The column below reflects the views of the author, and these opinions are neither endorsed nor supported by WisOpinion.com.
Modern capitalistic economies, and the representative forms of government with which they are intertwined, have, over the last three hundred years, repeatedly spawned economic bubbles, psychological manias, and a variety of popular delusions. Thus, from the long view there is little new about the economic and political atmosphere we currently inhabit. What we have yet to decipher is how to classify the phenomenon within which we are embroiled.
Some people claim the “Green New Deal” is merely a political slogan hatched by Joe Biden and the Democrats to help them win an election…and an economic program that allows Biden and the Democrats to reward those who helped fund the 2020 campaign. Those who look at the “Green New Deal” from this perspective are apt to classify it as, at worst, a popular delusion. Widespread momentary acceptance of this delusion ended up helping out Biden and a few of his donors immensely, and it didn’t really harm anyone…so what is not to love? People who always viewed the “Green New Deal” through the popular delusion lens are even now beginning to pivot towards new slogans and strategies which could help win future elections and profits.
Other people claim the “Green New Deal” is not an evanescent popular delusion to be managed for political and economic profit, but rather a full-blown psychological mania that has infected influential segments of the population. People infected with this mindset are wholeheartedly committed to devising and implementing policies that will drastically diminish the economic well being of the vast mass of the American population. They are convinced that doing so will reduce carbon emissions sufficiently to prevent changes in temperature around a globe that has often witnessed wide swings in temperature owing nothing to human activities, and in which the USA is only one of numerous carbon emitters. People who view the “Green New Deal” through the psychological mania lens are extraordinarily pessimistic about the future. They think the “Green New Deal” will have zero positive impact on global climate but will nonetheless continue until the USA is reduced to third world status…if not worse.
The final group identifies the “Green New Deal” as a convenient moniker with which to identify a particular economic bubble. In this case it is the bubble that formed over the last decade around an effort to replace fossil fuels with renewables while at the same time maintaining the American people’s current standard of living. The bubble climaxed with an effort, subsidized by the American government, to replace automobiles powered by internal combustion engines with electric powered automobiles. Alas, it was discovered (or rediscovered) that cars with internal combustion engines are in many ways a superior technology to electric cars and are as “clean” or “cleaner” than electric cars (from both an environmental and a moral perspective) when one scrutinizes the entire process by which these competing technologies are produced, fueled, and maintained. In light of the emerging evidence the American Government, which had developed for itself a financial squeeze because, in part, of the subsidies it had advanced during the “Green New Deal,” abandoned the subsidies. As the subsidies evaporated the bubble collapsed and a recession ensued—a recession the length and severity of which has yet to be determined.
I don’t know whether we should call the “Green New Deal” a bubble, a psychological mania, or a popular delusion yet … but I have decided to keep my gasoline powered car, trim my position in Tesla, and add to my positions in Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, and Conoco Phillips. Who knows what comes next?
–Mobley is Thiensville village president.
