The Green New Deal (read it for yourself; its not long), floating around Congress on a cloud of cow farts, is quite a grand and far-reaching manifesto.  Here are differing views from the media, think tanks, and other interested parties. They describe it better than I.

Even though the GND is “impossible”, reliably left Slate opines that‘s why some people like it. Impossible plans are good for thinking and thinking leads to dreaming, and dreaming is the only way that change occurs.

But the journey from dreams to reality is perilous.  According to Big Think, the GND is a “catalyst to radically restructure the US economy and social structure”. Speaking of peril, among the goals the sponsors want to achieve through government action are:

• Universal health care
• Universal basic income
• Right to affordable housing
• Restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act
• Revoking corporate personhood
• Abolishing the Electoral College
• Repealing the Patriot Act
• Re-establishing strong labor unions
• Breaking up too-big-to-fail banks
• Relieving debt for students and homeowners
• Reducing military funding
• Overhauling the military-industrial complex.

According to Big Think, proponents see the government as the driving force for this rapid re-industrialization because the scale is too large for the private sector and incentivizing companies won’t produce necessary results within the mandatory 10-year time frame.

That expansive wish list of goals is not a good thing, according to the reliably right Daily Signal, who says the GND won’t affect global warming because other countries aren’t going to cooperate. Rather, “… it’s about creating massive new government programs that will increase the power of government and move the country closer than ever to socialism.”

Ditto from National Review.

The Yale Program on Climate Change says the GND has a broad and strong bipartisan support. There are several caveats: At the time of the poll, 82 percent of respondents had heard nothing about it.  The wording of the poll leaves a lot to be desired if one is looking for an accurate gauge of public support: The premise is that it would produce jobs and strengthen the economy, but there is no mention of increased taxes, affordability, or increasing the power of government.

Politico refers to a massive climate investment as “a tentpole of Democratic politics.” and classifies backers of the GND  as “left of Obama activists” who want to graft their economic agenda onto a response to the climate emergency like the 2009 stimulus, which passed the House as a reaction to an economic emergency without a single Republican vote and the Senate with three Republicans who were promised many goodies in order to get the 60 votes necessary to pass.  For their part, the current Democratic-majority House intends to inject the climate issue into everything Congress does this term: transportation, infrastructure, military spending, tax legislation, and disaster aid.

Left of center The Brookings Institution believes climate change “ … may represent a fundamental transformational opportunity, one where we can transform our economic and energy systems and build a sustainable planet.” No mention of cost.

In fact, I’ve looked far and wide but can’t find any legitimate assertion that the GND is affordable. Bloomberg comes the closest by downplaying the environmental efforts and detailing the astronomical cost of the non-environmental policies.

Says reliably right The Heartland Institute, the GND is so fanciful and politically and economically impossible as to be not very dangerous compared to say, a carbon tax, which they don’t like either.

And a musical interlude most appropriate for this venture. Note to trolls: Its about the GND, not the sponsors.

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