“As our nation’s first Green president, my mandate won’t be just to ‘create new jobs.’ My mandate, if elected, will be to end mass unemployment … through a Green New Deal … which will create 25 million jobs through direct public works programs and support for cooperatives and community businesses.”
– Jill Stein, USA Today, October 4, 2012.
Last week, the energy view of Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson was reviewed at MasterResource. The wish was that the Republican ticket of Romney/Ryan would take to heart the fundamental free-market approach of Johnson for the benefit of consumers, taxpayers, and the general economy.
Then there is the Green Party, whose government planning approach to energy and the environment lurks in the hearts and minds of Obama science advisor John Holdren and no doubt others deep inside the Administration.…
“We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children. It has to collapse, unless adults stand up and say, ‘This is a Ponzi scheme. We have not generated real wealth, and we are destroying a livable climate.’”
– Joe Romm, quoted in Thomas Friedman, Is the Inflection Point Near?, New York Times, March 7, 2009.
“Is there any more single-minded, simple pleasure than viewing with alarm? At times it is even better than sex.”
—Kenneth Boulding (1970), p. 160. [1]
Are free-market optimists the dumb ones who jump off tall buildings and report that everything is fine, even breezy, on the way down? Or are those who fear, rant, and make this analogy bungee-jumping with reality?
The optimists have been jumping off buildings ever since Robert Thomas Malthus’s An Essay on Population was published in 1798–and not hitting the ground.…
“While energy is needed to fuel a modern society, government should not be subsidizing any particular form of energy. We oppose all government control of energy pricing, allocation, and production.”
– Libertarian Party Platform (2012)
While Romney/Ryan haven taken a lead in many polls over Obama/Biden, Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson is polling well ahead of Green Party candidate Jill Stein for third place. If you add the Libertarians to the Republicans, the majority widens against the Democrats and Greens. Greater economic and energy freedom anyone?
Today’s post examines the Libertarian Party platform on economic liberty, energy, and the environment. Next week, the Green Party’s Green New Deal will be studied.
The LP platform begins with this statement on economic liberty:
…Libertarians want all members of society to have abundant opportunities to achieve economic success.