It’s Not Easy Being Green

Nicolas Loris / October 27, 2008

Kermit the Frog poured his heart out when he sang, “It’s Not Easy Being Green.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. In fact, it’s quite costly to be green. But policymakers and environmentalists alike are purporting the ‘Green Revolution’ as the solution to both our financial woes and our environmental concerns.

And it’s not just the United States. The United Nations is proposing an environmental ‘New Deal’ that would “be similar to Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal which helped the US recover from the Great Depression of the 1930s.”

First, the reality is that FDR’s New Deal did not help the U.S. recover from the Great Depression but simply made things worse. Second, the only thing a green ‘New Deal’ will do is lead us down a Green Road to Serfdom. (Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom is a telling portrayal of what collectivism in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany can lead to: impoverishment and oppression of freedom.)

More regulations. Higher prices. Less freedom. All for a negligible change in the global temperature. Sounds great.

The Center for American Progress reports that building solar, wind, and expanding mass transit and infrastructure will not only reduce emissions but stimulate our economy. So and outrageously expensive cap-and-tax scheme that reduces jobs and increases energy costs across the board will be a remedy for a weak economy?

Green is the color of money, too, which makes you wonder if this was really ever about the environment. Mary Frances Repko, a senior policy adviser to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) asserted that

there is a growing tide even among House leadership about looking at a carbon bill as a way to raise revenue for other things.”

But there’s a problem with this. Taxing and spending does not create wealth – it merely transfers it. It’s the same reason the second stimulus package is a bad idea. And if you think that the companies being taxed by carbon legislation will be passed down to the consumer, go to the head of the class.

The threat of climate change legislation is very real and very scary. If implemented, the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill that died on the Senate floor this past June (more…)