The Green New Deal Is Back. Its Next Target: AI

In Michigan, three candidates running on a platform of blocking, restricting, or seizing control of artificial intelligence companies swept their Democratic primaries. In Wisconsin, another data center opponent came within just a few thousand votes. Depending on who you ask, it’s a victory for either socialists who hate capitalism or left-wing populists eager to disrupt the broken status quo.

But neither description is quite true. In politics as in life, there is nothing new under the sun. The far-left, anti-AI triumph in Michigan is really just the resurgence of the radical climate left. The only difference is that this time, conservatives are helping them win.

No, conservatives didn’t cross party lines to vote for radicals in a Democratic primary. But many support the increasingly NIMBY-driven opposition to AI. Seeing the opportunity, left-wing climate groups are leveraging bipartisan resistance to AI to smuggle otherwise toxic candidates and unpopular policies.

Just look at who won in Michigan. Abdul El-Sayed defeated Rep. Haley Stevens for the Democratic Senate nomination despite a nearly $65 million establishment spending onslaught — the most expensive Democratic primary ever. A primary plank of his platform: government ownership of the AI industry. But that’s not all. He also opposes fossil fuels, an odd position for someone seeking to represent the beating heart of the American auto industry, and racked up endorsements from hardcore environmental groups like Oil Change Action and Friends of the Earth, two of the most anti-oil and gas groups in the country. Policies that would have normally been radioactive in Michigan snuck in behind El-Sayed’s anti-AI bluster.

Then there’s William Lawrence, who won the Democratic nomination in a genuine toss-up House seat by running explicitly on a federal moratorium on data center construction. Like El-Sayed, Lawrence is also a creature of environmentalism, the co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, a far-left climate activist group.

And Donavan McKinney, who unseated an incumbent congressman in Detroit while opposing data centers, spent his entire career before running for office as a political director for Climate Power, an environmentalist messaging group.

Even the tactics being used by anti-AI activists are a copy-paste of the climate movement’s previous campaigns: local protests, permitting fights, state-level bans, and endless litigation. That should be no surprise, because it’s the same people trying to achieve the same goals.

Yet otherwise reasonable people are unwittingly lending their support to a discredited left-wing climate movement. Americans love cheap energy. But tell them the biggest private sector buildout of renewable energy in history is happening to support data centers, and they’ll support building moratoriums. Americans love growth and prosperity, but tie it to AI, and you’ve just won a mandate for development restrictions and limits on innovation.

By and large, Americans have always rejected climate doomers and their message of demonization, fear, shame, and inevitable decline. But with AI maybe, just maybe, the covert climate left can finally convince everyone, like Jimmy Carter tried before, that it’s time to turn down the heat and put on a sweater.

Conservatives shouldn’t take the bait. The AI boom is not without challenges, including heavy energy and water usage, unseemly tax breaks for data centers, and failures to generate local support before building. In response, we should support rational policies like using AI windfalls to benefit the communities that opened their doors to data centers, limiting tax carveouts for the most highly valued industry in history, and fully implementing the Ratepayer Protection Pledge for AI companies to build, bring, or buy their own power rather than burdening ratepayers. Such policies shape development for the common good without preventing growth.

But what we should not do is unwittingly make peace with America’s resurgent green party. Even more importantly, we shouldn’t accept the message of fear that has always been at the core of the climate left’s crusade.

AI may seem scary now, but look back at all the other times climate activists have tried to destroy nascent industries that ultimately benefited the American people.

We were told fracking would cause earthquakes and poison water. In reality, it made America the number one producer of oil and gas in the world, driving energy prices lower for consumers and manufacturers alike. For decades, the environmental left successfully painted nuclear as dangerous and evil. Only recently did we break through the lies to restore the American nuclear energy industry, bringing emissions-free, baseload power to the grid. There’s not a single agricultural development of the past century that environmental activists haven’t clutched their pearls over — synthetic fertilizer, GMOs, Golden Rice—even as American ingenuity overcame the worldwide scourge of famine.

It’s sad the Democratic Party is being taken over by the anti-abundance far left. But at least the Michigan Democratic primary results provide clarity. With radicals like El-Sayed, Lawrence, and McKinney on the ballot, we can see organized AI opposition for what it truly is: a Trojan horse for the Green New Deal.

Chris Johnson is the founder and president of the American Energy Leadership Institute.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.