A Practical Green New Deal

By now we’ve all have heard the bad news. The world is going to end in 12 years because of air pollution. The only way to stop it is to give all our money to AOC, get rid of all internal combustion engines and fossil fuels along with farting cows, all of which put pollutants into the atmosphere. We must stop having children and turn down our thermostats and crawl under the covers – which may exasperate the previous problem!

But let’s be the adults in the room and see if there is a serious answer to this serious question. Let’s assume that prying a couple of trillion dollars out from under the mattresses of all those greedy billionaires turns out to be feasible without causing World War 3. What would be a effective, practical way to use that pile of cash in the most efficient, highest bang-for-the-buck kind of way?

In America, we have already figured out how to do this. We have had a 70% reduction in air pollution over the past few years and it is mostly attributable to the increased use, not of solar panels, windmills and electric cars, but to natural gas – plentiful volumes of gas accessed with fracking technology. And the source of that nasty, kill-the-planet-in-12-years pollution is not even found in America. It is found in China and India primarily. Recognizing the major sources of the pollution problem makes the solution to reducing it almost fall out of the box! Let’s give those trillions of dollars to China and India along with the fracking technology and let them have a go at cleaning up the world’s skies! Not only would we be putting the work into the hands of people who have a tremendous work ethic (compared to the Americans and Europeans) but when they put their mind to doing something, they get it done! They don’t need to stop and change horses in mid-stream as is always the case in America every 4 years.

Already the switch to natural gas has been noticeable in the Beijing skies. Shuttering the coal burning plants in that country has had a major impact on the PM2.5 pollution indexes in Beijing. Expanding their access and usage of the much lower polluting natural gas will have a large effect on the amount of nasty pollutants entering the atmosphere. Everyone on earth will be able to enjoy life considerable beyond that 12-year dismal deadline that we are told will otherwise be our misfortune. And we could even come out of this crisis looking like the good guys that are truly interested in the greater good of all mankind. As an exceeding wise person once said, “They go low, we go high.” Great! Let’s do that for once. We can possibly save the world by being post-hypocritical. Hmm! Sounds like the name for a new, non-political party!