STUDY: Green New Deal Would Have 'No Effect' On Climate Change

The impact would be "barely distinguishable from zero."

Green New Deal proponents, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), have long claimed that the GND, an expansive, costly, and dramatic change in the American economy (and in American infrastructure), would be worth it if it such extreme measures would in the long run lessen our impact on climate.

Now, though, a new study from the American Enterprise Institute questions whether the Green New Deal would have any real impact on climate change at all — leaving it little more than an effort to dismantle industry.

The AEI report breaks down the GND into bite-sized policy proposals, assessing not simply the cost, but the proposed effectiveness of each legislative item to address the core goal of the GND: reducing American carbon emissions to a "net zero" by 2050.

The researchers' ultimate conclusion? "It is not to be taken seriously."

The "net zero" emissions proposal is particularly nonsensical, AEI warns, given that such an effort would require an estimated $490 billion per year investment in "green energy" and a sharp decrease in land available for agriculture. It also fails to address a very specific problem when it comes to U.S.-specific plans for climate change abatement: it fails to consider that the U.S. is only one of several heavy carbon-emitting nations, and that the vast majority of industrial pollution comes from the developing world and from countries like China and India.