Presumably some of you have seen the video of the group of children, and an adult or two, having a conversation with Dianne Feinstein. I never thought I would say anything nice about her but I do appreciate two things.
First, Senator Feinstein argued back when challenged. A lot of Democratic politicians don’t seem to have the guts to do even that.
Second, I like the part (at about the 1:00 point in the short video) where the girl says “We’re the people who voted [for] you.” Feinstein asks “How old are you?” The girl answers “I’m 16, I can’t vote.” Feinstein replies “Well you didn’t vote for me.”
In the rest of it, though, Feinstein pulls rank, reminding them that she is much more experienced (true) and knows more (almost certainly true.)
But she could have done better. Here’s what she could have done. I’ll give the questions. Of course, there would be follow-up questions that would depend on the answers the children gave.
Do you have any idea what the Green New Deal would cost? What if it cost $50 trillion, which is more than double the output of the whole U.S. economy this year? Would you still want to do it? Let’s say that you asked your parents to buy a new wide-screen TV; what if the cost of that TV were $10,000? Do you think your parents would buy it? Shouldn’t we look at the cost of programs before deciding whether to implement them?
Do you think any of you would ever want to fly to Europe? How would you feel if ten years from now the federal government prevented anyone from ever flying to Europe or to anywhere else? Would you feel upset that you would never ever after that be able to fly?
You say that you’re the ones who would be affected. That’s true. You’ll be around much longer than me. If the whole of the GND were adopted or even if some major parts were adopted, what would be the effect on world temperatures?
You say that some scientists have said that we have 12 years to turn this around. Which scientists said that? Are you aware that most scientists who have studied the issue disagree with that?
HT2 Charley Hooper.
Update: Here’s Saturday Night Live’s take on what Dianne Feinstein should have said. Warning: Bad language.
READER COMMENTS
Mark Z
Feb 27 2019 at 6:59pm
I think the key point is to make people understand that the cost is paid in goods and services and isn’t just a number on a scoreboard. Ask them if they’re willing to see the average American’s standard of living reduced to that of the average Guatemalan for the forseeable future in exchange for reducing CO2 emissions by some amount. If no, then you’ve established that cost does matter to them; the only question is finding out precisely how high is too high.
Or, better yet: if Republicans proposed a bargain, agreeing to pass the components of the GND actually geared toward reducing CO2 emissions (let’s pretend to 0 by 2030, for the sake of argument) if Democrats agreed to cut $2 trillion per year of entitlements, would you accept? $1 trillion? How big of a cut to the major entitlement programs would it be worth to trade? I expect it’d amount to less than the $50 trillion ten year cost of the GND (though the American Action Forum claims it could be over $90 trillion: http://reason.com/blog/2019/02/25/study-green-new-deal-could-cost-more-tha).
Mark Bahner
Feb 27 2019 at 9:17pm
Hi David,
Interesting and good comments as usual. 🙂 I’ll probably have more comments later, but I don’t think Dianne Feinstein asked, “Do you have any idea what the Green New Deal would cost?”…
…because I don’t think she has even the vaguest idea herself. Here’s a link to a more complete record of the conversion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd3H1boPIIE
About 2:10 into the video, Feinstein says, “We can’t just take hundreds of millions from here, and hundreds of millions from there…”
My point here is that she used “millions” with an “m.” In order to provide enough subsidies to completely convert the electric grid to renewables and batteries (and to provide reliability equal to what we have today) would take more like hundreds of billions…or even several trillion.
But what I really worry about is that they–the Democrats…I don’t think any Republican currently in Congress is so foolish–would simply mandate conversion and just roll the dice on what would happen. (If there were no subsidies, with present technology, there would be blackouts much more than 10 percent of the time in most parts of the country. Or to avoid blackouts, electricity prices would probably easily have to double.***)
***—>This analysis is a wild guess, but based on much more knowledge of the state of technology for electricity generation than any of the congressional sponsors of the Green New Deal probably have. (My undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering was basically geared towards the power generation industry, and I’ve probably had more than a decade of experience over my career involved in the power generation industry and performing energy analyses.)
Mark Bahner
Feb 28 2019 at 11:03pm
Oooh! Oooh! Oooh! I know, I know!
Mean warming from 1980-1999 to 2081-2100 (let’s call it 1990 to 2090) under the RCP4.5 scenario is 1.8 degrees Celsius. Currently, the U.S. emits about 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. If we cut our emissions to zero by 2030 the global emissions from 1990 to 2090 would be about 8 percent less than they would otherwise be, and so the temperature increase would be reduced by 8 percent. Eight percent of 1.8 degrees Celsius is…approximately 0.14 degrees Celsius less warming.
Linda Cannon
Mar 1 2019 at 9:24pm
I’m a Conservation, Christian Republican. I agreed with Sen.Feinstein ( my Senator) for the first time in my life.
The Children were effectively brain-washed and were very rude. The Adult Group Leaders/Sponsors are responsible.
Mark Bahner
Mar 4 2019 at 10:50pm
It seemed to me that the adult leaders were pretty young themselves. (But that’s probably because I’m old.)
I have little doubt that the children and their adult leaders very sincerely believe that global warming is an existential threat to civilization…and possibly even an existential risk to them personally.
It would be very interesting to me if I could have the chance to talk with them (or hear/see David talk with them).
Comments are closed.