Ocasio-Cortez is green in more ways than one

Despite being a government-elected official for all of five minutes, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seems determined to bring in a new world order, reason and facts be damned, writes James Morrow.

For years, Labor and the Greens have been working on schemes to hobble the economy in the name of saving the planet.

America’s Democrats have just looked across the Pacific and said, Hold my beer.

If you’ve been following American politics recently, you may have heard of a 29-year-old junior congresswoman named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who has become the darling of the hard-left progressive wing of the Democrats — and a favourite of the media as well.

Yesterday Ocasio-Cortez, or AOC as she’s universally known, launched to great fanfare something she’s calling the Green New Deal.

Invoking everyone from Franklin Roosevelt’s spending during the Great Depression to Kennedy’s call to put a man on the moon, AOC’s plan calls for a mobilisation of “every aspect of American society at a scale not seen since World War 2 to achieve.”

The idea is to move the entire country off fossil fuels, transform the food system, retool the entire economy, and create millions of jobs — all within a decade.

Cars will be a thing of the past, or at least the 99 per cent of autos that run on internal combustion. AOC’s scheme calls for electric vehicle charging stations to be built, though where the power will come from to charge your Tesla is anybody’s guess.

The plan also discusses eliminating air travel — though presumably well-connected politicians and Silicon Valley billionaires will still be able to fly under the new regime.

There’s more than a few flaws in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal. Picture: Win McNamee/Getty

Of course, there will be no new nuclear, so what’s left of the economy may as well be fired on unicorn emissions. In fact, the plan calls for America’s nuclear plants to be decommissioned.

Pretty much every building in the country will be either knocked over or retrofitted to make it “green”.

Meanwhile vegan food will become even more overpriced than it already is as agriculture will be, ahem, “overhauled”, with cattle and other methane-emitting livestock in the frame. Though, like in other countries where the state has taken control of most of the economy, everyone will still be guaranteed their daily bread.

Or, as AOC’s plan puts it, “universal access to healthy food”.

Ultimately her vision goes beyond saving the planet to saving America’s very soul — or as her talking points put it, “promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of frontline and vulnerable communities”.

It’s as if someone took a half-semester’s undergraduate seminar on Jean Jacques Rousseau’s state of nature — the idea that we are all born pure but corrupted by civilisation — and turned it into the platform of a major political party.

Oh, and here’s the kicker: Everyone will get a pay check, not just those “unable” to work, but those “unwilling” as well. The same goes for housing and education.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unveils the Green New Deal resolution. Picture: Alex Wong/Getty Images/AFP

But that’s OK, of course, because AOC tells us that America can just print more money. Which the US can in theory, though no one has answered quite what stops it from becoming in practice like Venezuela.

If you haven’t gotten the idea, the point is to remake society from the top down and the bottom up. The only thing the plan leaves out are heroic posters of AOC everywhere urging Americans on to their clean climate future.

So far, so much Utopianism. But it can’t be dismissed, because faced with the prospect of having to run against Donald Trump in 2020, Democrats have largely abandoned the sensible centre and made a run for the fringes.

Likely presidential contenders Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand have all signed on to the Green New Deal: Ironically, leftists who used to fret that Trump is a dictator-in-the-making are down with a program that would require a vast dictatorial apparatuses to implement.

Meanwhile Hillary Clinton, who is said to be toying with the idea of making a final run against Trump in 2020, has been remarkably silent about the plan.

Wonder why?

James Morrow is Opinion Editor of The Daily Telegraph and co-host of Sky News’ Outsiders.

@pwafork

Originally published as Ocasio-Cortez is green in more ways than one