…. is from my AEI colleague’s Ben Zycher’s article in National Review “The Green New Deal Is Awful but Unlikely” (bold added):
The basic premise of the net-zero [U.S. emissions of greenhouse gas] proponents is that we can destroy a substantial part of the economic value of the energy-producing and -using capital stock without impoverishing tens of millions of households and destroying employment opportunity on a massive scale. Not to worry, say proponents of net-zero policies and sharp increases in the cost of conventional energy: We will subsidize and otherwise mandate the creation of millions of replacement “green jobs,” a hallucination driven by utter ignorance about the close relationships among aggregate economic growth, resource shifts among sectors, and employment. In a nutshell: More-expensive energy means a smaller economy and less employment. Period. And, say the proponents: We can force the rest of the world to follow our lead by imposing equivalent tariffs on imported goods, a proposal that would be an administrative nightmare and ironically Trump-like in its myopia.
……
Put aside the fact that there is no systematic evidence of a climate “crisis” in terms of cyclones, flooding, polar ice, drought, and other such phenomena in the data reported by government agencies, or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or in the peer-reviewed literature. Net-zero policies can be predicted confidently to yield an inexorable horror show of outcomes: skyrocketing costs, greater impoverishment, reduced reliability, more pollution, other serious adverse environmental effects, and a marked expansion in government coercion, even as the stated climate-policy goal remains virtually unaffected. Such are the fruits of leftist fantasies and mendacity. These predictable endpoints of greenhouse gas fanaticism will lead even a Democratic Congress to reject the Green New Deal in favor of a series of tax subsidies and other such wastefulness that, however silly and narrowly destructive, will not pose a threat to our constitutional republic.
The post Quotation of the day on the horror show of outcomes from greenhouse gas fanaticism….. appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.