Shades of Green - Pt. 2

On energy, environmental and economic policy, the Green Party and Democratic Party bear a spooky resemblance.

In Part 1 of Shades of Green, we explored Jill Stein’s Green Party campaign and the Green Party platform. In Part 2, we look at similarities between Stein’s Green Party and the energy, environmental and economic policies of U.S. Democrats.

"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." – Maya Angelou

Ban fracking. Nationalize the energy industry and public utilities. Declare a “climate emergency.” Abolish the Electoral College. Increase the number of Supreme Court Justices. All of these are components of Jill Stein’s campaign and the Green Party platform.

Exactly how different are these ideas and policies from those put forth by the EcoLeft wing of the Democratic Party? The question is more than rhetorical. A little stroll down memory lane helps.

When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) introduced her “Green New Deal” (GND) Resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives in February 2019 (which Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren co-sponsored in the Senate), Vice wrote:

“..there’s an excellent way to ensure that the public has ownership in Green New Deal assets, and has agency in a world with the Green New Deal: Nationalize public utilities.”

In summer 2022, Madison, Wisconsin news site Cap Times published an OpEd by Wisconsin Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Tom Nelson with the title Let's Nationalize the Oil Industry.  He wrote:

“The oil industry is on the ropes and it's only a matter of time before it is bailed out or nationalized…. The industry needs to be put out of its misery and placed into the hands of the people.”

In April of 2020, Oregon Democratic Congressional candidate Albert Lee suggested nationalizing utility Pacific Gas and Electric:

What about jobs and “economic security”? A summary overview of AOC’s 2019 GND Resolution included an eerily similar idea to the Green Party’s “guaranteed livable income above poverty”: One of the GND overview’s bullet points read “Economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work”. 

The “unwilling to work” phrasing set off alarms. Within a day, AOC’s office took down that summary and awkwardly tried to explain it away.

The GND Resolution melted faster than a witch doused with a firehose. When Mitch McConnell cleverly forced a cloture vote to advance it to the floor of the Senate, all but four Democratic members of the Senate, including many co-sponsors, voted “present” (a way of not voting for your own proposal without voting against it). The four Democrats who did not vote “present” voted against the Resolution.

The small portion of the electorate who even remember the “GND” are most likely to associate it with AOC and a handful of hard-left Democrats. As a public service, we remind readers that the GND had 101 co-sponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives, all of them Democrats.

AOC, Markey, and Warren are far from the only EcoSocialists who have pushed some form of universal basic income (UBI). In summer 2019, Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) released her bill, offering a $3,000/month per adult UBI.

In May 2020 Senator Kamala Harris introduced a temporary UBI bill which would have extended most U.S. households even more than the $2,000/month proposed by Independent Senator Bernie Sanders during the Covid-19(84) pandemic. Harris proposed $2,000/month per adult, and added another $2,000/month for up to three children. A mother, father and three children could have received $10,000/month in “UBI”.

How about a “carbon tax” (or its sneaky cousin, “cap and trade”)? Former U.S. Senator and Democrat nominee for President in 2000 Al Gore was proposing one or the other in the early 2000s. The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES) introduced by Democrats Henry Waxman (CA) and Edward Markey (MA) was the first serious U.S. legislative attempt to impose a “cap and trade” system for carbon emissions, similar to the European ETS (“Emissions Trading Scheme”). Democrat Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) refuses to give up. In 2019 he introduced the “American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act of 2019” with a $52 “fee” on coal, oil and natural gas per ton of CO2 emitted by their combustion.

What about “banning fracking”? In April 2015, Democrats Mark Pocan (WI) and Jan Schakowsky (IL) introduced the “Protect our Public Lands Act”. Giving credit where due for brevity, their bill required fewer than 250 words to ban fracking on public lands. 38 Democrat in the House of Representatives co-sponsored the bill.

During a Democratic presidential town hall on climate change hosted by CNN on September 4, 2019, during her first Presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris said, “There's no question I am in favor of banning fracking."

Of course, now that she has an actual chance to win the Presidency this week, and that chance likely depends in large part on the state of Pennsylvania (where fracking on private lands in the Marcellus shale is a significant economic factor) her position has shifted. Genuine change of heart based on learning new information? Or an act of political expediency, likely to revert to her 2019 position if elected? You be the judge.

In February 2020 Congresswoman AOC introduced another bill aimed at targeting hydrocarbon energy. Her “Fracking Ban Act” would have prohibited federal agencies from issuing permits for the expansion of fracking or fracked oil and natural gas infrastructure, including infrastructure intended to extract, transport, or burn natural gas or oil. The bill would also ban all fracking on onshore and offshore land by 2025. Twenty-one Democrats co-sponsored the bill, which never advanced beyond the committees to which it was referred.

What about the idea of the President “declaring a climate emergency” and invoking the Defense Production Act? Surely this one has to be unique to the Green Party, right?

In summer 2022, after failed attempts to advance climate legislation in the Senate, Democrat Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) and Jeff Merkley (OR) implored President Biden to declare a climate “emergency” and use the Defense Production Act to ramp up domestic production of nonreliable (“renewable”) energy like solar. 

In May 2023, Congressional Democrats Earl Blumenour (OR) and AOC (NY) and Independent Bernie Sanders introduced the Climate Emergency Resolution, which demands that the President wield both existing authorities and emergency powers to unleash every resource available to mitigate and prepare for the climate crisis. The resolution was co-sponsored by 82 Congressional Democrats.  Blumenour’s website lists six Senate co-sponsors, all Democrats - Richard Blumenthal (CT), Jeff Merkley (OR), Edward Markey (MA), Elizabeth Warren (MA), Cory Booker (NJ), and Peter Welch (VT).

How about “100% clean renewable energy” and “net zero by 2035”, a date which for some inexplicable reason seems to keep slipping by five years? The following excerpt comes from the same summary overview of AOC’s “Green New Deal” that her office quickly took down over the “unwilling to work” flap:

There is no time to waste.

·       IPCC Report said global emissions must be cut by 40-60% by 2030. US is 20% of total emissions. We must get to 0 by 2030 and lead the world in a global Green New Deal.

In 2021 Representative Frank Pallone (D-NJ) introduced the cleverly named Climate Leadership and Environmental Action for our Nation’s Future Act or the CLEAN Future Act. The bill had twenty-one co-sponsors, all Democrats. It called for national goal of net zero CO2 emissions by 2050, but with a special caveat for retail electricity producers:

By 2035, the suppliers must provide 100% zero-emission electricity or demonstrate alternative means of compliance.

Net zero electricity by 2035 or, what? Cap and trade?  Like the other Progressive regressive EcoStatist bills mentioned above, Pallone’s was going nowhere.

What about some of the other eyebrow raising proposals in the EcoSocialist Green New Deal, like “abolish all student debt?” The Biden Administration has been fighting that battle since its early days, and was still at it just two weeks ago.

How about “abolishing the electoral college”? Is the Green Party flying solo here? Hardly. On October 8^th, speaking at a California fund raiser, Kamala Harris’ running mate Tim Walz said, “I think all of us know the Electoral College needs to go.”

Finally, the Green Party platform lists expanding the Supreme Court from 9 justices to 18, with rotating terms. If this sounds vaguely familiar that’s because it is. In April of 2021, frustrated with President Trump seating three Supreme Court Justices, Democrats thought it would be a good idea to “pack the court. Senator Edward Markey (MA) and Congressman Hank Johnson (GA) introduced companion bills in the Senate and House to add four new Justices to the Supreme Court (with 6 Conservatives and 3 Liberals at the time, 3+4=7, and 7>6). Johnson’s Bill had 59 co-sponsors, every one of them Democrats. Markey’s bill was co-sponsored by fellow Democrats Elizabeth Warren (MA) and Tina Smith (MN).

Undeterred, they tried again two years later. The “Judiciary Act of 2023” was once again sponsored in the Senate by Senator Ed Markey (MA) and co-sponsored by Elizabeth Warren (MA) and Tina Smith (MN). Johnson reintroduced the bill in the House and had sixty-four co-sponsors, all Democrats, including cohorts Jerrold Nadler (NY), Adam Schiff (NY), Cori Bush (NJ), and The “Squad”: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortex (NY), Pramila Jayapal (WA), Rashida Tlaib (MI), and Ilhan Omar (Mn). The proposals were the same: expand the Supreme Court by four seats to thirteen total Justices.

The Green Party makes no bones about its EcoSocialist ideology. Their Malthusian, “planet before people” energy and environmental policies are plainly, if not proudly evident.

Many Democrats in the House and Senate publicly distance themselves from their own EcoSocialist, Malthusian leanings. But their actions speak louder than their words.

Ban fracking? Nationalize key industries? Declare a climate emergency? Thwart nuclear power? Commit to “net zero” by 20(fill in the blank)? Impose carbon taxes or cap and trade? Using the “climate crisis” to justify universal basic income-type benefits (that have nothing to do with climate or the environment)? Pack the Supreme Court?

All of these proposals have been put forth by both the Green Party and the Democratic Party in one form or another over the last decade. Any minor differences are semantic in our view.

As regards energy, environmental, and economic policy, Jill Stein and Kamala Harris share the same EcoStatist ideology under the pretense of an existential climate crisis both claim but about which neither understands a damn thing. In this regard, the same can be said about the environmental wing of the Democratic party and the Green party. They are merely different shades of green, a distinction without a difference.

From a practical standpoint, the impact on the lives and living standards of average Americans would be indistinguishable under the energy, environmental and economic policies of either leader or party. Whether a Democrat running for President in the twenty-first century would say the quiet parts Jill Stein and the Green Party say out loud matters little. Kamala Harris’ flip-flop on fracking is a perfect example.

Perhaps no one drove this point home better than Josh Fox, director of the anti-fracking documentary film Gasland. The creative license Fox took to try and turn America against fracking made him a celebrity “environmentalist” in the vain of Mark Ruffalo. In an article titled I’m an Environmentalist. That’s Why I Can’t Vote Green published in The Nation two days ago, Fox implored Green Party voters to cast their ballots for Kamala Harris.

We close by noting that nuclear energy could be the one area in which U.S. Democrats and the Green Party are materially different, but it is too early to tell. The Green Party in the U.S., to its credit, has remained consistent in its attempts to rid the world of nuclear power since its founding. Democrats, who in the 1960s and 1970s became nuclear energy’s biggest foes, appear to be having a change of heart.

AOC visited Fukushima, somehow survived and seems to have a new appreciation for nuclear energy. California Governor Gavin Newsom helped save Diablo Canyon, the state’s last operating nuclear power plant (generating ~10% of the state’s electricity). Governor Whitmer took a victory lap after helping to save the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan. In a letter, Pennsylvania Governor Shapiro recently implored the Regional Transmission Operator (RTO) for Pennsylvania PJM to fast­ track Three Mile Island’s Unit 1 restart after Microsoft and Constellation Energy announced their $16 billion deal to do so. Even Illinois governor JB Pritzker lifted Illinois’ nuclear ban (albeit for small modular reactors) less than ten months ago.

At the startup of Vogtle Unit 4, second of the two new nuclear reactors brought online in Georgia recently, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm crowed (emphasis added):

To reach our goal of net zero by 2050, we have to at least triple our current nuclear capacity in this country. That means we’ve got to add 200 more gigawatts by 2050. Okay, two down, 198 to go!

It almost doesn’t matter whether Democrats’ newfound fondness for nuclear power is rhetorical (and illusory) or genuine, and whether their “environmentalist” supporters try to obstruct its rapid deployment with the same old lawfare playbook used to obstruct hydrocarbon energy. At the end of the day, Big Tech’s bigger purse - and the fact that its perceived economic opportunities hang in the balance – is likely to be what drives nuclear energy’s return. Because that’s going to take a couple of decades, Big Tech is going to burn a whole lot of natural gas. In the meantime, the EcoLeft wing of the Democratic party and environmental NGOs are going to be forced to just get the hell over it.

Greens proudly declare themselves EcoSocialists. Democrats publicly attempt to avoid the label but embrace similar policies.

In terms of energy, environmental, and economic policy, these are party distinctions without a meaningful difference. They are merely different shades of Green.

“Like” this post while you can still afford the electricity to do so.

Leave us a comment. We read of all of them and reply to most.

Subscribe to environMENTAL for free below.

Share this post. It helps us grow and we’re grateful for the assist.