Hearing the Falconer #33 ~ 15-April-2019 - The Green New Deal: Part 7

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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15-April-2019: The Green New Deal, Part 7
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.” Recently we looked at the first "Resolved." Now let's look at the second "Resolved."

The second "Resolved" starts getting into some of the more detailed plans and goals for the Green New Deal. This section calls for a 10-year national mobilization to achieve these goals. It is divided into 14 numbered items. We will just pull out a few of the high lights here.

Some of the items here are probably too extreme. For example, "meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources" and "upgrading all existing buildings in the United States and building new buildings to achieve maximum energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability, comfort, and durability."

It might be more realistic to say we will INCREASE the percentage of energy we get from clean and renewable resources rather than that we will get ALL our energy from those sources. It might be better to focus on ensuring that new buildings will achieve maximum energy efficiency. Trying to upgrade all existing buildings in the country might be beyond our ability.

There are other goals that sound extreme but are modified the phrase "as much as technologically feasible" which makes the goal more realistic and achievable. These include: "removing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing and industry as much as is technologically feasible," "to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector as much as is technologically feasible," "to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible."

Other goals might sound extreme but I think they are just GOOD goals to shoot for: guaranteeing everyone access to clean water and healthy food, and cleaning up hazardous waste sites, for example.

Overall we have big, sweeping, ambitious goals here. Some of them we likely cannot achieve, some of them we can, but working for all of them, whether we can achieve them or not will move us in the right direction.

Anyway, that's it for the second "Resolved." Next week we will look at the third "Resolved."

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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

Truman