The Green New Deal

The Great Depression officially ended with World War II, which resulted in the deaths of 70 million people, the Holocaust, and the Atomic bomb. The current global economic crisis will put more people (in a more crowded world) out of work and destroy more wealth than the events of the 1930s. Revolutions often begin as food riots. Signs of unrest are in the news everyday - small and often politically energized - but anti-social none-the-less. How does the current crisis end? At the April G20 Summit, UN representatives will present a "Green New Deal" agenda. The world has an opportunity to focus stimulus spending on infrastructure and technology for renewable and cleaner energy. Over $2 trillion dollars in global stimulus spending can be classified as either "Green or Clean", and perhaps more stimulus can be focused on this problem.

There are still a few people who think Global Warming is either myth or Mother Nature, and therefore does not warrant mankind's intervention. The International Conference on Climate Change, ICCC held in New York last week, attracted a few hundred attendees. Scientists who are either funded by big oil, or blinded by their data. Apparently big oil has switched agendas - at least with their advertising dollars - to a "responsible energy" mandate. The real question is not whether global warming is man-made, but rather can man-made technology be used to ameliorate what is clearly happening to our world climate-wise. If the pursuit of the answer puts people back to work, and puts the world on a path to less finite-and-dirty-oil dependency, the world will be better off. And it beats the hell out of WWIII.

BTW, useful technology also emerged from WWII: nuclear power generation, radar (which directly led to communications protocols that enable mobile telephony, commercial jet aviation, and rockets (which enable global satellite communications. The technology side effects of the Green New Deal may not be realized for decades.