Is There a Conservative Case for the Green New Deal?

What did you say, Jamie? The Greenland thing? You wanted to buy Greenland? Oh, that was it! Talk about that, Ris. That is hilarious. That's right! Before you put the Trump Hotel in the middle of the Greenland, I promise I'm not going to do this. Come on, man. I know. First of all, buying the Greenland thing is a great move if global warming is real. If that becomes a part of the United States, then you can go up there. You don't have to worry about it. Yeah, well, they say, I think that they want rights, not to Greenland, but also there's a movement in the Arctic. They want to do this to Greenland. Come on. That shit is hilarious. That is pretty funny. But you've got to click on it, though, Jamie, so you can get it. Joe, they want to do oil drilling now in the Arctic and shit. He doesn't say Trump in that photo. You know how Twitter is. They only give you three quarters of the picture. Yeah, they want to do oil drilling. But I mean, just the whole global warming is terrifying to me. The whole climate change thing is terrifying to me. But what's more terrifying, I think, than anything, that is a hilarious picture. That is funny. What's more terrifying than anything is that some people are resisting it and it's become politicized and some people are just buying whole hog into anything that gets said that supports climate change or supports the concept of climate change and that we've gotten into this thing where it's an ideologically based sort of subject. Okay. Can I try to frame it in a way that I hope I can convince some conservatives watching this? Yes. Please. Because I would love to have the chance to do that. So what I would say to them is, first of all, there's a lot of issues that you care about that this will impact. So there was a report that came out about a year ago which found that basically large swaths of the Middle East will be uninhabitable at a certain point because it would just be too hot for human beings to live there. Well, we were talking about that yesterday. They have Saudi Arabia in summer where a lot of people from Saudi Arabia would come over to LA during the summer because our summer ain't shit compared to theirs. And that's the thing is you think there's a refugee crisis when it comes to what's happening in South America. You think there's a refugee crisis in Europe when it came to what happened in Syria and Iraq. You ain't seen nothing yet. So if you're somebody who fancies yourself against immigration or a hardliner on immigration or against helping refugees or whatever it might be, just think about what happens when you multiply what's happening now by a thousand, okay? Because that's what's going to happen at some point. It's just a matter of when. And the other point I would make to them is this. People like to make fun of the Green New Deal and try to pick it apart. If we talk about the Green New Deal and only define it as basically a new new deal. So the New Deal FDR put that into place. This was trying to fight back against the Great Depression, try to get people employed, try to fix the country, right? And FDR kept getting reelected because FDR was beloved by the entire country because he was fighting for regular working people. That was his thing. And that's when the Republicans were like, geez, we really should have term limits because we can't beat this guy. What if when we talk about the Green New Deal, we're highlighting the fact that yes, we're going to move towards renewable and green technology. Yes, that's going to be a large part of what we're doing. But the whole point, guys, is millions and millions of jobs created for regular people. The whole point is to improve this country, to fix this country, to try to make it so that our infrastructure is better than the rest of the world. What if instead of looking at this as like, oh my God, this is going to be such a drain on the economy and what's going to happen to the deficit? How about you look at this like an economic opportunity? Because what's going to happen in the future, Joe? There's inevitable patents that are waiting to be had for all these green and renewable technologies. We could lead the world on that front, or we could lag behind Russia. We could lag behind China. We could lag behind everybody else and be stuck in what would effectively be a stone age compared to them. So how would they encourage this industry to flourish? Will it be subsidies? What do you do to get these industries to innovate and to pump a shitload of money into green technology? It has to do with government contracts. It has to do with, I mean, first and foremost, before we even do the right thing, you have to stop doing the wrong thing, which is stop giving $4 billion a year every year as a subsidy at ExxonMobil and they hilariously say, oh, they need this money because it's for research and development. No, it's not. They don't need it for research and development. They're one of the most profitable corporations on the planet. They could do their own research and development. So stop subsidizing fossil fuels. And then, yes, what we need to do is invest in a variety of different things that show a little bit of promise. Some things won't work. Okay. Some things will work. And then we move forward from there. And so that's where you could get the hyperloop all around this country. What if all this stuff was built and brought about because we did a massive investment in a green new deal? Then everybody would talk about how it's a wonderful thing and how we're finally leading the world and in our rightful place. I find it hilarious that guys like Trump and guys like Joe Biden, by the way, love to say, there's nothing this country can't do. And then in the next sentence, they go on to tell you a thousand things that they think we can't do and that we shouldn't do and we shouldn't even try. Well, what technologies have you heard, if any, that are being even proposed to mitigate global warming or climate change? Is there anything? Well, there's the classic ones that I think are more effective than people give it credit for, like solar is one that's effective that people, I don't think it gets its due. But then there's other things like thorium. Now let me just say I'm not talking about a thorium car because there was a car that was proposed and it apparently was total bullshit. They couldn't make a thorium car work. But thorium is basically the way it's been described to me as nuclear energy without the downside of like it could melt down and destroy everything. That's the way it's been described to me. So a nuclear powered car? No, not a car. We're talking about power for the energy grid. Why not a nuclear powered car? Well, the thorium story that everybody got pissed over was because they were trying to make it seem like it was right around the corner or they had the plans and it just wasn't and those people were full of shit. But that doesn't mean thorium is bad and totally off the table. It just means that that specific car they were talking about was nonsense. But if you have thorium reactors, it's basically like meltdown proof, nuclear facility. That's how it's been described. Now, I'm an idiot. I have no idea how far off we are from actually developing that. But I do know that we need to invest in this and other things that show potential. I mean, that's the only way to move forward.