Apr 21, 2019 3 min read

Why I will resist the Green New Deal

I wish to explain why I will be resisting the Green New Deal. Not just because it is bad economic strategy and dangerous foreign policy, but mostly because it appears to be unscientific. When the authors suggest that they intend to phase out nuclear energy on their way to achieving zero carbon emissions, they reveal they don’t know, or don’t care, that nuclear energy produces almost no carbon emissions.

Ask any physicist and they will tell you that nuclear energy is the only immediate and practical way to reduce carbon dioxide while still maintaining the modern electrical grid. This is not a singular opinion. Nuclear is also endorsed by many leading environmentalists, as well as the International Panel on Climate Change. Abandoning atomic energy in a fight against global warming is about as unscientific as abandoning penicillin in a fight against disease.

A second reason to reject this green new deal is its over-reliance on wind and solar energy as a replacement for carbon fuel. You can dismiss this idea with a single common sense observation: modern windmill factories are not themselves powered by windmills alone. Neither are the plants where solar panels are produced. Both factories rely on carbon burning fuel because wind and solar are still too unreliable.

A third reason to reject this proposal is the happy but little known statistic that shows American carbon dioxide production is already declining, and it has been doing so without any government involvement for many years. Conversely, China’s contribution to global carbon dioxide is double that of the United States, and it is accelerating.

I’ve no doubt that the people who designed this new deal, and the hundred Democrats who signed on to it, have the best of intentions. But they are not climate scientists, they are political scientists. And we have learned that politicians will say anything to gain power. So when they insist that I vote for them or the world will end in 12 years, I get very suspicious.

Some of these politicians have claimed that climate change is settled science and an immediate response is beyond debate. But questioning is the root of science as much as debate is central to politics. Our leaders appear convinced that they can pass a new law that will force science to deliver new technology. But while legislation is a powerful tool, it cannot alter the Laws of Physics.

If a windmill-powered factory cannot produce more windmills, then where are we going to get new windmills? How do we force other nations to curb their carbon output short of war, and how do we win that war with glider planes and sailing ships? These are physical questions that are worthy of debate, yet we never hear that debate.

It is easy to predict the end of the world, but it is far more difficult to run it, and harder still to save it. The climate is a non-linear chaotic system with multiple feedbacks, dynamic buffers, natural variables and independent actors. All predictions are madly uncertain. In turn, we voters need to be certain that our response to a spoken threat does not cause more harm than the prediction itself.

Wayne Moss

West Alexander