and minority groups leading his campaign against traditional energy businesses.
“We will do this by coming together in a truly inclusive movement that prioritizes young people, workers, indigenous peoples, communities of color, and other historically marginalized groups to take on the fossil fuel industry and other polluters to push this over the finish line and lead the globe in solving the climate crisis,” the plan states.
The plan already has its critics. Michael Shellenberger, the founder and president of Environmental Progress, wrote on Twitter that the “$16 Trillion Green New Deal is doomed to fail & impoverish millions.”
Bernie Sanders’s $16 Trillion Green New Deal is doomed to fail & impoverish millions. How do I know? For starters, I helped create the last one.
The only Green New Deals that have worked were done with nuclear, which Bernie’s would ban, not renewables https://t.co/kT1zohbBLw
— Mike Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) August 22, 2019
Michael Bielawski is a reporter for True North Reports. Send him news tips at bielawski82@yahoo.com and follow him on Twitter @TrueNorthMikeB.
“In 2005, Vermont legislators promised to reduce emissions 25% below 1990 levels by 2012, and 50% below 1990 levels by 2028, through the use of renewables and energy efficiency only.
What’s happened since? Vermont’s emissions rose 16.3%. That’s more than twice as much as national emissions rose during the same period.
When you account for the U.S.’s far faster growth in population, Vermont’s per capita emissions rose 5% while U.S. per capita emissions declined by 17%.”
Ouch.
Way to go VT, you keep digging though…
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/02/07/green-new-deal-excludes-nuclear-and-would-thus-increase-emissions-just-like-it-did-in-vermont/#698cb2489afd
This is the guy that got kicked out of a commune because he refused to work.
“You have to ask yourself, do Radical Leftists, like U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who welcome an endless progression of illiterate, illegal aliens, and an expansive welfare state, know what this bodes for our Nation? For the U.S. Senator, he likely does know. Senator Sanders is intelligent. To realize his dream of a Socialist State in America, he wishes to destroy the Nation as a Free Republic, and rebuild it in his image of a magnanimous Socialist Utopia. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, unlike Sanders, is a moron, but simply abhors America and seeks, as well, to destroy it, in order to transform it into a massive welfare state. If they, both of them, have their wish, our Nation would indeed be destroyed. But, no Phoenix would arise from the ashes of that destruction, as they wrongly presume would happen.”
“The Nation would be ruined forever; the remains to be subsumed, albeit it in a diminished state, into a new, transnational, supranational political, social, economic, cultural, financial and legal system of governance, likely headquartered in Brussels, which is the very heart and brain of the monstrosity known as the EU, and the people of those nations and of our Nation, too, will be reduced to penury and servitude, and all subjects, of this new world order (no longer citizens of their Nations as Nations will no longer exist), will live under duress, and under the severe and stern hand of an all-seeing, all-powerful Government, watching one’s every move, and controlling every thought.”
By Roger Katz
http://arbalestquarrel.com/guns-knives-occams-dangerous-razor/
Give me all your money and I’ll save the world!
I don’t know, if somebody came knocking on your front door and suggested this what would you do?
Tell them to get the Hell off my lawn!
Will burnee be using the Venezuela model of “government run energy”?
They don’t use greentard but they can’t even make fossil fuel work and it’s not because of oil price it’s because the government is useless when it comes to doing anything. Too many hands to grease…
Burnee didn’t listened to the Obamanation who proclaimed we couldn’t drill our way out of it but the most successful PRES. at getting it done did just that which pushed our economy back to the forefront. Burnee would gladly put all those people who put us back on top out of work and the economy back in the crapper where obama left it. Sustainable energy isn’t the same as dependable energy. I wouldn’t trust the shyster with $16, much less 16 trillion.
$16.2 Trillion for Bernje’s Green New Deal? Wonder how he’s going to fund it. He’s already put fee health care for all, free college tuition, forgiveness of college loans, plus whatever else on the agenda. My guess is he thinks he can erase the national debt by the stroke of a pen or use his cell phone to start over. Ain’t gonna happen Bernie.
It’s amazing what this clown comes up with every other day. Bernie and gaff a minute Biden make a great pair. It won’t be long when the two of them will be in a nursing home playing checkers.
A power plant harnessing the hot air from Bernie’s mouth could significantly offset fossil-fuel energy production.
Just some more BS from good old Bernie. For a guy full of these wild ideas what has he ever accomplished as a Senator..”NOTHING”, Nada, zero. When are his followers ever going to pay attention to what he’s done in all these years. They don’t seem to care. They just hear free and they are fully on board.