A "green" new deal

A lot of people, including presidential candidates visiting Iowa, are throwing around the idea of a “Green New Deal” to confront climate change, as polls indicate more Americans are thinking about how they can help turn back the devastation that Earth’s warming promises. It’s easy to support until the specifics come down. Nobody really knows what such a program entails. But we hear of increasing taxes on the uber wealthy in just about every way you can imagine to pay for a massive national effort to create jobs around “green” initiatives. Iowa is the perfect place to define what we’re talking about. We generate more electricity per capita from wind than any other state thanks to one of the earliest Renewable Energy Portfolios in the nation. We can build rural communities and jobs through renewable energy and sustainable agriculture. There are a lot more well-paid technicians tending wind towers around there than coal-fired power plants or natural gas plants. Iowa has as much solar energy potential as Florida.(Why is an oil pipeline favored over a transmission line that runs renewable energy?)