(3) AOC’s Green New Deal wants to reduce carbon emissions while phasing out the largest source of non-carbon energy we currently have—nuclear power. The level of whimsy here is matched only by the aspects of the plan that add universal healthcare, a job guarantee, and ending racism as essential parts of its environmentalist vision.

Why not add world peace and education reform while we’re at it?

The narrowness of the anti-nuclear attitude of the Green New Deal appears to be either willful or ignorant. One of the quiet revolutions taking place inside much of the environmental movement today is a reckoning with its opposition to nuclear power a generation ago. Many prominent environmentalists such as James Hansen now argue that nuclear power is essential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It is no coincidence that the advanced nations with the lowest greenhouse gas emission rates are those with high amounts of nuclear energy, such as France and Sweden. (Kudos to those environmentalists who have publicly broken with the rigid orthodoxy of the past.)