It called for an awful lot of things to simply ignore the one solution that 1) could get done soon and 2) HAS to get done soon.
Yang’s numbers are right on the money too. Start at 40/ton and increment up to 100/ton over the next decade. Understand that adding carbon output as an important cell on every corporate planning spreadsheet in the US would change a lot of choices that get made every day.
All this talk of banning this and regulating that would take actual decades to implement and wouldn’t do anywhere near as much as capitalism just saying ‘carbon = $$$’.
I’ll tolerate outsider candidates if they bring along good policy. Marianne is cuckoo for cocoa puffs. Bernie already brings enough of that to the race for the whole field.
But It doesn’t call for an awful lot of things. The whole thing is 10 pages. It basically says climate change is really bad. Let’s combat it by reducing emissions via enforcing existing laws and creating new ones. It is completely compatible with whatever you think will work because it doesn’t even specify what it thinks will work. Technically, the bill they passed in the House isn’t even the green new deal. It’s a bill saying a green new deal should be passed at some later time.
It calls for a 10 year national mobilization to deal with climate change. It’s a blatant attempt to kill multiple birds with one stone in a situation where we REALLY have to hit the first bird. Look I support AOC and I agree that almost every issue in the GND (I just read the source material for the first time… and didn’t really change my mind about the issues with it) but I don’t agree at all that we need to prioritize making sure the unions get taken care of, monopolies get busted, or that we fix the housing market using climate change as a driver. Those things are all important and need to happen, but are a totally different conversation from climate change.
It’s a great recipe for making sure business in the aggregate drags its heels on the whole climate change issue in the process of resisting the rest of it (which they are going to resist really hard). Climate change needs a faaaaast timeline and the GND is calling for social changes that will take decades probably. I don’t want to tie those things together and slow down environmental reform.
Looks like all the campaign finance infighting, voter suppression stuff, and fair elections aren’t gonna matter one bit. The FEC is functionally dead as of today.
Then where is it in his climate change proposal? Bernie has introduced lots of bills that haven’t gotten anywhere, and it’s not remotely reasonable to expect anyone to remember any of his many legislative failures when they are deciding whether to vote for him or not.
Instead he’s got something vague and impossible to actually execute on his campaign website right now.
Bernie’s ideas haven’t been as popular as, say, Donald Trump’s, so his bills haven’t gotten very far. People like Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid often don’t even bring his bills up for a vote. That’s the world we live in. Yang and his ideas are much less popular and he won’t be making any laws happen, that doesn’t mean he’s got bad ideas.
FYP. His ideas and the way he communicates them almost play better to the fox news crowd than they do the left. Any scenario where he wins the nomination this is 100% true too. I know a lot of you don’t get it yet, but I’ve been watching his pitch land like a train carrying trucks on pretty hard core conservatives for months. The whole ‘freedom dividend’ and ‘not right not left forward’ messaging fucking works. Like really well. It’s a little scary how easy conservatives are to shift if you just speak their language and make them feel like they haven’t actually changed their mind. This is what watching thousands of hours of propaganda does to a persons brain… it makes them susceptible to propaganda.
These are people who are grateful buyers of Trumps bullshit. They’ll do what you want if you explain it to them in a way they can digest. Yang has absolutely decoded that. For proof watch his Ben Shapiro interview. He basically flips the guy in real time. Truly a weird thing to watch for someone who hates Ben Shapiro and everything he stands for as much as I do.
As far as vague and impossible to execute, I don’t agree with the latter, but I think it’s strategically smart to have plans that are aspirational before they meet the forces of compromise and I’m not sure what you mean by vague. The goals are pretty clear. I don’t think it would be wise to actually draft the legislation for campaigning or much less start trying to write the federal regulations that would actually be the details.
Regardless, Bernie clearly supports a carbon tax and dividend, so that’s good right?
Yes of course it’s good. It’s the only really viable way to get the ball moving and keep it moving on carbon emissions. That’s why the Koch brothers have worked so hard to kill it.
I think you’re right that he probably has more pull with Republicans and Independents than many of the Dem candidates. Like Bernie killed Hillary with independents. That doesn’t help in the primary - not very much anyway. I’m not saying you shouldn’t vote for him if you like him.
