The Green New Deal is anything but 'clean' or 'green.' Even the relatively modest numbers of solar and wind installations in the United States today are causing serious environmental damage. //

A few minutes of serious thought from self-described environmentalists would prompt a realization that if the Green New Deal, a program championed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, were implemented, it would create an environmental disaster.

In recent decades, policymakers have forced public utilities to generate increasingly more electricity from fashionable “renewable energy” sources, especially wind and solar, and pushed automakers to manufacture more electric vehicles. Their chief goal is to eliminate reliable, affordable, generally clean fossil fuels, including natural gas, even though they generate most of America’s electricity and power most U.S. transportation.

Environmentalists claim to worry that carbon dioxide from these fuels will cause devastating global warming. Many would also eliminate nuclear power, which they say is inherently unsafe. //

environmentalists have paid too little attention to the serious harm Green New Deal policies would inflict on the environment — including scenic lands, wildlife habitats, and threatened and endangered species. Implementing the Green New Deal would undermine the very values environmentalists have espoused for decades.

America faces a dilemma. Will it focus on real environmental problems that do measurable harm to human and ecological wellbeing, or will it mandate policies to head off climate disasters that are based on warming predictions have been repeatedly proven wrong by real-world empirical observations? Will it recognize that harnessing intermittent, weather-dependent wind and solar energy requires enormous amounts of raw materials and mining, resulting in massive land-use impacts and human rights abuses, and is anything but clean, green, renewable, and sustainable? Or will it ignore all this? //

Solar farms generate only 1.5 percent of the nation’s electricity and would be an inefficient way to generate the more than 8 billion megawatt-hours of power that fossil fuels and nuclear provide each year to meet industrial, commercial, residential, and automotive transportation needs and charge backup-power batteries. Using cutting-edge Nellis Air Force Base solar panels to generate that electricity would require completely blanketing 57,000 square miles of land — equivalent to the land area of New York and Vermont — with 19 billion photovoltaic solar panels. //

Turbines ruin scenic views, kill countless birds and bats, and harm marine mammals, which is why environmentalists — and even the late leftist icon Sen. Ted Kennedy — have long opposed the planned Vineyard Wind facility off the Massachusetts coast. To provide enough power for the country, Green New Deal advocates would have to build hundreds of thousands of truly gigantic offshore turbines. //

Solar panels require many toxic materials, and wind turbines require enormous amounts of steel, concrete, copper, and rare earth elements. Storing a week’s worth of power for periods when the sun is not shining or the wind isn’t blowing would require some 2 billion half-ton Tesla car battery packs. Meeting these needs would require a massive expansion of mining for lithium, cobalt, and other substances in the United States or in Asia, Africa, and South America. Operations in the latter countries involve extensive child labor, create environmental disasters, and even lead to premature death.

What’s more, disposing of obsolescent solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries is already causing problems in the United States and in countries such as Germany. Green New Deal advocates ignore this problem, which would multiply substantially under their plan.