The Editor's Perspective: Impossible promises blunt moralizing in Sanders’ climate plan
Prominent among the many ways liberal scolds make themselves insufferable is by moralizing about others’ past infractions of retrospectively defined rules.
If insufferability were the only criterion for the US presidency, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) already would occupy the White House.
Campaigning for the Democratic nomination, Sanders on Aug. 22 proposed a Green New Deal loonier than any of its forebears.
Sanders would spend $16.3 trillion seeking to ensure that all electricity in the US be generated from renewable energy by 2030 and that the economy be decarbonized by 2050.
From those soaring delusions the Sanders program spirals through promises about ending unemployment, providing “a just transition” for displaced workers, and contributing $200 billion to international responses to climate change.
And despite the snub to affordable energy and all the spending, Sanders insists the economy could grow, replete with green jobs.
With more such hopeless promises comes the moralizing.
“The fossil fuel industry has known since as early as the 1970s that their products were contributing to climate change and that climate change is real, dangerous, and preventable,” the Sanders document booms, promising litigation. “Yet, they kept going.”
In the 1970s, the world was in panic over oil supply. Oil executives of the day could not have curtailed production out of concern for climate change or anything else. They’d have been prosecuted for price manipulation.
Even without this historical context, Sanders’ suggestion is vacuous.
The oil and gas industry can’t halt work at any time for any reason without creating massive hardship. To bloviate otherwise is beyond foolish.
When important and responsible businesses learn their work causes environmental harm, they look for ways to lower the damage and keep working. Oil and gas companies are doing that. Among other measures, many of them link salaries to carbon-dioxide cuts.
Sanders grants no credit. He instead accuses oil companies of “criminal activity.”
Like all liberal scolds, the senator refashions history to suit his radicalism. He makes promises he can’t keep, too.
(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted Aug. 23, 2019. To comment, join the Commentary channel at www.ogj.com/oilandgascommunity.)
Bob Tippee | Editor
Bob Tippee, Editor of Oil & Gas Journal, has written the weekly magazine's editorials since 1981. Since 1996, he also has written a weekly online feature called "Editor's Perspective," which appears first on OGJ Online and later in the print magazine. A member of the OGJ staff since 1977, Tippee has been chief editor since January 1999. He holds a degree in journalism from the University of Tulsa.