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The following is an opinion contribution and reflects the author’s views alone.
Partisans and pundits have tied themselves in knots over the Green New Deal. Will it bring socialism to America? Is it the most viable solution to a suite of pressing problems? Is there even a problem to solve? These questions are worth answering, but they will not be the focus of this article’s discussion. Instead, we will examine only two factors: cost and benefits.
The Green New Deal is expected to cost between fifty and ninety-three trillion dollars, depending on the analysis used. Of that, approximately 20% is devoted exclusively to environmental measures, which means that the actual cost is approximately ten to eighteen trillion dollars. It is unclear exactly how this money will be spent, but judging by the authors of the proposal, it seems unlikely to be based on free-market solutions. This begs the question: what is the real cost of climate change – both its effects and solutions – and what is the best way to deal with it?
There are various estimates surrounding the cost of climate change to the U.S., ranging from 1% to 10% of GDP. There is also an unquantifiable social cost – say, the anxiety and frustration of having to move from an affected community, or human suffering more generally – that is not accounted for in this figure. We also have to remember that climate change is a global problem, and that the U.S. will probably account for less than 15% of total greenhouse gas emissions in the future. So in order to enact meaningful action on climate change, other countries will also need to step up their efforts to reduce emissions.
How might this happen? The widely-cited IPCC report gives a cost range of 2 – 3 % of global GDP for limiting change to 2oC warming. Others, such as a report from Oxford University, suggest that most of the necessary mitigation on a global scale could be achieved by spending €200-350 billion yearly ($220 – $380 billion USD), which is less than 1% of projected global GDP in 2030. This number hardly reeks of big government, and it seems plausible that most of the mitigation measures could be achieved through free market and innovation-supporting measures such as a revenue-neutral carbon tax. Of course, participation of countries like China and India — which together will account for nearly 50% of global emissions — will be crucial. The U.S. will also likely account for less than 20% of global GDP by then, so there will need to be additional burden sharing. But this is far from implausible: many small NATO countries (like Estonia) invest heavily in their militaries even though they alone are powerless in defending against the enemy, and the same could be said for countries fighting collectively against climate change. Of course, the U.S. will still be an economically-powerful country, so it could use its leverage to encourage other countries to pay their fair share, just as is happening today. We only need look to the E.U.’s proposed “border adjustment tax”, which adds a tariff on products made in countries without appropriate greenhouse gas pricing, as an example of the tools the U.S. could employ. The climate change problem is eminently solvable – all at a fraction of the cost that leftists would have you believe.
All of this makes the multi-trillion dollar price tag of the Green New Deal look ridiculous. But for a moment, let’s ignore the common leftist accusation that conservatives are stingy and assume that they do have big hearts, desiring to contribute large sums of money to improve the welfare of domestic or international communities. What would the Green New Deal buy us instead?
There are many other valuable initiatives that the U.S. government could devote money on. Some are domestic, such as a debilitating opioid and homelessness crisis, while others occur in developing countries around the world. These include childhood malnutrition, infectious disease, low school attendance, and many others. Researchers believe that with the right aid policies, it would be possible to reduce childhood malnutrition by 36% and infectious disease death rates by 10%, as well as reduce the total number of hungry individuals by 200 million. The total cost? $75 billion, which does not even include various other measures, such as basic R&D into climate change mitigation measures. That is less cash than the U.S. federal government spends in two weeks. In short, the Green New Deal would be the most significant misappropriation of “do-good” money in world history, and should be scrapped into the dustbin of history.
The apocalyptic nature of climate change rhetoric may make some of us feel that we should strive to prevent the impending doomsday by whatever means necessary. But we are not facing the end-of-days, not just because climate change is solvable, but because it is solvable on the cheap. Those who wish to establish a climate emergency and let governments engage in previously-unacceptable expansions of state power should take a step back and analyze the cold, hard facts of climate change. Climate change is not an excuse for socialism or for enacting war powers, and the right should work harder to show that there are solutions to the issue that do not involve incursions into personal liberty. Acknowledging this shared reality is the first step to forging workable legislation on this issue.
Jacob Brown ’20 is an electrical engineering major, with certificate in international affairs.
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