by E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow Greg Walcher
As appearing in the Daily Sentinel

The proposed “Green New Deal” has attracted enormous attention in the past few weeks, mostly negative. In fact, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s promise of an early vote on the measure is widely seen as a stunt, designed only to embarrass Democrats. Some Democratic senators are scrambling to create an alternative to substitute before the vote, while most simply want the vote called off.

The growing controversy almost makes me proud to have warned about this several weeks ago, although at the time most of us viewed it only as an extremist wish-list from one especially far-out freshman legislator (Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez). Many were prepared to dismiss the proposal as summarily as Speaker Nancy Pelosi did, except that several presidential candidates have now endorsed it, and others are calling for more in-depth discussion of it. OK.

Simply put, the energy and environment aspects of the plan are unserious. Many observers call the dream of eliminating carbon emissions “pie in the sky.” I don’t like the reference, because I like pie. More to the point, that expression implies a dream that may be impossible to achieve — but is a dream nonetheless. The “Green New Deal” is no such thing…

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