It is hard, sometimes, to realize how different today's world, and economy, is from what it was when I (and most of us here) were children. We're the frogs that have been boiled. It was just as difficult, I think, for our parents to realize how profoundly different the world (and economy) became after their childhoods. My parents were products of the Great Depression and the Second World War. It struck me last night that I was alive when the Wall went up between East and West Germany. My childhood was the Cold War - and I'm, essentially, a late "Boomer". My children are both post-Soviet collapse products, so never experienced the USSR. The next generation is post 9/11. And now it is post-economic collapse of 2007-8. Those events have profoundly affected the understandings of those generations, and shape their thinking. (Although I hate to bring him up, this explains Trump's thinking - he hasn't adapted to the post-Wall world, and still thinks like a 1950s child, albeit a privileged one.)

The Green New Deal is an expression of the thinking of the current generation. Yes, there are some politicians, economists, pundits and thinkers who understand the transition, but the leaders are really much younger, and truly think differently. Personally, I think we should follow their lead, as it is now their world. Conservatism, really, is in the Boomer headspace, and needs to adapt or die (really, just die). Reagan was already an anachronism when he became President, and George Bush was the last of the WWII generation of Presidents. His son should have been the last of the Vietnam era Presidents. I really like Joe, and Elizabeth, and Bernie, but their time has passed. Don't trust anyone over 55!

I am almost in agreement on the age thing and have stated that elsewhere. We currently have a president that is 72 years old. I am becoming more and more convinced that he is not always telling lies but simply telling us what he actually believes. He actually believes, for instance, they he is, and has been, building his wall! He has even been photographed standing next to one (but Obama built it which, I am sure, he thinks a canard).

In other words we have a president that is losing any grasp on reality in favor of a reality he THINKS is real! If the congress had half a brain then both sides would legislate a law that would force the president to be examined by a group of shrinks to make sure he actually is living in reality or his reality.

This is, incidentally, the only possible explanation of why he keeps on insisting he is building walls! On top of that it would also explain a number of his other claims that are just flat out wrong. We are also told that them that work with him don't dare point out any of the constant references to things that are simply not true. I could list the but, I think, you all have heard, or witnessed this.

I believe that Donald Trump is clinically insane! There is no other possible explanation for much of what comes out of his mouth! https://www.oregonlive.com/trending/2017/09/is_donald_trump_actually_crazy.html

The Green New Deal Could Launch Republican Climate Solutions (TIME). Now, there's a thought.

Let me start with this...
They're just going to quietly start believing in climate change...?

As if they hadn't been making fools of themselves for completely denying it.

It's only when lobbyists start whispering in their ears that they begin to believe.

We all want a sustainable economy and don't want to bankrupt them. But they gotta stop the coal mining and oil drilling and move into providing clean sustainable energy. We know it's the future, they know it's the future. It's not like we really have a choice in the matter.

It's kind of like the old joke about masturbating making you go blind. So I'm just going to do it until I need glasses. Coal, oil, and natural gas have been our easy bootstrap to sustainable energy sources. But we need to stop using the bootstrap before it kills us.

I'm heating my house this winter with a combination of passive solar (I open the South-facing windows during the day.) and livestock heat. 6 big dogs and two people put out a surprising amount of heat, and I have really good insulation.

The recommended GND should be a litmus test for the 2020 elections. Screw party purity and primary this type of entrenched deadwood in the party. If it's a DSA candidate all the better. They have the cojones to push for change as opposed to these tired millionaires squatting a senate seat.

Senator knows best

Somebody needs to do something for feck's sake, we are running out of time!

https://youtu.be/CadP4dRemYk

I'm afraid we need several feet of sea level rise and a bunch more super hurricanes before anything gets done. I think some countries will still be burning coal until after we are all dead. A big breakthrough could be a standard Thorium molten salt reactor design that is put in the public domain. Or maybe a standing wave depleted Uranium reactor. We have enough depleted Uranium to last a very long time. Every country now burning coal could construct them cheaply and transition away from coal for economic reasons and because they would put less radiation in the atmosphere than burning the equivalent amount of coal.

I think Bill Gates is trying to do something along those lines.

Pfffffft....sh*t in one hand and invest a billion in nuclear energy in the other and see which one fills up fastest..

Spend a billion building a massive solar power/wind farm on an abandoned soybean field near a city and watch how fast that billion comes back to you. That's how the Green New Deal works. It creates thousands of clean jobs and provides free clean energy. And it's shovel ready.

A billion in nuclear eh? Does it all go to one university where one day they will build the Bill Gates Center For Cultural Diversity? Or does it go to a thousand different places and go down a thousand different drains. And get a thousand buildings named for Mr. Gates.

I once was young and idealistic like you and believed all the things I read in Popular Science and Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine. Now I see that it's a race for survival in the near term.

We may see viable nuclear reactors which provide unlimited free energy from a unit the size of a shoebox within the next few centuries, Bill Gates donation to the cause will be long forgotten by then.

But first...we have to survive. That's where the Green New Deal is focused. On survival, on lifting up those trampled by economic inequality and on cleaning up the mess that Bill Gates and his fellow billionaires made while creating an existential threat to humanity.

Nuclear energy is not and will likely never be "green".

The #1 energy effort that we can do now, and make money in the process, is conservation. I firmly believe thar we could get by very satisfactorily on 50% of our current consumption levels. That is the same thing as doubling the available energy while spending half as much.

Unfortunately, what with our human inclination to zomboid behavior, all we can do is believe that making more energy is the final solution (which it will be...).