What does a world with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions look like? According to some on the far left, it’s a world where airplanes don’t exist, cars are replaced by electric trains, and fossil fuels are made obsolete by clean, renewable energy produced by wind turbines and solar cells. As an ancillary benefit, this ‘Green New Deal’ world provides a high-paying job for everyone, thereby achieving social justice. What stands between this utopia and our carbon-begrimed, economically-unjust present? Only a lack of political will and the nefarious lobbying of big oil, big coal, and big gas.

MI senior fellow Mark Mills will explode this fantasy. More so than at any time in decades, the U.S. today is awash in cheap, affordable energy—just as Mills predicted it would be in his 2005 book, “The Bottomless Well.” Further, as Mills notes, any government-imposed transition from hydrocarbons to wind and solar would sink the U.S. economy (and with it, chances for economic advancement), as the cost of energy from renewable sources is—and will continue to be for the foreseeable future—prohibitively high.

Please join us on March 18th for Mills’ spirited analysis of these and other aspects of the ‘Green New Deal’ and our energy future. See you there!

communications@manhattan-institute.org