
Bernie Sanders unveils $16T 'Green new deal' plan - kaushikt
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/22/climate/bernie-sanders-climate-change.html
======
achow
From Reddit, posted by 'AlarmedScholar':

The most significant goals:

\- Reaching 100 percent renewable energy for electricity and transportation by
no later than 2030 and complete decarbonization by at least 2050

\- Ending unemployment by creating 20 million jobs

\- Directly invest an historic $16.3 trillion public investment

\- A fair transition for workers

\- Declaring climate change a national emergency

\- Saving American families money

\- Supporting small family farms by investing in ecologically regenerative and
sustainable agriculture

\- Justice for frontline communities

\- Commit to reducing emissions throughout the world

\- Meeting and exceeding our fair share of global emissions reductions

\- Making massive investments in research and development

\- Expanding the climate justice movement

\- Investing in conservation and public lands to heal our soils, forests, and
prairie lands

\- This plan will pay for itself over 15 years

[https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ctvmwp/bernie_san...](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ctvmwp/bernie_sanders_unveils_16_trillion_green_new_deal/)

~~~
marricks
Given how cities that transitioned to $15 minimum wage workers did better*
after implementation maybe it's time to try investing in infrastructure and
the working class rather than the 30 years of trickle down economics and
stagnate wages we've suffered from both Republican and Democratic
administrations...

~~~
heartbreak
I'm asking this in good faith. Does the success of a $15/hr minimum wage in
specific cities indicate that it would be successful across the US?

In other words, A) does the local cost of living matter to its success? and B)
does the limited rollout keep inflation in check?

Is YC still studying UBE in an attempt to answer questions like these?

~~~
notus
Yes the local cost of living matters, however it also depends on how you
define success. If the minimum wage constitutes an overall increase in wages
then you could consider that successful by some metrics. However if success is
defined by people not living paycheck to paycheck and feeling financially
secure then it would be unsuccessful...even at 15 an hour. We're setting such
a low bar for ourselves still at 15 an hour IMO. People will still live
paycheck to paycheck at that wage.

~~~
swsieber
If people live paycheck to paycheck despite wage increases, doesn't that
indicate that wages aren't the root cause?

------
Hongwei
"The proposal opposes nuclear energy and carbon capture and storage
technology." Ugh

~~~
MSM
Do you see nuclear as a stopgap between coal and renewable, or do you think
that 100% renewable is not going to be possible?

I'm with you as being pretty pro nuclear, but if I'm making a plan to spend
$16T, why even bother with half measures; just go straight for the future
ideal.

~~~
toomuchtodo
You can replace all current nuclear generation in the US with solar and
batteries in less than 2 years, for a lower cost (nuclear generators take at
least 10 years to build, and almost always go over budget; some are never
finished and abandoned [See Duke in Florida, ratepayers got soaked on a
nuclear plant they gave up on]). Your point is spot on.

Nuclear lost (for commercial generation; edge cases like the Arctic circle and
marine applications are still valid). It’s time we get over it and build as
much solar, wind, and batteries as we can, and get Americans trained to deploy
these technologies. Anything else is deck chairs on the Titanic. Drive out
fossil fuel use through any means necessary.

~~~
calvinbhai
Do you mean, replace just the nuclear with solar in 2 years, but keep the rest
of the infra (Coal and other source of power generation) as is?

If so, it can only mean exponentially more coal/gas power generation to supply
power during peak demand. How does that help?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Coal is going away regardless due to it not being competitive against natural
gas, no solar required. I’m saying nuclear should stick around until it’s the
last base load left, but not bother building one more nuclear generating unit.
Safely extend operating licenses whenever possible.

Batteries and their lower costs will meet us at peaking needs in 3-5 years.
There are hundreds of GWs of battery manufacturing capacity coming online over
that time frame. Every million Tesla EVs is 10GW of controllable battery
storage load on demand (example used only because I’m familiar with their
presentation on it, and have seen it’s orchestration demo).

~~~
calvinbhai
I agree

------
partiallypro
I don't understand why politicians always put forth "plans" that would never
pass. Why not put forth realistic options that would pass? It's not wonder we
can't tackle anything, much less climate change. Everyone goes so far on the
spectrum that they can't garner votes for anything. It's ridiculous. This
pleases the base, it does nothing more. And even at that, I'm sure the far
flungs will say this isn't enough. Come to the middle.

~~~
save_ferris
Because politics is largely a negotiating game. It's really not that different
from haggling. Formal bills are adjusted in order to be passed, which usually
involves making members of both major parties happy.

The other reason is that there's a large consensus that believes that we're
not in a climate for moderate politics to thrive because some members of
congress have a tendency to negotiate in bad faith. There's a widely held
belief on the left that the GOP cannot be negotiated with, and any kind of
call to the center requires giving them more power.

~~~
partiallypro
Of course it's a negotiation game...but that tactic works a lot better when
the stakes aren't so public. In this political world, you have now tainted
your proposal and any future proposal you make because the media on the other
side will paint anything and everything as a slippery slow toward your
original goal or plan. So this particular tactic doesn't work here, not
anymore.

~~~
save_ferris
> The media on the other side...

If politicians like Sanders created their proposals based on what the other
side was saying, we’d never have major discussions around our culture, policy,
or anything else of consequence. In this hyper partisan, bifurcated media
environment, we’re constantly bombarded with accusations of Nazism juxtaposed
with accusations of Red-scare socialism. I don’t know many people that
actually care what the other side is saying because we tend to focus on what
our side is saying.

The big problem I see is that people want proposals to be perfect on arrival,
which isn’t possible because A) perfect is subjective and people disagree on
details, and B) in our legal system, just like life, nothing ever goes exactly
to plan. As I said earlier, legislation is often passed by making trade-offs,
and the ideal is often a moving target.

We shouldn’t look at proposals like this and expect them to come out exactly
the way they’re advertised because our system has never, ever worked that way.

Look at the early drafts of Obamacare compared to what was eventually passed.
Was the ACA a failure because dems made serious concessions around several
aspects of the bill? How often do you hear that Obama was a failure because he
wasn’t able to pass the ACA as he originally envisioned it? Never.

~~~
partiallypro
No one expects a proposal to be perfect on arrive, they want it to be
realistic and grounded in reality.

------
mcorning
Something along these lines is necessary to save our planet. Cutting off the
$650B in fossil fuel subsidies over the course of 15 years pay for a little
over half of the plan.

If we can hand over trillions of dollars to save big banks, we can hand over
what is necessary to save the planet.

~~~
blackflame7000
Because there is no guarantee any of that money will actually save the planet
but there is a guarantee that all that money will be missed in other places.

~~~
yifanl
If an effort like this isn't made, then it's guaranteed we don't save the
planet.

Yes, it sucks, but someone has to be the first to bite the bullet.

------
manfredo
Some quick napkin-paper math as far as how much electricity we could generate
if this $16T was spent on nuclear energy:

The levelized cost (that is, including overhead costs of plant construction)
are still lower than solar. Less than solar and about the same as wind, except
that nuclear isn't intermittent which eliminates the need for energy storage.
At $120 per megawatt hour, this $16 trillion could be used to generate 128000
terawatt hours of electricity [1].

Let's put this in more concrete examples. The total us electricity generation
is ~1 terawatt. The Palo Verde plant generates ~4 gigawatts and cost $12
billion in 2018 dollars [3]. At this cost/capacity ratio, $16 trillion could
be used to generate just over 5 terawatts. Over 5x the current capacity of the
US power generation grid. What's even more impressive is that this is a one-
off plant design, which is much less cost effective than serial plant
production (like what the French did during the 70s and 80s) where a handful
of designs are created but dozens or more plants are built using those
designs.

Granted electricity isn't the only form of energy consumption, but it is a
huge source of carbon production that can be replaced.

1\.
[https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/electri...](https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/electric-
generating-costs-a-primer/)

2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_Unit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States)

3\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station)

~~~
cma
Does that pay for the insurance liability?

~~~
manfredo
The amount that insurance will cost depends on how much we want to insure
against, there's no fixed value for that. Currently each US nuclear power
plant has a minimum of $375 million in insurance, as compared to total plant
costs often in the several billion dollar range. If those estimates above
didn't include insurance, the total cost would not increase very drastically

Contrary to popular belief nuclear power plants have historically been the
safest forms of power generation. Even more so if you restrict the analysis to
nuclear power plants in developed western countries, where there are zero
deaths due to radiation and only a few during construction. We could take
1/5th of the 16 trillion to construct the plants and have over 12 trillion
left over to insure them.

~~~
cma
Insurance is only that cheap because the liability is artificially capped to
$1billion by the Price Anderson Act, when in disaster scenarios it can far
exceed that (Fukishima didn't impact a major population center and is already
$187billion). There are many plausible multi-trillion dollar scenarios.

~~~
manfredo
That $187 billion figure is worthy of skepticism. Remember, the entire
earthquake and tsunami is estimated to have caused US $235 billion of damage.
That nearly all of this is going to reactor cleanup is suspicious. Especially
when the 3 Mile Island meltdown and subsequent cleanup only cost $1 billion.
It seems likely to me that this $187 billion figure includes damage caused by
the tsunami, and is not specific to the nuclear meltdown.

~~~
cma
In Wikipedia it is broken down without the cost of the tsunami damage, though
it is an estimate from 2016:

>Japan's economy, trade, and industry ministry recently (as of 2016) estimated
the total cost of dealing with the Fukushima disaster at ¥21.5 trillion
(US$187 billion), almost twice the previous estimate of ¥11 trillion (US$96
billion). A rise in compensation for victims of the disaster from ¥5.4
trillion (US$47 billion) to ¥7.9 trillion (US$69 billion) was expected, with
decontamination costs estimated to rise from ¥2.5 trillion (US$22 billion) to
¥4 trillion (US$35 billion), costs for interim storage of radioactive material
to increase from ¥1.1 trillion (US$10 billion) to ¥1.6 trillion (US$14
billion), and costs of decommissioning reactors to increase from ¥2 trillion
(US$17 billion) to ¥8 trillion (US$69 billion).

Three Mile Island is one where the liability cap wouldn't have mattered so
much, but compare Chernobyl. And compare plausible scenarios affecting
populated areas depending on the winds, etc.

The liability cap is so extreme, it is as if you had to only buy insurance to
cover your healthcare deductible, and the government paid for all the actual
insurance.

~~~
manfredo
Interesting why one nuclear meltdown costs 200x more than another, that is a
disparity that would be worth digging into. Inflation accounts for 10x of that
at most.

The nature of insurance is that th cost of it is amortized. One individual
plant may create a hundred billion dollar disaster, but spreading this risk
over hundreds or thousands of plants results in a liability rate that is not
so large per plant.

~~~
cma
Depending on the winds and nature of the incident I could imagine one costing
>1000X more than another (causing evacuation of a major city, etc.)

Three-mile island was a 5 on the INES scale, Fukushima a 7:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Sc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Scale)

Tokyo (the most populous metropolitan area in the world) was considered for
evacuation, and had things gone a little different it may have been evacuated.

~~~
manfredo
The cost of decommission alone is 70 times higher, differences in th
surrounding geography don't explain this discrepancy. It's worth pointing out
that from what I can tell, this money hasn't actually been spent it's a
forecast. Furthermore, a competing party held power in Japan at the time of
the accident vs. when this projected cost was drawn up. There's a conflict of
interest in that exaggerating the damage is politically advantageous. I'm
interested in seeing how much money actually gets spent.

~~~
cma
And what are your thoughts on Fukushima being a level 7 vs Three Mile a level
5? Is that just a political distinction?

~~~
manfredo
Yes, it is mostly political. What is the difference between a "major" release
of radiation and a "significant" release of radiation? These levels have
vague, subjective descriptions.

------
misiti3780
Question: If he is dropping 650B in FF subsidies, does that mean we can assume
the price for gas prices, flights etc will all go up respectively ?

~~~
rileyphone
Yeah, as they should.

~~~
misiti3780
it's fine for people that can afford it, i suspect a large group of people in
the US cannot afford gas prices to double/triple

~~~
bradlys
Housing prices will likely adjust accordingly too though. Houses further from
jobs will decrease in value because it costs so much in gas just to get to it.

------
nodesocket
I respect and listen to Bernie even though I have very different ideologies
and fiscal policy. Recently he went on the Joe Rogan podcast for over an hour;
it is a great source of information on his politics:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2O-iLk1G_ng](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2O-iLk1G_ng)

------
zaroth
NYT appears to link to a scanned copy of the plan;

[https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/1654-bernie-
sanders-...](https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/1654-bernie-sanders-
green-new-deal/761873c26ec4075c609b/optimized/full.pdf#page=1)

------
abeppu
The article mentions that the plan doesn't include a carbon tax, and that one
of Sanders' advisors says we need "more than just a carbon tax", and then
gives a favorable quote from that advisor. I can understand why a carbon tax
might not be _enough_ given the current state of affairs, but is there a good
argument against including it in a comprehensive plan other than that people
dislike the idea of new taxes?

------
derg
Good. This is the kind of total war ramp up to help attempt to save the planet
that we desperately needed to do years and decades ago.

------
api
I don't like this. I like the sentiment but repeat after me: _politicians
should never ever insert themselves into engineering!_ The only exception
would be politicians who are engineers, and there are not many of these in the
US. Bernie Sanders it not an engineer.

When they do we tend to get ignorant choices (because 99% of them are not
scientists or engineers) and corruption. A great example is our biofuels
programs that gave us corn ethanol, which is literally the absolute worst
possible biofuel for EROEI. Another example unrelated to energy is the Space
Shuttle. NASA would have built a much more affordable and reusable orbiter had
Congress not mandated a bunch of extra capabilities that were never used,
specific contractor mandates, and other meddling that ruined the design.

Just tax fossil fuels and other carbon emitting activities. Do not allow
politicians to get involved in picking the alternatives or they'll pick the
wrong ones or be influenced by lobbyists for the most expensive or politically
well connected ones.

I also don't like the categorical rejection of nuclear. I'm not strongly for
expansion of current-generation nuclear power but I am also not at all opposed
to more research on better ways of exploiting fission energy. I'm also
strongly in support of increasing funding for fusion energy given the progress
that's occurred in areas like compact superconductors and computer modeling.
If we can solve fusion we'd at the very least have a source of base load power
for regions with strong base load power demands and that lack large scale
renewable resources sufficient to meet that demand.

~~~
danhak
> politicians should never ever insert themselves into engineering! Never.
> Ever.

So Manhattan Project and Apollo program were mistakes, in your opinion?

~~~
api
In those cases politicians set the goals. They did not pick how it was to be
done. If NASA came back and said "we think we can put humans on the moon with
a big catapult" _and they were right_ , we would have built a big catapult.
They set the goals and let the real professionals do the work.

What I dislike about this and other proposals is politicians specifically
saying what technologies should and should not be used. That's the road to an
expensive failure. Instead we should just tax carbon and set emissions goals
and let the people who know how to build stuff build stuff.

~~~
danhak
Thanks for clarifying that's a fair point.

------
bbmario
> and commits $200 billion to help poor nations cope with climate change.

Why?

~~~
av2
If I had to guess: Justice. Wealthy nations like ours are the primary driver
of climate change while poor nations will suffer the bulk of the damage.

~~~
nostromo
US and EU have reduced carbon emissions in the past decade. Meanwhile China
almost doubled their emissions, and now emits more than the US and EU
combined.

China now burns more coal than _all the other countries of the world,
combined_.

Any plan ignoring China's dramatic carbon emissions growth (for example: the
Paris Accords) will do nothing to stop climate change.

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sleepysysadmin
Just gave the leadership to Biden.

------
greenail
The worst thing to post or upvote is something that's intensely but shallowly
interesting: gossip about famous people, funny or cute pictures or videos,
partisan political articles, etc. If you let that sort of thing onto a news
site, it will push aside the deeply interesting stuff, which tends to be
quieter.

~~~
greenail
can someone explain why I got downvoted for quoting the community guidelines?

