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There was a very interesting study published by some scientists at Oxford about a week ago. It affirms something that's been suggested a few times, namely that switching to green sources of energy will actually be cheaper than sticking with the old-fashioned stuff. How much savings do they anticipate, assuming a full-fledged effort to convert? How about $12 trillion worldwide by 2050?
This is really the argument that environmentalists should be making. That is to say, people who care about the planet, or who fear the consequences of climate change, are already on board that there's a problem. Making this about dollars and cents, and about profit, has the potential to win over some sizable number of holdouts.
And you know who, in particular, should be making this argument? Jill Stein (who is the actual subject of this item). She is never, ever going to win an election as a Green Party candidate, whether it's for president or for Vice Associate Dogcatcher of East Cupcake. The power of established third parties is that they have a semi-seat at the table, and can potentially steer the national dialogue a bit. If she used every media hit to talk about the big bucks in green energy, she might actually have an impact.
But that is not what Stein actually talks about, as far as we can tell. We've seen a few speeches, and of course we've read plenty of articles, and she seems to address environmental issues, and environmental policy, very rarely. Mostly, she seems interested in griping about how the U.S. political system doesn't give candidates like her a fair shake. She's not unlike a third-party version of Donald Trump, up to and including the buddy-buddy relationship with Vladimir Putin.
According to a new piece from The New Republic (which is very friendly to lefty politics), the proof is in the pudding when it comes to Stein. She has been the leader of the Green Party for nearly a decade now, and the Party is a sinking ship. There are only 143 officeholders in the entire U.S. affiliated with the Party, and none of them occupy statewide or federal office. More damning, perhaps, is that when Stein first became involved with Party leadership (early 2000s), there were 319,000 registered Greens in the country. Now, despite the considerable population growth of the last two decades, that's down to 234,000.
This week, Stein was asked a very basic civics question (How many members of the House are there?) and could only hazard a very wrong guess (600). This caused Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to take Stein to task as an unserious political actor and activist:
Y'all, this is a little spicy, but I have thoughts. What I have a problem with is the fact that if you're running for president, you are the de facto leader of your party... Trust me on this, I've run as a third-party candidate in New York. I've also run as a Working Families Party candidate in addition to running as a Democrat... I've been on record about my criticisms of the two-party system, so this is not about that... If you run for years and years and years and years in a row, and your party has not grown and you don't add city council seats and you don't add downballot candidates and you don't add state electeds, that's bad leadership. That, to me, is what is upsetting. If you have been your party's nominee for 12 years in a row, 4 years ago and 4 years before that and 4 years before that, and you cannot grow your movement pretty much at all and can't pursue any successful strategy, and all you do is show up once every 4 years to speak to people who are justifiably pissed off, but you're just showing up once every 4 years to do that, you're not serious. To me, it does not read as authentic, it reads as predatory.
That was in an instagram post, which went viral, having been viewed at least 20 million times.
The lesson here seems awfully clear: If the Green Party wants to get serious about the environment, or about politics, or about keeping itself going as an active concern, Stein needs to go after this election. Whether that will actually happen, however, may be a different matter. (Z)