Kerby Anderson

When Congress reconvenes, we will be hearing more about a new initiative called the “Green New Deal.” Proponents want to overhaul government spending in order to combat climate change. Some of the new Democrat members of Congress want the majority to establish a committee that will be tasked with increasing the size of government and decreasing carbon emissions. In a recent column, Timothy Meads quotes from an article that appeared in Politico. “The Green New Deal resolution calls for a bevy of far-reaching liberal goals to decarbonize the economy within a decade by reshaping the electric power, agriculture and transportation sector.” The article goes on to acknowledge that the plan may even be too much for Democrats in the House and Senate. Nevertheless, “the concept has become an important rallying cry for the need to address climate change.” If all of this sounds familiar, it should. Back in 2009, President Obama’s Reinvestment Act pushed billions of taxpayer dollars toward green companies tasked with a similar mandate. These companies often failed, while their leaders pocketed the cash instead of creating jobs and lasting green energy. A similar plan has been tried in other countries. Tim Worstall, writing in the Washington Examiner, provides some perspective on what happened in Australia and the United Kingdom. When the global recession hit Australia, government leaders thought they could prime the economic pump by spending money to insulate houses and other structures. A Royal Commission documented that financial failure. The British government decided to do the same thing. There are fears that as many as a million houses were ruined by this central planning. The Green New Deal would not be a deal at all. We have seen what happened in Australia, Britain, and the United States when a similar plan was implemented and failed miserably.