The News: According to a new study, the Green New Deal would hit the average family in Wisconsin with more than $40,000 in new costs per year, cause $200 million in losses to Wisconsin farmers, and a $2.5 billion hit to the state’s dairy industry – or $2,000 per cow. The new research is part of a multi-state study on the effects of the Green New Deal authored by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and Power the Future. WILL’s Research Director, Will Flanders, contributed to the Wisconsin analysis.
Green New Deal: Championed by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mark Pocan, and Gwen Moore and Senators Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar, the Green New Deal would radically restructure the U.S. economy to become 100% renewable energy in 10 years. Key provisions of the Green New Deal include:
- Ends the use of fossil fuels and nuclear energy completely in 10 years
- Upgrading all existing buildings
- Eliminating greenhouse gas pollution from farmers
- Overhauling the transportation system, scaling back air travel
The Impact on Wisconsin: The ground-breaking study examined the additional costs from the Green New Deal on electricity, shipping and logistics, new vehicles, building retrofits, decreased crop yields, and a carbon tax on farmers. The results include:
- $75,000 in household costs in year one, and more than $40,000 in each year after.
- $200 million in losses to Wisconsin farmers as a result of reduced corn and soybean crop yields.
- $2.5 billion in costs to Wisconsin’s dairy industry - $2,000 per cow – as a result of net-zero carbon emissions goals.
Read the full study HERE and a one page summary HERE.
The Quotes: Will Flanders, PhD, Research Director, WILL: “While the Green New Deal may play well in Washington D.C., in Midwestern states like Wisconsin, families, businesses, and farms depend on affordable, reliable energy. The Green New Deal would drive middle class families into poverty by imposing staggering annual costs of more than $40,000 per household.”
“The Green New Deal is a politically motivated policy that will saddle households with exorbitant costs and wreck our economy. Our analysis shows that, if implemented, the Green New Deal would cost for American households at least tens of thousands of dollars annually on a permanent basis,” said CEI President Kent Lassman. “Perhaps that’s why exactly zero Senate Democrats, including the resolution’s 12 co-sponsors, voted for the Green New Deal when they had the chance.”
"The Green New Deal would effectively destroy America’s energy industry, and with it, our entire economy," said Daniel Turner, Executive Director of Power the Future. "Right now our booming national economy and record low unemployment rate is driven by abundant, domestic, reliable, and inexpensive energy produced by millions of men and women across the country. Any policy which proposes to reverse this success is a threat to jobs, to rural communities, to national security, and to the very prosperity that Americans are experiencing"
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