12 Years to Doom: Is AOC Right?

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Jane M. Orient, M.D.

Jane M. Orient, M.D., is the Executive Director of Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and has been in solo practice of general internal medicine since 1981. She is a clinical lecturer in medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. She received her undergraduate degrees in chemistry and mathematics from the University of Arizona, and her M.D. from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. She is the author of Sapira’s Art and Science of Bedside Diagnosis; the fourth edition has just been published by Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins. She also authored YOUR Doctor Is Not In: Healthy Skepticism about National Health Care, published by Crown. She is the executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a voice for patients’ and physicians’ independence since 1943.

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Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)  (“AOC”) is unhappy that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell plans to bring the Green New Deal to a vote—although Democrat presidential hopefuls support it.

But isn’t there a perilously short time to act?

Environmentalists have issued many apocalyptic threats before—as short as 500 days. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that to achieve the goal of a less-than 1.5 °C temperature  increase, the world must stop all fossil fuel use in 4 years, according to the prestigious Nature magazine on Oct 11, 2018.

If warming slows or “pauses,” the deadlines just move forward, giving us a “bit more breathing space” to meet carbon-dioxide reduction goals, Nature writes.

One way to reduce emissions is to slow industrial production or to raise prices so people can’t afford to drive or heat their homes. Prosperous nations are the ones with the highest carbon dioxide emissions. Radical economic change can occur quickly.

It took only 10 years of a socialist new deal to ruin Venezuela’s prosperity.

AOC and her fellow Democratic Socialists need to explain how the results of their plan would be different in the U.S.

For more information, see this.