Posted on 04/13/2015 11:37:39 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
The proliferation of renewable energy will never please environmentalists. In fact, the more efficient and inexpensive energies like solar and wind become, the more environmentalists will fear and eventually hate them.
Currently, arguments against renewable energy are based on the accurate claim they are too inefficient to become widespread. The technology behind solar and wind power are just not where they need to be to justify widespread use.
In October 2014, data revealed the massive Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the Mojave Desert fell well short of its anticipated output. During an eight-month period in 2013, the solar plant missed its goal by a whopping 40 percent.
Because of stories like these, many are reluctant to support large government subsidies for renewable energy projects. The lackluster performance of alternative energies have led several states to reconsider legislation requiring a portion of their energy to come from renewable sources. In January, West Virginia made headlines when the state ended its mandate in full.
The inability of alternative energies to compete with fossil fuels does not deter environmentalists. They see renewables as a solution to the problem of rising CO2 in the atmosphere and the climate change they say inevitably results from it. Their goal is to save Earth from climate disruption.
But what happens when renewable technology does become efficient enough to replace fossil fuels? What if another energy technology is developed that supplies us with abundant and pollution-free energy? The resulting scenario is one environmentalists fear the most: Civilization growth unconstrained by the threat of climate disruption.
This fear was exposed in 1989, when two scientists announced they produced excess energy through the process of cold fusion. This revelation, which turned out to be false, would have the potential to produce inexpensive and inexhaustible energy. People believed we were on the verge of creating free energy. This concept caused many environmentalists to show their true colors.
While people rejoiced at the prospect of free energy, author and activist Jeremy Rifkin was quoted by the Los Angeles Times saying, “It’s the worst thing that could happen to our planet.” Rifkin envisioned a world filled with waste—a world where people were free to use up Earth’s resources.
Biologist Paul Ehrlich said, “[It’s] like giving a machine gun to an idiot child.”
These environmentalists and many others reacted this way because the real threat, in their eyes, is human development and growth.
In the same article referred to above, environmentalists voiced concerns that abundant energy would open the door to an increase in population growth, the result being a “crowded earth.” This fear is still held today by environmentalists like Bill McKibben.
McKibben, considered to be “America’s most important environmentalist” by the Boston Globe, became a big name in the global warming debate in 1989 with the publishing of End of Nature. Since then, McKibben has written several more books about mankind’s impact on the environment, such as Maybe One: A Personal and Environmental Argument for Single Child Families.
In Maybe One, McKibben makes the case for potentially painful population control. Population control is necessary in the minds of many environmentalists like McKibben because large populations inevitably lead to more homes, office buildings, cars, shopping centers, and trash. This is why McKibben wrote in his two books Deep Economy (2007) and Eaarth (2010) that he did not want to see an increase in development but rather a “controlled decline.”
Environmentalists do not see fossil fuels and CO2 as a threat to mankind; they see mankind as a threat to the environment. Advocating for renewable energy is just an excuse to implement a constriction of fossil-fuel use and development across the world. If the time comes where renewable, clean, and abundant energies become a reality, environmentalists will surely withdraw their support in the name of protecting the planet.
Donald Kendal (dkendal@heartland.org) is a new media specialist for The Heartland Institute.
I would love to see some alternative energy source come out to replace our current dependence upon fossil fuels. Breakthroughs can happen at any time and aren’t always predictable. Let’s hope it happens so we have a huge burst in civilization’s growth!
Everyone else is supposed to die off except them.
Low-cost energy - from whatever source - is anathema to them.
If they hate humans so much they should just kill themselves.
Three candidates for early termination to help Gaia’s health: McKibben, Rifkin and Ehrlich.
Hey, if they’re sincere....drink the Kool Aid, boys.
“What if another energy technology is developed that supplies us with abundant and pollution-free energy? “
And herein lies the real agenda of the left. With pollution there is a cure. Stop polluting. But, and here is a big but, if they call it pollution, the global warming meme is shot. Billions going to leftist climatologists all go bye bye. The funding of the left which helps promote their ideology would be no more.
It would impact universities, businesses, politics. Every walk of life has been impacted by “global warming.” It’s pollution and that’s what the right needs to say and say it loud.
They think the human race is pollution.
Modern environmentalists are acolytes of a malthisan neo-luddite religion that seeks to eliminate human beings as a force on this planet.
Have you ever noticed the lack of support for new nuclear designs and fusion from the left? They know that would cut pollution without having to give up civilization, which is why they don't support it.
They think they are the only "real" humans.
would love to see some alternative energy source come out to replace our current dependence upon fossil fuels. Breakthroughs can happen at any time and aren’t always predictable. Let’s hope it happens so we have a huge burst in civilization’s growth!
We had it, nuclear power, and we pi$$ed it away. I guess if you are an “alchemist,” who thinks some how a way can be found to turn $hit into Gold, there may be a “breakthrough” on the horizon for you. But the reality is that there is nothing on the horizon except nuclear power, so get prepared for a cold, dark world in succeeding generations.
[ The environmentalist’s real goal is the depopulation of Earth.
Everyone else is supposed to die off except them.
Low-cost energy - from whatever source - is anathema to them. ]
You really have to wonder if they are actual aliens/demons/evil entities that are striving for the destruction of mankind.....
It would reall be a bigger piece of evidence FOR the existence Malevolent Aliens messing with us than some blurry pic of a flying disc....
[ If they hate humans so much they should just kill themselves.
They think they are the only “real” humans. ]
They think that they are “Evolved Humans” and the rest of us are just a bunch of “Wal-martians from flyover country” that can be disposed of...
[ We had it, nuclear power, and we pi$$ed it away. I guess if you are an “alchemist,” who thinks some how a way can be found to turn $hit into Gold, there may be a “breakthrough” on the horizon for you. But the reality is that there is nothing on the horizon except nuclear power, so get prepared for a cold, dark world in succeeding generations. ]
China will have power, they are working on Molten Salt Nuclear Reactors and will probably sell us energy fromthem once they perfect it from powerstations built in Mexico...
We could have had this tech as early as the early 70’s but cronyism from G.E. and other “Government Industial Complex” companies involved in the nuclear industy wanted to milk the government for fuel and weapons contracts....
Eisenhower was SPOT ON....
Our descendants will be shivering inthe dark or paying through the nose to china for heat and power....because we were to stuipid to see the long game....
“We could have had this tech as early as the early 70’s but cronyism from G.E. and other “Government Industial Complex” companies involved in the nuclear industy wanted to milk the government for fuel and weapons contracts....”
Exactly! And that is the Achilles Heel of Free Enterprise as it has morphed here in the US. It’s why the Japanese took over the TV market because our vacuum tube mfrs. didn’t want to give up their buggy whip businesses. It was said at the time, if the transistor came with an octal base, our TV makers would have adapted to it, but they wouldn’t change their decades-old manufacturing processes to utilize the new technology.
And it’s likely the same situation in the “big Pharma” business. Innovative medicines and protocols are buried because the new stuff would take away particularly lucrative old medicines. It’s why you never hear of many of the “cancer break throughs” ever making it to market. The difference here, is that we may well be being kept from life-saving/extending stuff for the sake of profits. Today’s business “leaders” would be happy to see you die if they could get bigger bonuses by reason of more profits on old stuff.
Insofar as nuclear energy is concerned, as you point out the industry had the government as a “partner” in the withholding of progress. My best man worked for the old Atomic Energy Commission in their Berkeley Office. He left in disgust for the way the thing ran and that was in the early 1970’s. Now the NRC is staffed with people who are opposed to Nuclear Power.
Thanks for posting this. I agree with the writer that if and when renewable energy becomes cheap and abundant, environmentalists will oppose it. They already oppose solar power because it threatens the habitat of the desert tortoise, and wind power because it kills birds and bats.
It only makes sense that they should lead by example :)
I remember forty years ago when enviros were bawling about how power poles were spoiling the view of everything! They wanted all power grids underground!
Now look at what we have! Windmill generators everywhere spoiling the view! Now the wide open areas can only be enjoyed by seeing a CGI movie!
It seems that the renewable energy pipe dreams of the hippies from 45 years ago are coming to fruition in this generation with rotted fruit.
The article makes a lot of sense about how environmentalists would rue the day that renewable energy sources could replace fossil-fuels, BUT....
Democrats are not about energy independence or about doing away with fossil-fuels....
Democrats are about taking advantage of the issue, in order to advance their agenda of controlling the people and the economy. Liberals and socialists and communists, cannot have complete control of a country without getting control of the economy and the people after that.
To quote from one of the later Dune novels, revolutionaries are all closet bureaucrats; they expect to be in charge when the revolution is over, changing all the little things that annoyed them.
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