Control, Not Science: The Democratic Socialists Are Now Reviving the Green New Deal

We might remember as well the state of affairs vis-à-vis pollution in the old Soviet Union, which was likewise pretty bad. It's always like that in communist nations. Other than putting on a show for Western lefties, communist countries generally don't give two hoots about pollution, the environment, or the climate. Just look now at the pace with which China is still building coal-fired power plants. 

So, when American lefties start preaching climate panic, you can tell how serious they are about it. And this comes at a time when some of the older-school Democrats, the ones that used to be the mainstream, are backing away from overt climate scoldery, perhaps realizing that 1) all the dire predictions aren't happening, and 2) realizing it's a losing issue.

It was “all of the above” on the way up, and it is “all of the above” on the way down. Lisa Friedman and Brad Plumer’s “Democrats Once Vowed to Stop Oil and Gas. Now They’re Not So Sure” (New York Times, June 11, 2026) is worth revisiting to document the sea change that has occurred in the Democrat party away from climate alarmism and forced energy transformation.

“As the midterm elections approach, many leading Democrats are rethinking their approach to climate change,” the article begins.

Democrats and environmentalists are shifting their approach to climate change, as the economic fallout from war in the Middle East has reshuffled the politics of energy. With voters worried about spiking gas prices and inflation, some of the party’s leaders argue that they should stop trying to throttle oil and gas, which heat the planet when burned. It’s a rejection of the approach taken during the Biden administration, which treated climate change as an existential threat and tried to stop new drilling and pipelines.

Now, though, as an illustration of the growing civil war in the American left, the loony wing of the party, the "democratic socialists" (commies) are doubling down on stupid, and are trying to resurrect Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's (NY-14) Green New Deal. 

Politico’s E&E News published an article Friday with a headline that should scare the bejeebers out of anyone who hopes for sanity in energy policy: “Progressives look to recharge the Green New Deal for the AI era.”

The piece quotes Melat Kiros, the socialist who unseated longtime incumbent Democratic Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette in the party’s recent Colorado primary as saying, “The Green New Deal, frankly, is a floor now, not a ceiling, for what we need to actually be looking at doing.”

This, of course, parrots the classic mantra of every generation of new socialists, who, when presented with the reality that socialism fails disastrously everywhere it is tried, invariably claim that it just hasn’t been done the right way, and they know better.

But they never really do know better.

It's always like that with commies; they always think they can do better with the right Top Men in charge, the right Top Men being whatever particular commie or group of commies are trying to seize control at any given moment. There's no small amount of hubris apparent in these knuckleheads.

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And, in the case of these new, American commies, who seem to be hoovering up some Congressional seats in a few deep-blue districts, is getting support for their agenda, including the resurrected Green New Deal, from a familiar source: The Soros empire.

All the various socialist candidates quoted in the E&E piece are supported by The Sunrise Movement, a far-left activist NGO funded mainly by leftwing billionaire interests like the Rockefeller Foundation, the Tides Foundation and the Soros-affiliated Open Society Policy Center. What a surprise – it’s like a who’s who of far leftwing astroturf protest funders who have been behind every U.S. protest movement since Occupy Wall Street.

Why does this matter? Because of what they are proposing. The Green New Deal, or at least the original version AOC and her partner in crime Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) were proposing, would have drastically reduced the quality of life for millions of Americans, in the name of climate change. The original bill would have prohibited ordinary Americans from things like air travel for vacations or family visits, what they called "discretionary." All travel, in fact, would have been restricted, even personal driving. There's an apocryphal tale often attributed to the Duke of Wellington, in which he supposedly vigorously opposed the growth of passenger railroads in Britain on the notion that they would "promote unrest by allowing the lower orders to travel too freely about," and that's the attitude on display here.

The Green New Deal would also have ended any American development of natural gas, petroleum and coal resources, with never a care as to how American industry would replace all of the materials derived from petroleum that our modern society depends on; when one of these kooks learns how to make a smartphone from wood and leather, I'll be interested in seeing it. And, last but not least, the Green New Deal would have forced most Americans into unreliable, intermittent sources of electricity: Solar and wind.

The politicians who supported this, of course, wouldn't have had any restrictions at all. That, too, is how communist governments always work. 

Always.

I've been pointing this out for years, and it still rings true: These proposals aren't about the environment. They aren't about the climate. The fact that the dire predictions keep failing, over and over, is proof enough of that. No, for this new wave of commies in American politics, it's all about control. Like the rumored attitude of old Wellington, they consider us, the American people, all of the American people, to be the "lower orders," and they don't want us traveling too freely - or thinking too freely.