Bernie will declare a national emergency on climate change
and take immediate, large-scale action to reverse its effects.
So says the presidential campaign website of Bernie Sanders.
This U.S. Senator from Vermont, now 2nd time presidential candidate, and socialist without apology, is leaving nothing to chance. He’s just come out big – really big – for a Green New Deal.
Bernie Sanders’ Green New Deal is less about the climate and more about, as he put it, “a wholesale transformation of our society.”
He doesn’t mince words: “The climate crisis,” he says, is “our single greatest opportunity to build a more just and equitable future.” Such is the promise of every socialist visionary and leader, dating to Karl Marx.
Four years ago, when running for president the first time, Sen. Sanders, with the deck stacked against him, gave Hillary Clinton a serious challenge for the Democratic nomination, and made it a relatively close race.
This time, Sanders has more competition since there are many copycat candidates to his socialist agenda. Credit Bernie for shifting the Democratic Party toward the socialist left, except that it ironically may again rob him of the nomination.
The crowded presidential field also has made Sen. Sanders’ agenda somewhat of an echo, as his version of the Green New Deal (GND) is late to the party. Several candidates, plus the ubiquitous Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, already came out with climate plans to transform America.
Still, Sanders is not to be outdone. His plan has a $16.3 trillion price tag, meaning it dwarfs all the others. More brazenly, Sanders claims that the plan “will pay for itself over 15 years” as unnamed “experts have scored the plan and its economic effects.”
You can’t make this stuff up, except Bernie does.
Somehow, Sen. Sanders promises to make electricity and transportation (cars, trucks and buses) fueled by 100 percent renewable energy sources by 2030. Presumably, the other plans that make similar promises by 2040 or 2050 will be too little, too late; passed the point of no return for the planet.
The old saying, invention is the mother of necessity, will surely be put to the test by Bernie Sanders. To maintain focus, his plan would ban imports and exports of fossil fuels and halt all permitting of new fossil fuel extraction.
Oh, and nuclear power, hydro-fracturing and coal mining would be banned, too.
If a President Sanders actually attempted any of this “transformation,” price spikes in energy would be guaranteed since no one has yet found a way around the laws of supply and demand, any more than one can cheat gravity when falling off a cliff.
But that never stopped a big-league socialist like Bernie, whether it’s explaining how his single-payer health care plan would be affordable, or the cost and practicality of his Green New Deal. His go-to answer is that the federal government, run by him, is going to handle things, including keeping electricity prices down.
Politicians making unrealistic promises is nothing new, but Bernie Sanders takes it to an extraordinary level, as his GND also would create 20 million new jobs, “lead the planet in a wholesale shift away from militarism,” and so much else. This item may be my favorite: a “victory lawns and gardens initiative [to] help urban, rural and suburban Americans transform their lawns into food-producing or reforested spaces” at a comparatively meager cost of $36 billion.
One cannot help but ask whether any of Sen. Sanders’ three homes produce food? It would be nice if he could lead by example.
Bernie Sanders, for a man 77 years old, has extraordinary energy and determination, in contrast to most people his age and several years younger. Still, it may not be enough. Other, younger candidates are promising free health care, millions of new jobs, 100 percent renewable energy, free food, and altering the Earth’s climate all without inconvenience or disruption to the 99 percent of non-wealthy Americans.
More than almost any other politician, Bernie Sanders’ avowed socialism is genuinely felt. He may really believe the earth is doomed unless we adopt his Green New Deal. But, even if he thought it wasn’t, he’d want the same approach because it constitutes the pathway to a government run, socialist economy and the destruction of the private economy and capitalism.
There is no disguising that Bernie is about making the United States a full-blown socialist country, and using the label of climate crisis to get there. Ominously, with no mention of Congress playing a role in Sanders’ plan, democracy itself may have to be scaled back under such a declared “national emergency,” which is historically common for aspiring socialist leaders.
History and present-day experience are replete with socialism’s inevitable and predictable failures, manifesting in poverty, rationing, oppression and much more. Bernie Sanders’ America would be no different, no matter how determined he sounds.