The 'Green New Deal' is a prescription for poverty

Craig Richardson

At its core, the Green New Deal is a measure aimed at eliminating all fossil fuel and nuclear energy and “meeting 100 percent of national power demand through renewable sources” within just a 10-year time frame, according to a draft legislative text. Behind the rhetorical smokescreen, the ugly truth is that a mandatory shift to higher-cost solar and wind energy before the market is ready to support those, as the Green New Deal does, would serve as a regressive tax on the poor. Ironically, it would be minorities and the poorest of the poor who would be disproportionately harmed. Low-income households already pay 7.2 percent of household income on home energy costs, more than three times the proportion paid by higher-income households on average, according to an American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy report. According to that same report, low-income African-American and Latino families are particularly hard hit by any increase in utility costs. Higher home energy costs mean that lower-income families would descend yet deeper into poverty, because they would be forced to allocate an even greater share of their limited incomes to home energy costs. Increases to energy costs in public schools and hospitals do nothing to help meet the needs of the poor and minorities. And for older Americans, higher-cost energy may present stark choices between medicine, food, or staying warm in the dead of winter. The Green New Deal's arbitrary and reckless 10-year time frame for moving all energy production to “green” sources would require many reliable plants to be taken offline far ahead of their scheduled retirement from service. This would needlessly drive up energy costs still further. New solar generation, according to a 2016 study by the Institute for Energy Research, is already estimated to be five times more expensive than existing fossil fuel-powered electricity. New wind power is 3.5 times pricier. California has long been at the forefront of solar and wind mandates in the U.S., and it shows. Household electricity bills there are roughly 40 percent more expensive than the national average and are the ninth-most highest in the nation. California has the nation’s highest poverty rate (50 percent higher than Mississippi) and high utility rates only exacerbate the suffering. One million California households now live in energy poverty, according to the Manhattan Institute, a condition in which families must devote a tenth of their income for home energy expenses, excluding gasoline and other transportation-related costs. Of course, the Green New Deal championed by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez goes well beyond how power plants generate electricity. It would also include trucks that transport food and cars that take Americans to work. This makes its impact even more dramatic. Just ask France how well skyrocketing gas and diesel prices have worked out for its working class...MORE