The Green New Deal is not Green

The Green New Deal is not Green

By Stephen W. Houghton II

            What ever one thinks of the “social justice” and “welfare” provisions of Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, as a program to reduce carbon emissions it is totally inadequate.

            Those who are worried about climate change cannot be expected to be taken seriously if they allow their own prejudices to influence what they claim to be emergency legislation. A program to reduce carbon emissions that does not include the words “nuclear fission” cannot claim to be based on science. 

            The plain fact is that wind and earth based solar power are inadequate for base line power generation. Until such time as nuclear fusion can be made work, if it even can be, hydroelectric and nuclear fission are the key to a low or zero emissions electric supply. That is not to say that wind and solar have no place in energy generation, especially if paired with something like hydro energy storage, but that place will be relatively small at least in the near term.

            That Ms. Ocasio-Cortez cannot even mention fission indicates that she, and a significant portion of the environmental movement, is not serious about climate change. Paired with her proposal to ration car and air travel, this suggests that she is driven by a fundamentally Malthusian mentality.

            This is made even clearer by the omission of the words “space industrialization” from her proposal. Consider that the energy output of the sun every second is 678,000 times the amount of power humanity uses in a year. In space, there are no clouds to block the light so it can be used for base line power generation.

            Further, space mining will provide nearly unlimited amounts of metals and other elements that can be used to create orbital habitats many thousands of times the area of earth for us and the rest of the biosphere to inhabit. But more importantly in this context, it can be used to create solar shades that could block part of the sun light not used for photosynthesis, thus lowering global temperature.  

            Since the value of the hundred most valuable known asteroids is believed to exceed $10 quadrillion, more than a hundred times annual world GDP, the probability that asteroid mining will not begin in the next two decades is essentially zero.

            Some might reasonably ask why we should spend money to build sun shades instead of just reducing carbon emissions. The answer is that first, space industrialization will make us all richer and second that they will have to be built eventually anyway as the increasing solar output over the next few hundred million years will render the earth uninhabitable without them. The only question is will we build sun shades as a wealthy space faring society or a poor society crippled by excessive regulation.

            Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and a part of the environmental movement seem to have not noticed that Elion Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the developers of other reusable launch systems have solved climate change as a long term problem. Now all we have to do is not cripple the space industry and use nuclear fission to mitigate the possible damage from carbon dioxide emissions. But we will not do either, if those posing as the champions of the environment will not face the facts.

             Hopefully I am misjudging Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and she will take the above as friendly criticism and adopt her plan accordingly. If she does she will be attacked by the “sustainability” cult, it is a cult since it denies the second law of thermodynamics, for heresy. But if she believes that global warming is as serious a problem as she states, then that will be a small price to pay.