The Patriot Post® · Sanders Shows the Way Backward

In last month’s Democrat debate, Bernie Sanders identified the supposed “greatest threat facing our planet”: climate change. We guess he gets credit for treating it with the severity Democrats insist it deserves, but his plan to remake the entire economy through top-down government mandates is the real threat.

The Wall Street Journal relays the specifics:

> He is proposing a 40% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030, and an 80% reduction by 2050, which is significantly more than the up-to 28% cut by 2025 that President Obama has pledged at the Paris climate confab.

> To reach this developing world level of CO₂ emissions, Mr. Sanders would: impose an unspecified carbon tax; ban all offshore drilling and fossil-fuel leases on federal lands; stop ‘dirty pipeline’ projects; ban natural gas and oil exports; force states to ban fracking; ban mountaintop coal mining; impose a new fuel-efficiency standard of 65 miles per gallon by 2025; spend ‘massive’ federal dollars on subsidies for wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels, home-efficiency programs and energy storage; federally underwrite electric-car charging stations, high-speed passenger and cargo rail, a smart grid, and clean-energy job training; shut down the nuclear industry; and provide ‘clean energy funding’ to the rest of the world.

You won’t ever hear Sanders honestly disclose the costs of his plan — either the price tag or the lost jobs, not to mention the lowered standard of living. But while he might appear to be advocating some sort of futuristic utopia, the reality would be more of a throwback to the past. And they call themselves “progressives.”