Posted on 02/15/2019 5:19:42 AM PST by SJackson
Ocasio-Cortez and her comrades travel backward toward “Year Zero”.
Democrats led by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Sen. Edward Markey have rolled out their “Green New Deal,” a 14-page House Resolution that would replace air travel with trains, eliminate gasoline-powered cars and get rid of “farting cows” that emit methane.
“Almost everything about Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal is wrong,” explained Ed Ring in American Greatness, with accompanying detail. He also called Ocasio-Cortez and company the “watermelon people,” because they are green outside and red inside. That comparison has been around for a while, but the red is deeper than ever before. The left has always been at odds with Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, but the Green New Deal Democrats also have a beef with Orville and Wilbur Wright.
On December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers took flight in the first successful power-driven airplane. The brothers gained fame as the “fathers of modern aviation,” which grew at a rapid pace. In 1927, Charles Lindberg became the first to fly across the Atlantic, and soon airplanes were transporting passengers across the oceans. Propeller aircraft gave way to jetliners such as the Boeing 707, which made its first flight on July 15, 1954, only six years after Orville Wright passed away, and went on to “popularize jet travel.”
From the 1960s onward jetliners whisked people around the globe, at prices the American middle class could afford, and reduced delivery times for goods and emergency services. If that is not progress, it is hard to imagine what might be. Now the Green New Deal reactionaries want to ground the airliners, which as Sen. Mazie Hirono noted, “would be pretty hard for Hawaii.” The Green New Dealers want to replace air travel with rail, an essentially nineteenth-century form of transportation.
California’s vaunted “bullet train,” for example, would likely cost many times more than its current estimate of nearly $100 billion. As in Blazing Saddles, one thing stands between the project and the agricultural land they need: the rightful owners. Even if completed, the “high-speed rail” project would be slower and more expensive than air travel, and would not take passengers where they need to go. That is the key to the left’s enthusiasm for railway transportation, and the Green New Deal Democrats also have a beef with Henry Ford.
Ford did not invent the automobile but his production techniques lowered costs and made cars accessible to the masses. Workers could purchase the products they made, and Ford sold some 15 million Model T automobiles. After World War II, automobile travel opened up the country on the interstate highway system. As Dinah Shore sang, “see the USA in your Chevrolet,” and millions still do.
In the automobile, unlike rail, you can go pretty much wherever you want. That’s why the Democrat Luddite leftists have made the automobile their primary target. A cinematic back story may help those of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s age to appreciate their wheels.
The Grapes of Wrath, based on the John Steinbeck novel, showcased the hardships of the Depression and for many served as a powerful critique of American capitalism, at a time when admiration for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was running high. The movie hit theatres in 1940, when the Stalin-Hitler Pact prevailed, and Stalin didn’t allow it to be shown in the USSR until 1948. The Soviet dictator thought an American-made movie would serve as effective anti-capitalist propaganda, but as Nicola Budanovic recalls, this gambit backfired.
As the film showed, in America “even the poorest owned an automobile ― a luxury that was off limits to an ordinary Soviet citizen at the time.” The poverty-stricken Joads could drive wherever they wanted and “were perceived as well-off members of the middle-class who have nothing to complain about.”
Stalin quickly yanked the film but the episode openly revealed “the flaws of a central-planned economy.” And eventually, “this crippled economy and a great shortage of goods would be one of the main causes for that system to collapse.”
The United States of America would certainly collapse under the Democrats’ version of Planes, Trains and Automobiles, a sure-fire tragedy. On the left, “from each” comes first, and the deal takes away the people’s mobility. “To each” comes last, and the people get only the health care the government wants them to have. Promoters such as Kamala Harris don’t even bother to lie about it.
Those farting cows have to go, so the deal limits what the people can eat. Other deprivations would be sure to follow, as they did in the USSR, China, Cuba, and most recently Venezuela. The Green New Deal, in effect, is the Democrats’ version of the Khmer Rouge’s “Year Zero,” a suicide note for the freest, most prosperous nation in human history.
The Green New Deal would also take away a lot of money from the people and give it to those unwilling to work. For that crowd, as Dire Straits said, it will be money for nothing. Meanwhile, whatever happens to the House resolution, the ideas of the Green New Deal will not go away any time soon.
I do not like Green Deals and Ham, Sam I am!
The regs would be fairly simple to implement. Abolish private vehicle sales; then increase the taxes on privately owned autos every year until only the 1% could afford them. Ban piston engine planes, and allow jet aircraft only for the business purposes of the owners (and state specifically that carrying freight and passengers isn’t a business purpose). Then aircraft would be generally available only to the 1%. Allow only clean electric mass transit, and limit railroads to green only electric lines. Shut down all fossil, hydroelectric and atomic nuclear plants; ration the remaining green power for the “public good”. (The 1% could afford their own green power generation which would be off the grid). Eliminate fossil fuel powered ships.
This should lead to mass starvation that would put Stalin to shame and elimination of the kulaks leaving only the 1% living in luxury and the poorest proles leading a 15th century existence. The ultimate Green goal.
I hate the force of government as much as anyone, but when it comes to rail, there is just a lot of knee-jerk ignorant hatred coming from our anti-government side.
The REAL argument should not be “rail sucks” (which it DOES NOT) or that it’s “antiquated” 19th cent while somehow 20th cent airplanes and cars aren’t, but that government has no business doing any such projects at all, and forcing its vision of what is right on anyone.
‘high-speed rail” project would be slower and more expensive than air travel, and would not take passengers where they need to go.’
By the time we are forced to get to the airport far early and FINALLY get on a plane, it takes just as much time for say, a CA trip. And no, the airplane has no special advantage on “where we need to go” - we ALWAYS end up taking a taxi or bus or finding a rental car. It’s not as if an airplane drops you off exactly where you need to be. Come on guys.
It’s a gadget play intended to get massive gains for Socialism.
They’ll end up with national health care and guaranteed jobs for everyone. We’ll get to keep airplanes and hamburgers and feel like it was a winning compromise.
If it is green, it doesn’t work.
Green New Deal: green on the outside; red on the inside.
The green new deal is a fraud. It would take the burning of more fossil fuel energy to build the Green Economy and convert than the Green Economy would produce over 20 year period
Let us narrow the conversation and focus on bovine flatulence.
Assuming that said flatulence is 100% methane (it isn’t, but)...
We can find that methane is included in the greenhouse gas (GHG) regulations. All GHG are calculated using a standard of CO2-equivalents (CO2e). This measure is an indication of “radiative force” of the material (how heat energy is reflectied or absorbed).
Looking at the IPCC info, we see that the CO2e comparative value for CO2 is 1.46 and Methane is 0.48. Methane is approximately one-third LESS “radiative” than CO2.
Let’s simplify. For our purposes, let’s assume that a single cow flatulates a VERY large estimate of one cubic meter (1M^3) of methane each day (STP), running that out to a realized lifetime of 22 years, a cow emits 8030M^3 in a lifetime. Wow, that a lot of greenhouse gasses, right?
Now, do a little math and internet research and find out how much CO2 a cow breaths out in its lifetime.
That too is a lot of GHG emissions, right? Notice how it is A LOT MORE than the flatulence volume? Now apply one more step...Evaluate the relative impact when the cows breath is 3 times more radiative than its farts!
It would be more helpful to kill all the cows for their breathing than for their farts.
AOC, turns slowly and looks at YOU....
No Milk-—No cereal—those manufacturers will lay off thousands of people.
No Milk-—or cheese—or ice cram—or sour cream-—or or or.
No cowhide for shoes, boots, belts, purses, and other protective surfaces.
No vacations out of the continental USA. Nothing but SHORT vacations inside the USA because you spend so much time trying to get there. More jobs lost.
People who live rural will be abandoned.
No more police vehicles.
No more ambulances.
No more fire trucks.....
We all know that AOC is bat chit crazy. The question is WHO will put her down for good???
Everyone seem to forget that the mentally-challenged Ed Markey was also responsible for this.
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They are just trying to create a new Dark Ages.
Dictatorships and a rigid class system flourished during the Dark Ages.
That’s what they really want.
Dictatorships? They’d call it nobility. Among themselves. But that is what they want, it’s where the power is.
Easier to ban fuel. The homeless can live in the empty cars, they don't really care about the homeless. Planes potentially a bit embarrassing, but manageable. Starvation, plenty of ruminants around to rid the world of, when they run out, who knows. As I noted in a thread I posted yesterday, in the past the elite survived, even if it meant eating cats and rats.
Abandoned by government not such a bad thing. I'd prefer rural should this happen.
Fuel won't work - there are always home made substitutes. From alcohol (yes, some modifications necessary, and parts won't last as long) to gassing off wood or coal like the Nazis did.
According to the article here, the range is competitive with electric.
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/01/wood-gas-cars.html
Yes, though I’m assuming you couldn’t use such vehicle publicly. Not happening, still might be fodder for a Mel Gibson/Mad Max movie. Tina Turner can play an old AOC
Age of Soylent.
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