U.S. Senator John Boozman (R-AR) released the following statement after the Senate rejected the Green New Deal in an overwhelming manner:
“We have an obligation to cut emissions and move our energy consumption toward renewable sources. The U.S. can be proud of the efforts we have made to move in this direction, but more work remains to fully achieve these goals. The Green New Deal is not going to get us there.
Instead, the Green New Deal is an all-encompassing, far-left wish list masquerading as a clean energy plan. The authors of this massive—and extremely expensive—plan suggest the Green New Deal can cure all of society’s ills within a 10-year time frame. What they won’t tell the American people is how exactly it will work or where they intend to find the trillions of dollars it will cost. They don’t have answers for either question.
Real solutions to our energy and environmental challenges should be driven by positive incentives, research and development—not heavy-handed regulation. Furthermore, our strategy should focus on addressing those specific issues and not be used as a pretense for the government to involve itself in almost every aspect of its citizens’ lives.
We need to embrace an all-of-the-above approach to energy security that includes wind, renewable biomass, hydroelectric and solar power. The solution absolutely needs to also include an expansion of nuclear power, which the Green New Deal mysteriously leaves out.
Policies that incentivize production and usage of renewable forms of energy are the way forward to responsibly balance our energy needs with our concerns for the environment. The Green New Deal, and its laundry list of undeliverable promises, is not a serious solution to any of the supposed injustices it proposes to fix.”
