“Green” New Deal:
Really?
Some vociferously criticize those who dare to use science to
alert the world to climate change. Proposals charge that those who espouse concerns
about this real-world issue which is waaay past “theory” or “junk science” are loonies. You know the critics - the Hannitys, Carlsons and their (former??) idol, Donald Trump? One
favorite weapon wielded in this battle is to caricature environmentalists as
simply using “climate change” to mask what is really a much larger and even more controversial social agenda,
extending even to the point of socializing not just those things which do work,
such as Social Security and single payer health care initiatives, but extending to socializing the entire national economy. This would be almost laughable
were it not for the so called “Green” New Deal. And lo and behold, what does the Green New
Deal resolution call for?
Some concepts are socialist, yet reasonable and in many
cases already in place or prevalent, such as, paid family leave, paid vacations,
and single payer Universal Health care (which Medicare is, in fact) These are
also absolutely unrelated to climate change – the “green” concept in “Green.”
Others are actually not Socialist at all in concept, yet promising goals. These
include encouraging the refurbishment of buildings in the country to meet
environmental standards, and “promoting justice and equity by stopping current,
preventing future, and “repairing” historic oppression of: (a list of admittedly
historically disadvantaged persons, be it by racial or gender of economic
discrimination).
The first two parts are easy - follow the Constitution.
Period. It already provides the requisite language, and by the extended powers
of the 14th amendment would constrain States to act accordingly as
well. Of course, this would also require some un-legalizable change as well - that
of the human heart, in far too many cases. The “repairing” part is harder, not
only to even define, but to enact in any manner which accomplishes the stated
end. In fact, the entire issue (at least to this writer) of “reparations,” which
to (too) many means only a monetary band aid, would require an H.G Wellesian
time machine to truly implement. Not gonna happen, cannot happen.
The truly lunatic,
and egregiously misguided piece of this litany-like wish list is eliminating
Nuclear Power. This subject is actually why I started this essay, and I shall
return to it anon.
Sadly, The Green New Deal will likely (already has, to a degree)
become a litmus test for would-be Democratic candidates in the 2020 election
cycle. This is dangerous, principally because in addition to the very real probability
of alienating many, otherwise inclined to vote Democratic, it provides demonstrable
evidence of the inflexibility and childish hubris of its proponents. In fact, most of the resolution (GND hereafter)
doesn't even address climate change!! What it does address are the Socialist aims of
a core few involved in its promulgation. These include:
The GND also seeks to “promote justice and equity by
stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of
indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized
communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women,
the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (referred to in
this resolution as 'frontline and vulnerable communities')." This includes
things like jobs for all, subsidies for those who “choose not to work” (Whaaat?”)
and more “levelling” issues based not on merit, contribution, or self- respect,
but on simple existence.
O-kaay! So, what
Ocasio-Cortez and Ed Markey may well have accomplished, along with all of the
Democrats who've endorsed this Utopian wish list, is to make themselves look much
less really concerned about pressing environmental issues, especially global
warming, and much more like fifth grade essayists writing to the prompt “what
would a perfect world look like?” This weakens what the Green New Deal’s name
implies it should be. It almost seems as of “climate change” was just tossed in
to impart the sense that they are totally serious about combating climate
change instead of mandating social “levelling.”
This from Mona Charen (yeah, I know she’s a Conservative pundit, but she
also hates Trump and deals in facts):
“If they were
committed to mitigating what they claim to believe is a looming catastrophe,
you might imagine they would study the question for at least a few minutes,
even swallow hard and make some tough choices about the way forward. That's what
others have done. Recently, the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a
statement noting that the ‘sobering realities’ of climate change ‘dictate that
we keep an open mind about all of the tools in the emissions reduction toolbox
— even ones that are not our personal favorites.’ In other words, they don't like nuclear power,
but they concede that it is necessary.”
Two things here – Ms. Charen is no
climate change denier, in fact, she quite the opposite, which distances her by
light years from the current leadership of her party. Additionally, when the Union
of Concerned Scientists admits we need to revisit Nuclear power, having been critics
for years, we probably ought to listen. It’s pitiful, but, one supposes, predictable, that because
wind and solar, are (correctly) labelled as “zero emission, no carbon
footprint, renewable, etc.”, the average lay person is blinded to the
considerable drawbacks involved, such as cost, maintenance and more prosaic
issues as well.
As Samuel Thernstrom of
the Energy Innovation Reform Project points out, “Renewables get all the love,
but they are simply incapable of meeting the energy demands of our whole economy.”
Period. This won’t change in any realistic or foreseeable future. It's not because
the sun goes down at night and the wind doesn't always blow. It's because in
some regions, the sun gets weak and the wind stops blowing for months at a
time. Batteries are advancing, but not fast enough to make an all-renewables
power grid practical for some time. Additionally, the processes for manufacturing Solar panels are carbon footprint intensive (which we seldom hear).
Here‘s the return to Nuclear power, which is why I really
wrote this: Other technologies are on the shelf and ready to go. Nuclear power,
though it gives many, for some reason, on the left side of the aisle, schpilkis,
is safe and reliable.
Why the resistance?
A double whammy, really. In March,1979, two
singular and seemingly unrelated events occurred. The first-the release of a
film entitled The China Syndrome premiering March 16. The movie’s theme was the
catastrophic failure due to a quake, (not a power plant failure) of a California
nuclear power plant built on a fault line. Twelve days later, and most of a
continent away, there was a reactor accident at Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania.
Immediately
anti-nuclear power forces in America began the chorus of “we told you so.” Plants
under construction were cancelled (at tremendous cost to electric power
consumers, to whom the utilities red ink was passed). The chorus of nay-sayers
were vocal, and they were mostly wrong. What passed unnoticed in all the uproar,
with the movies imitating life, is the following truth: With no real-world experience whatsoever regarding
the sort of conditions eventuating from the disaster, the Three Mile Island (TMI)
accident caused justifiable concerns about the possibility of radiation-induced
health effects, principally cancer, in the area surrounding the plant.
Because
of those concerns, the Pennsylvania Department of Health for 18 years
maintained a registry of more than 30,000 people who lived within five miles of
TMI at the time of the accident. The state's registry was discontinued in mid-1997,
without any evidence of unusual health trends in the area. Indeed, more than a
dozen major, independent health studies of the accident showed no evidence of
any abnormal number of cancers around TMI years after the accident. The only
detectable effect was psychological stress during and shortly after the
accident. The studies found that the radiation releases during the accident
were minimal, well below any levels that have been associated with health
effects from radiation exposure. The average radiation dose to people living
within 10 miles of the plant was 0.08 millisieverts, with no more than 1
millisievert to any single individual. The level of 0.08 mSv is about equal to
a chest X-ray, and 1 mSv is about a third of the average background level of
radiation received by U.S. residents in a year. That figure is “averaged” because smokers get more
internal radiation due to tobacco’s affinity for radium, and those in Denver and
other cities at elevation are above much of the atmosphere’s natural shielding
of cosmic radiation. The accidents make headlines, but nuclear plants have not
been responsible for a single death in the United States.
Simply stated: Three
Mile Island caused no damage to human beings. Even Russia's 1986 Chernobyl
meltdown, which caused worldwide dire predictions of tens of thousands of
cancer deaths in its wake, has shown nothing of the kind. A 2015 National
Institutes of Health paper found that, "In spite of the best efforts of
statisticians and epidemiologists, the claimed Chernobyl-induced cancers and
mutations have yet to manifest themselves." It is worthy of mention that
in Russia – largely still a socialist nation in character at the time, it was
pressure to meet timelines for government ordered operational testing, coupled
with the use of a reactor design which would never have been approved in the USA, as it was at
Fukushima, in Japan, which led to both accidents. Neither power plant design as
they were built, in situ, would even gain consideration in the United States.
On the other
hand, air borne emissions from coal-fired power plants cause serious human
health impacts. Coal-fired power plants emit 84 of the 187 hazardous air
pollutants identified by the EPA Several of these pollutants cause cancer. Air
pollutants released by coal-fired power plants can cause a wide range of health
effects, including heart and lung diseases. Exposure to these pollutants can
damage the brain, eyes, skin, and breathing passages. It can affect the
kidneys, lungs, and nervous and respiratory systems. Exposure can also affect
learning, memory, and behavior.
Coal-fired power plants are also the biggest industrial
sources of mercury and arsenic in the air. Mercury pollutes lakes, streams, and
rivers, and builds up in fish. People who eat large amounts of fish from
contaminated lakes and rivers are at the greatest risk of exposure to mercury.
Nationally, coal-fired power plants account for 81 percent of the electric
power industry’s greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide. These
plants also release smaller amounts of methane and nitrogen oxides.
Unlike Nuclear
plants, even the one which actually had an accident, there are “clusters” and
significantly higher incidences of respiratory diseases, both systemic and
cancers within a 25-mile radius of most coal fired power plants. Yet we saw little
concern from the Trump administration which continued using terms like “Clean
beautiful coal.”
So, if the “GND crowd” are truly serious about the environment
and would like to actually do something, other than chant slogans about
economic “fairness,” why do they harp on Solar (50 cents per kwh) and Wind (11
cents per kwh) while urging the abandonment of Nuclear (6 cents per kwh)? Wanna
make friends of the economically disadvantaged? Halve their utility bill!
Of
course, hydro is cheapest and, like nuclear has a zero-carbon footprint, but
there are only so many places that is works, (Norway, for one, produces all
electrical power with hydro) and oddly enough, Global warming also has some
effect there with decreased snowfalls in some areas, where spring melt fills
lakes behind power dams. Want to see first-hand what this could mean? Go to
Lake Mead and look at the line where the water level used to be and then where
it currently is - it looks like a 30 foot wide bath tub ring.
On the other hand, The
U.S. Navy has been using compact and high power-density nuclear reactors in
submarines and aircraft carriers for decades — without a single accident. Stationary
reactor plants are lower power density and inherently safer for obvious reasons,
such as there is no danger of running into a sea mount. I have actually spent about
five years of my life underwater (I know, ‘splains a lot, huh?) and most of that operating
a nuclear reactor for electrical power and propulsion. I have also been a radiological
controls technician during a reactor refueling overhaul of 17 months. In all
this time working in the field, my lifetime radiation exposure is less than if
I had spent the same period in Denver, sucking up cosmic radiation!
In summary
there are few to no concrete reasons to shun nuclear power, especially if the
climate is a prime concern and you use terms like “Green” in your rhetoric. In fact, anti-nukes are the Anti-Vaxxers of the energy game. The
greatest reductions in greenhouse gas emissions were achieved by France in the
1970s and '80s when the country made a big switch to nuclear energy. They
reduced their carbon emissions by 2 percent per year while still providing
their people with affordable energy.
None of the choices we face are cost-free. Wind is, in
initial cost, stratospheric and maintenance costs are constant and frequent.
(Some wind turbines require multiple oil filter changes weekly, which if you have
many or most offshore as the Danes do, is a bitch.) Solar is decades away from
being really useful when it’s dark.
But if people are serious about addressing
climate change, they must, at the very least, acknowledge the simple reality
that simply stating your aims, whatever they might be, will produce no solutions.
Neither will diluting what you claim as your real aims (“Green”, remember?) by
giving equal weight to disastrously expensive and, in a real world, with real
people, with real human nature, unachievable in any realistic projection, aspirations,
however “noble.”
You cannot simply toss your hair, stamp your foot and demand
that the entire U.S. economy be transformed in 10 years. Evaluate the
trade-offs. One of those, the one which has the most potential to help reach
the carbon aims of your “Green” plan, is acknowledging the real merit of
Nuclear power as well as it’s track record.
Just as an aside – take this with
you - According to the World Health Organization in 2012, urban outdoor air
pollution, from the burning of fossil fuels and biomass is estimated to cause 3
million deaths worldwide per year and 21indoor air pollution from biomass and
fossil fuel burning is estimated to cause approximately 4.3 million premature
deaths. The New London School explosion occurred on March 18, 1937, when a
natural gas leak caused an explosion, destroying the New London School of the
city of New London, Texas. 295 Texans died. There are about 100 deaths annually related to oil
and gas exploration. Imagine if just two had died in a nuclear accident? The horror,
the horror!
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