[We need]…A Green New Deal. If Roosevelt’s big idea for the Great Depression was public works, then it makes sense to use this crisis to start the long, hard process of making economies more sustainable and less dependent on fossil fuels. A combination of low interest rates and fiscal expansion is ideal – provided the investment is used productively rather than for speculation. That will involve two concepts that have been anathema during the heyday of laissez-faire: industrial policy and credit controls.
A Green New Deal is vital for the world. The US has only 4 per cent of the world’s population, but is responsible for 25 per cent of global CO2 emissions. The problems of the big three car makers provide Obama with an unprecedented opportunity to send the gas guzzler to the scrapheap. Rebalancing the global economy means countries such as China must increase domestic demand; one way to do that would be through investment in greener energy.
The search for utopia never ends. All will be right with the world if only someone has the will and strength to empose it on others.
This would make a lot more sense if the New Deal had really ended the depression. It didn’t. It only made it worse. This Green New Deal, like the original New Deal, is just a huge power grab by the government.
#2 tgs, “Right on baby”. I have heard that ~7,000-9,000 banks failed in the 1930’s Depression (as compared to the ~200-300 that have failed in the present time) and it was WWII that dragged us out of it. Are we setting up ourselves for WWIII or has it already started? I hope not! (P.S.- I am old enough to remember happenings in the very late 1930’s)
Yet another instance of the blind leading the blind. The worst aspect of such is that, to some extent, the blindness of those leading is [i]willful blindness[/i]!
Blessings and regards,
Keith Toepfer
Global warming measures should be seen more as environmental regulation than public works investment. If it is necessary it should be done, but it will lower the standard of living . Unlike, say , the clean air standards that increased the costs of driving but paid off immediately in measurable improvements in air quality, the cap and trade tax will increase costs without the objective payoff.
#5 very true, and unless we can bring the other 75% of the world into the ecological band wagon GLOBAL ecological is whipped before it starts!!
#6 – I sure hope so.
Just what we need in the face of a potential depression that will dwarf the Great Depression of the 1930’s—an ecologically-themed fool’s errand. Just so we ensure that we devalue the currency to the maximum extent possible.
Blessings and regards,
Keith Toepfer
All the onus on Global action seems to be directed at the US — the one country that has done more than all the other industrialized nations to clean up the mess created by the industrial revolution. Sure we have pockets (like Los Angelos) where pollution is noted at high levels, but we have the highest clean air, water and soil quality than we have had for the last 50 years. We have more forested land than when Columbus set foot on San Salvador.
Why the hatred of the US? Simple. If the anger is directed towards us, then THEY don’t have to clean up their act, and we become the scapegoat. That’s why so many polluted nations (China, India, Mexico, etc.) were exempt from the Kyoto treaty. And why the US, under the leadership of Bill Clinton and a Democratic Congress, rightly did not sign it.
Jim E.
PS, Human Caused global warming has not been proven! It is a theory being contested by more and more scientists every day.