PUBLISHED TO
Republicans have been absolutely apoplectic over the Green New Deal, a
nonbinding proposed resolution outlining, in broad strokes, steps to
tackle climate change. According to a host of extraordinarily crooked
Republicans, from Fox News denizens to the Senate and Donald Himself,
frightening anti-apocalypse Democrats are going to be banning airplanes
(civilian and military alike), banning cows (when cows are outlawed only
outlaws will carry cows), and a wide range of other batshit-crazy
declarations based not so much on a loose reading of the resolution's
text as on free-association improvisation based on individual resolution
words.
According to many of these same Not Insane Republicans, the climate legislation would also cost eleventy blarpzillion dollars, or approximately "$93 billion." Where did they get this number? From yon royal behinde, of course.
None of this actually matters, except as yet another example of how conservatism's bend towards dozens if not hundreds of individual conspiracy theories has rendered serious debate over serious issues impossible. It does not matter what is proposed; the response will be the same frothing about cow-banning and picking our mutant grandchildren's pockets when they ought to be saving up to put 30-foot stilts under their houses.
The Green New Deal is, to repeat, a nonbonding resolution. Passing it will cost approximately zero dollars and zero cents; it exists as a launching point for lawmaker discussions on how to get to a less polluting, less drought-and-famine-dominated future. But even this is met with hair-pulling alarm, with warnings of socialism and revolution and mutters of suspicious foreign "globalism" slithering into your crawlspace in the dead of night, because there's not a damn thing that any non-conservative can propose, in any arena, that will not get the exact same treatment.
Gun safety measures? A plot to leave Americans defenseless when ebola-bomb-wielding terrorists attack through WalMart-linked tunnels. An investigation into Russian election hacking? Since we do not actually care whether or not our elections are manipulated by hostile foreign powers, at least not as of November 2016, it must be a plot by the "deep state" to embarrass Glorious Leader, He Who Solves All Problems. The latest statistics on escalating global temperatures, ocean acidification, and melting icecaps? A plot by the most powerful of all global cabals: scientists and their doctorate students. This is all batshit crazy, and all of it is a staple of nightly Fox News "coverage" insisting that red-blooded Americans are being relentlessly attacked by fact-knowers and fact-investigators, and after several decades of that as preferred method of conservative discourse it has found itself a steady perch in Congress and the White House alike.
So there's no point in bothering with half-measures. Efforts to make plastics more recyclable will be met with the very same screaming about cow-banning socialism. Efforts to end government subsidies for the dirtiest fuels will assuredly be called communism by the companies currently getting those rewards. It's all nonsense and if we're going to be screamed at by insane people no matter what is done, we might as well save the planet for our troubles.
Except Mar-a-Lago, perhaps. Mar-a-Lago we can leave to the sea.
According to many of these same Not Insane Republicans, the climate legislation would also cost eleventy blarpzillion dollars, or approximately "$93 billion." Where did they get this number? From yon royal behinde, of course.
The number originated with a report by a conservative think tank, American Action Forum, that made huge assumptions about how exactly Democrats would go about implementing their plan. But the $93 trillion figure does not appear anywhere in the think tank’s report — and AAF President Douglas Holtz-Eakin confessed he has no idea how much exactly the Green New Deal would cost.Among other "features" of the think tank report: "back-of-the-envelope calculations" lumping in estimates for the costs for non-climate-related Democratic proposals of universal healthcare and jobs programs and a steadfast insistence on adding up only presumed costs while ignoring presumed fiscal benefits. Universal healthcare and jobs programs added up to more than $80 trillion of the $93 trillion estimate, so it’s safe to say that conservatives are being ... insincere ... in claiming that keeping our planet's atmosphere in the habitable zone would cost that upper number.
None of this actually matters, except as yet another example of how conservatism's bend towards dozens if not hundreds of individual conspiracy theories has rendered serious debate over serious issues impossible. It does not matter what is proposed; the response will be the same frothing about cow-banning and picking our mutant grandchildren's pockets when they ought to be saving up to put 30-foot stilts under their houses.
The Green New Deal is, to repeat, a nonbonding resolution. Passing it will cost approximately zero dollars and zero cents; it exists as a launching point for lawmaker discussions on how to get to a less polluting, less drought-and-famine-dominated future. But even this is met with hair-pulling alarm, with warnings of socialism and revolution and mutters of suspicious foreign "globalism" slithering into your crawlspace in the dead of night, because there's not a damn thing that any non-conservative can propose, in any arena, that will not get the exact same treatment.
Gun safety measures? A plot to leave Americans defenseless when ebola-bomb-wielding terrorists attack through WalMart-linked tunnels. An investigation into Russian election hacking? Since we do not actually care whether or not our elections are manipulated by hostile foreign powers, at least not as of November 2016, it must be a plot by the "deep state" to embarrass Glorious Leader, He Who Solves All Problems. The latest statistics on escalating global temperatures, ocean acidification, and melting icecaps? A plot by the most powerful of all global cabals: scientists and their doctorate students. This is all batshit crazy, and all of it is a staple of nightly Fox News "coverage" insisting that red-blooded Americans are being relentlessly attacked by fact-knowers and fact-investigators, and after several decades of that as preferred method of conservative discourse it has found itself a steady perch in Congress and the White House alike.
So there's no point in bothering with half-measures. Efforts to make plastics more recyclable will be met with the very same screaming about cow-banning socialism. Efforts to end government subsidies for the dirtiest fuels will assuredly be called communism by the companies currently getting those rewards. It's all nonsense and if we're going to be screamed at by insane people no matter what is done, we might as well save the planet for our troubles.
Except Mar-a-Lago, perhaps. Mar-a-Lago we can leave to the sea.
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