Capitalism will Fix Climate Change, not Socialism
One of the affects of the climate change issue is not so much how it impacts the climate but how it has transformed politics. The idea that CO2 emissions are changing the world’s climate, presumably for the worse, has driven normally marginal politicians around the bend.
The Green New Deal is a prime example. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, first presented the idea as a way to save the planet less human civilization fall into ruin in ten to 12 years. In fact, with it’s call to end air travel, end the cattle industry, and get rid of all fossil fuels, the Green New Deal looks like something that would come out of a dorm room after the bong pipe has been passed around once too many times.
Naturally. Sen Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont has presented his own version of the Green New Deal. The Bernie plan calls for a lot of things, but at its core is the elimination of all fossil fuels. Also, as it turns out, Bernie would get rid of the nuclear power industry, despite the fact that it does not emit greenhouse gasses.
Roger Simon, writing for PJ Media, noticed one disturbing aspect of the Bernie Green New Deal. Bernie tweeted, “Fossil fuel executives should be criminally prosecuted for the destruction they have knowingly caused.”
Simon compares Bernie to Eugene Debs, the frequent socialist candidate for president in the early 20th Century. He is wide of the mark. The socialist senator from Vermont sounds more like Lenin than anyone who rose out of the American political system. He has a hint of fury in his prose, of the sort that can send people to a Gulag, if not before a firing squad if one is not careful.
Fortunately, Bernie Sanders is not likely to be elected president of the United States, no matter how much some people are mad at Donald Trump. Besides, as I pointed out in a recent piece in the Houston Chronicle, the private sector has got this one. A company called NET Energy has been testing a prototype for a zero emissions natural gas power plant for the past year. The company is preparing to start manufacturing commercial scale models within a couple of years. Another company is devising a way how the same principle can be applied for gasified coal.
No matter what one feels about the climate change issue, and reasons exist to suspect that the matter is being hyped by people who are after political power, a carbon capture power plant that burns fossil fuels makes sense. The captured CO2 can be sequestered and sold to customers who use the gas for industrial processes. Carbon dioxide becomes less a pollutant and more of a profit-making product.
While socialists like Bernie Sanders and AOC rant and rave about how we have to destroy civilization by ending fossil fuels and prosecuting anyone associated with that industry, hard headed, clear eyed capitalists are developing solutions. Thus, it has always been and always will be.
