[Ed. note: Part I on Monday examined the Green Party’s Green New Deal; today’s post examines the rest of the Green Party’s platform with energy and the environment. With Obama’s reelection, it should not be forgotten that the philosophy and positions below–although not feasible for wholesale implementation–remain end-states for John Holdren and other Administration officials].
In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949, the Ministry of Truth had three slogans: “WAR IS PEACE,” “FREEDOM IS SLAVERY,” and “IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.” Enter the deep-ecology agenda, which is about controlling your resources and your life in the name of freedom for spaceship Earth.
Imagine Green Orwellian Freedom. Some of us would work in the public sector as green planners. More would work for government as enforcers, making sure the private sector is acting “sustainably.”…
[Editor Note: In “Speaking of Power” (October 2012), POWER editor-in-chief Robert Peltier takes issue with a recent analysis concluding that the EPA’s new CO2 rule for powerplants was inconsequential. Since his editorial was published, it was reported that a second wave of CO2 powerplant regulations are in the works.]
Cato Institute senior fellows Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren suggest in a recent Forbes blog that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) carbon pollution standard for new coal-fired power plants (Standard) is a meaningless skirmish in President Obama’s “war on coal.” But while the Standard may have no tangible impact on the industry in the future, it has great strategic benefit to the administration.
Going from Facts …
The blog posting, “President Obama’s Alleged ‘War on Coal’—Climate Change Edition,” correctly assesses the situation: First, the EPA’s recently proposed Standard covers only new coal-fired power plants built 12 months after the Standard goes into effect, perhaps in 2014, probably in 2015.…
“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.…