Rep. Gruenhagen Gets It on Energy and Minnesota’s Green New Deal

There’s been a fun exchange in the Litchfield Independent Review among Representative Gruenhagen and a member of the public who was defending the Green New Deal. The latest article features Rep. Gruenhagen lambasting the claims made by the writer and defending American Experiment’s work on energy and economic issues from the typical ad hominem attacks that come our way from people who don’t know how to do the math and evaluate our work for themselves.

You can read the article for yourself below, and I’d encourage you to also read the article on the Litchfield Independent Review site so they get the clicks.

Let me be clear: In the last legislative session there were at least 14 DFL bills that promoted the Green New Deal. These bills, too numerous to list, were included in the DFL Jobs and Energy Omnibus Bill, HF 2208, which passed the Democrat-controlled House 74-59.

Some of the more of egregious “green” provisions would have been expanded tax subsidies for community solar gardens, a new program to promote continual improvement process incentives that would have allowed big utility companies to collect a larger fee from ratepayers, a greenhouse gas reduction strategy report, a provision to establish an energy utility diversity group to promote the Green New Deal, and more.

Gov. Tim Walz has also called for legislation that would make Minnesota 100 percent dependent on “green energy” by 2050.

The impact of these DFL bills would have been to increase electricity costs, hurting our citizens, businesses and farms while doing nothing for the environment. And yes, Mr. Ramus, the Republicans stopped all of these provisions, including the 70 percent gas tax increase.

Mr. Remus is also wrong on nuclear energy. Advancements in technology allow approximately 80 percent of nuclear waste to be reprocessed, generating inexpensive and environmentally friendly electricity. France and China are just two countries with major nuclear waste reprocessing efforts. The U.S. could provide hundreds of years of cheap electricity by reprocessing our nuclear waste. Unfortunately, in 1978, DFL President Jimmy Carter signed a law prohibiting the reprocessing of nuclear waste.

It seems that liberals always concentrate on our past failures and believe things cannot be improved. Conservatives learn from our past failures and, with American ingenuity and optimism, build a better economic future for all of us. Technology and innovation have always solved our pollution problems.

Implementing the Green New Deal would not only be expensive, but alternative energy sources do not provide reliable baseload energy solutions. A Feb. 4, 2019, Star Tribune article stated that when Minnesota experienced minus 24-degree weather last winter, only 4 percent of Minnesota’s electricity was generated by alternative energy.

The Green (Greed) agenda also enriches many liberals, such as Al Gore, who profit at the expense of taxpayers.

My advice to the disciples of the Green New Deal is to disconnect their homes from fossil fuel baseload electricity and use only solar and wind for their electricity. When they freeze in winter and sweat in summer, maybe their brain will thaw and they will start to embrace reality.

I love the “thawing brain” burn at the end.