Hearing the Falconer #21 ~ 29-March-2019 ~ The Green New Deal: Part 1

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world....
from The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats, 1919

The middle of the road is all of the usable surface.
The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

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29-March-2019: The Green New Deal, Part 1
House Resolution 109: The Green New Deal
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From news reports I have gotten the impression the Green New Deal is too extreme. Let's take a look at it and find out for ourselves.

House Resolution 109 has the title “Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.”

This resolution starts with 7 “Whereas's” and then moves into 4 “Resolved's.” For today lets look at the first “whereas.”

The first “whereas” lays out the various problems we can expect to see if global warming increases by 2 degrees Celsius. The problems are based on two reports from 2018.

Among other dire forecasts this section tells us that a 2 degree increase will result in “more than $500,000,000,000 in lost annual economic output in the United States by the year 2100....” That is a predicted loss of $500 BILLION per year for the United States by 2100, which is now about one lifetime away.

Another forecast mentions “a risk of damage to $1,000,000,000,000 of public infrastructure and coastal real estate in the United States....” That is $1 TRILLION.

I don't know what the US GDP will be in 2100 so I don't know how big these losses would be relative to the whole economy. Still, at least in absolute terms these are BIG numbers and BAD losses. It would be too extreme on one side to ignore these warnings. It would be too extreme on the other side to take radical action without understanding what we are doing and what the potential impact could be.

Like good moderates and independent thinkers let's find out more about the Green New Deal. Tomorrow we will look at the 2nd “whereas” in House Resolution 109.

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The "Hearing the Falconer" Library

Books for Independent Thinkers

Moderates: The Vital Center of American Politics, from the Founding to Today

The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made It

Unapologetically Moderate: My Search for the Rational Center in American Politics

The Deliberate Moderate: Influencing From the Middle

Eisenhower: The White House Years

The Constitutional Convention: A Narrative History from the Notes of James Madison

Lincoln

Reflections of a Radical Moderate

Washington: A Life

The Reluctant Republican: My Fight for the Moderate Majority

Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party

Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life

Theodore Roosevelt: A Life

The Three Languages of Politics: Talking Across the Political Divides

Beyond Red and Blue: How Twelve Political Philosophies Shape American Debates