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

The south, am I getting close?

I read it twice to be sure I didn't misunderstand huge chunks of it, and when I was sure I didn't miss anything big I checked if I didn't fall for some sort of satirical lookalike. I read it first from NPR and then checked it again on DFP, but no, it's just that bad.

It's a nonsensical mess of pseudo-idealistic gibberish that no one who has ever so much as opened an introductory economics or physics book and understood at least its first chapter could think of as good or realistic. There is literally not a single section that doesn't have huge holes in it that fly in the face of established science. It's stupid beyond redemption and its entirety looks like it was written by someone whose understanding of the world doesn't go past what is expected of children to follow the plot of a Disney movie.

And it's glorious. Truly, if we had a republican satirical writer with the same established linguistic skills that Shakespeare and Dante had combined and he had the ability to sabotage this whole green new deal movement from the inside, he couldn't have come up with a better piece of paper to make everyone in that movement look like a bunch of stupid illiterate kooks.

It doesn't seem like you can win at this game. The ACA is derided for being 2000 pages of substance thought up by the "elite" and this is now being derided as short, idealistic, and lacking substance. At some point you just stop giving a **** what the other side thinks because they're arguments constantly contradict themselves.

If you're so bad at science that you can't even spell "thermodynamics" (or "their", for that matter...) correctly or understand that two different pieces of paper CAN be subject to two different types of criticism without the critiquers' self-consistency being called into question you can be sure you won't be able to win at this game ever.

I have to say, there is one silver lining in this heap of crap. I can't help but smile with mischievous glee thinking about leftist physicists and all kinds of industrial engineers having to dance on minefields when they are asked to explain how this whole thing is going to work and having to debunk all of that nonsense without being accused of being right wing extremists.

@Serraph105: Yeah, it's a ritzy area, for sure. His house is 50 percent more expensive than mine, for instance, but half the size with half the land.

But I've done city living, and I'm done with it. I like my space.

Damn.

AOC and her staff are now straight up gas lighting people over the FAQ section (that talked about cow farts, banning air travel, and welfare for the unwilling to work), saying that it was a doctored hit job by Republicans. Too bad NPR, WaPo, have the FAQ that was sent to them from her office, and archives show it on her website. Here is one of her staffers blatantly lying to Tucker Carlson about it.

Now would be a good time for some constructive criticism.

I mean if declining life expectancy is reality now in US, US has issues. Stagnation of wages is well known already.

The wage gap mentioned is for total pay I guess. I'm sure there are plenty of sources stating that by hourly wage, the pay is pretty equal early in the career and other part time jobs.

@horgen: That's really the Crux of the issue, imo. We've had a decades long supply side swing that left a lot of people behind despite promises to the contrary. Now they're looking at asking those who didn't benefit to sacrifice further in order to preserve the benefits of those who have gained immensely. That's a recipe for the populism we probably would have experienced after the great recession were it not for an outsized Boomer generation, QE, and Obama rather than Hoover in the White House

Lets get everyone on the record.

You can't "constructive criticism" a child's scribbles into a well written book. The only meaningful constructive criticism I can offer is don't pontificate how the world should behave by talking about topics you couldn't put in even vague operative terms.

I don't expect the clarity and specificity of a patent's description in a bill, but at least I do expect a bill to not completely ignore the laws of economics, jurisprudence, science, engineering and even the much more foggy and bias prone social sciences which leftists usually hold so close to their hearts.

Net-zero GHG emissions, how? By banning the second principle of thermodynamics?

Create jobs, how? The laws of economics say that in order to increase jobs you need to increase production, given that consumption wouldn't change because we're talking about a transition to renewables and not an actually new or more product why would anyone want to pay more (a LOT more) just to say well, at least this electricity's green?

Stopping and repairing past oppression of whoever, how? Leaving aside that the vast majority of the communities mentioned *aren't* oppressed, how would you do that? You think oppression only happens because nobody good stepped in to stop it? And how would you "repair" past oppression?

Should I go on? Because I could, but my point wouldn't change. You can't assume that just because you think you're "the good guy" anything you say or do has to be just as good and you can feel entitled to put into words anything that goes through your mind about any topic where you look at and think "someone should do something about it". Most of those dynamics that we could theoretically consider undesirable don't happen just because there isn't a good guy above watching over everyone. And even if they did I don't think anyone would be comfortable being under the thumb of a guy with that much power. Remember last time that happened? The guys with the Hugo Boss black uniforms? The guy who lead them had a similar attitude, he thought he was the good guy and was doing what he had to to make sure his people survived prolifically. The krauts have a knack for making up single words for complex concepts, in this case it's Lebensraum if you want to look it up.

I don't really want to get into the whole post because a dissection simply isn't worth the effort, but I do want you to elaborate on this point. I do not understand what the 2nd law of thermodynamics has to do with reducing and eliminating sources of emissions, in the context of making it impossible to do so.

I think most if not all of it sounds fair and great. It's just that it sounds EXTREMELY ambitious. I don't know what Green New Deals typically look like (I'm reading the PDF on their site) but I think it's fine to set the bar high.

I did hear some things about the Green Deal that I am not seeing here. For instance, I heard from a 'news' site that it implies that the USA would no longer be able to use/sell oil/gasoline in 10 years time. I don't see that mentioned anywhere in the PDF? I'm guessing that was, yet again, some much needed journalistic interpretation of actual reality. /s

On my screen it says:
"✔100% Clean and Renewable Electricity by 2035
All electricity consumed in America must be generated by renewable sources, including solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, sustainable biomass, and renewable natural gas, as well as clean sources such as nuclear and remaining fossil fuel with carbon capture."

Which is again, rather ambitious. But that doesn't sound like 10 years? And it doesn't mean that oil will no longer be acquired and used... just not for producing energy. Which does not mean a ban on the sale of oil and gasoline as far as I understand... like some articles are suggesting.

Some articles also suggest that: "The “smart” grid is also part of the plan and new street lights are the core infrastructure for smart cities because the lights also perform video surveillance, parking enforcement and traffic control, security and area source for wi-fi." But I don't find anything about streetlights that have surveillance camera's in the PDF. It does mention a smart grid but smart grids are typically a method to distribute and use electricity in a more intelligent way because you can't easily store it (one of my best friends works on smart grids in Germany) and not so much a 1984 surveillance scenario. Am I missing something there?

My only initial concerns (having glossed over it) are how they want to achieve this and IF it is remotely achievable.

I love that the party of "global warming is a hoax" and "Creationism should be taught in school" is lecturing people about intellectual inadequacy.

That's a good point. A lot of these provisions likely have significantly different levels of support.

It would seem wise to address these separately, no? I'm no history buff, but I believe that's how many of the provisions in the New Deal were passed as well.

Recent history alone has taught us that large legislation, even that which provisions are tightly focused on a single goal, is difficult to pass as the bill inherently carries with it all the baggage of each individual provision.

Better than the party of "there are 72 genders" , "I.Q. is bigoted" and "a moving being with a beating heart pumping blood isn't life"

FYI, scientific grants as a percentage of GDP have gone down significantly since the 60's, predominantly by Democratic administrations.

I haven't a clue what the underlined is about. The first is mistaking gender and sex. The last is, I presume, a misrepresentation of the viability standard established in Roe v. Wade.

Someone had a little bit of time on their hands.

Unwilling to Work website

Love it.

Glad you don't disagree with doing something about stagnating wages or improved health care for all.

I also have trouble seeing how we will reach a net zero on GHG, but perhaps having it as a goal, or an ambition isn't so bad? Switching from fossil combustion engines to electric ones with energy produced by greener alternatives than coal would help a lot. Side effect will be improved air quality in cities as well. Don't know about the situation where live, but in my city, local emissions are down. NOx in particular.

Jobs would be created with transitioning to renewables. Is there anything unclear about it? If creating and maintaining windmills is the next thing, producing the parts needed at an increased pace than today means possibly more jobs. Maintaining them require people working on that as well. With that said though, you might not be opposed of the idea that it won't be jobs for everyone in the future. As in an unemployment rate at 20% or higher simply because there is no need for more people to be working.

I have no idea how she wants to repair past oppression. Perhaps though she means admitting wrongdoings and working on improving equal treatment?

First of all, saying a bunch of remotely verifiable and probabilistic predictions, as veritable as they may be, aren't correct is infinitely less grave error than outright ignoring laws.

If during an exam you make mistakes during a computation and get the wrong result because you missed a number somewhere you wouldn't be as penalized as writing a random number without using any of the things you were taught in a class. You'd know that if you had ever studied anything worth studying.

Given the current context of discussion I think it's pretty clear that it's not like democrats have ever really even cared about being sciency if that took more effort than what was strictly necessary to appear anti-republican.

Second, leftists are much more likely to buy into emotional and religious surrogate beliefs. Astrology, pseudoreligious cults, aversion to GMOs, chemicals and anything nuclear are far more likely to happen to leftists than to right wingers. On top of that there's the even more dangerous thing, called very catchily "idea laundering" which is a consequence of confirmation bias and is festering among social scientists which overwhelmingly lean left.

The thing you love is a belief that has become outdated since the turn of the millennium.

Why should I disagree? Wage stagnation or bad health care aren't desirable outcomes, and that's a human consideration, not a partisan one. What is partisan is how we should go about to get rid of the most of them as quickly as possible.

There's a big difference between "zero" and "going down". Obviously given the choice with all else equal we'd pick zero no questions asked, the problem is how much effort it takes to get there, how much time, and effort on whose part to justify the "is it worth it?". "All else equal" is not something that works in economics, ever.

There's plenty unclear. First of all, renewables don't work universally. Both wind and solar are extremely sensitive to weather for obvious reasons, and by extension they're also sensitive to geographical position, time of day and extreme events, then there's hydropower. How would you implement renewables in places where none of these sources are comfortably and adequately available? How would you convert the power grid of the East coast when it gets yearly batterings from hurricanes, which are very likely to raze entire solar farms and force weeks-long shutdowns of wind farms?
And who's going to pay for them? Renewables are called so because during the life cycle of one such machine the energy it outputs will outweigh the energy it takes to build it and get rid of its remains when spent, but energy science doesn't only use joules as a currency. Where do you get the materials and labor it takes to do a complete conversion if energy prices are to stay roughly the same to prevent people from just continuing to use non-renewables?

Also, in my comment I should've added that speaking of the environment, the GND also mentions urban energy conservation and not just production, literally stating they want to upgrade infrastructure, industries and households to be as energy efficient as possible. Same problems as above: how would you go about doing it in a span of a few years, two decades at most, if the benefits take several decades just to break even with the costs? Who's going to shoulder the costs and who's going to build those upgraded houses for everyone?

Quite the opposite, I think the idea that improved technology leads to a net number of jobs being lost is pure bullshit. You don't even need to be an expert in economics to recognize this, historical data is more than enough. That's not the point though.