Friday, January 18, 2008

Who Needs Electricity?

By Alan Caruba

Over at The National Anxiety Center website I have a commentary, “No Energy, Please” regarding the cold reception news of a proposed ExxonMobil “Blue Energy” project received when it was announced. It involves a billion dollar investment in a liquid natural gas storage site to be anchored in the Atlantic Ocean out of sight offshore of New Jersey. The LNG would then be transferred via a pipeline for distribution throughout the northeast. Since natural gas heats many homes in the region, one would think it would be welcome, but not by some NJ daily newspapers.

In fact, if you connect the dots, you will discover there’s no welcome to be found for any of the traditional forms of energy on which Americans depend to turn on the light. Electricity has become the chosen battleground for environmental groups who have laboring night and day to insure there will not be enough of it to meet our needs.

Take, for example, the exultant news release (Jan 17) from the Rainforest Action Network, “Proposed Coal Plants Losing Steam” celebrating “59 coal plants cancelled or shelved in 2007.” Since coal-fired utilities provide just over 50 percent of the electricity generated in America, one would think that building more plants would be a good thing.

The Greens, however, using the utterly bogus “global warming” hoax and asserting the false notion that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will transform the climate of the earth, are managing to deny Americans electrical power. There is no global warming and CO2 constitutes about 0.038% if the earth’s atmosphere. In past eras there was a lot more CO2 and the result was lush vegetation that kept a lot of dinosaurs munching away for several million years.

“Coal-fired power plants are the wrong investment for our climate, our health, and our economy,” said Becky Tarbotton, director of Rainforest Action Network’s Global Finance Campaign. (1) Such plants do not affect the climate. (2) Americans now have the longest life expectancy ever, so our health is not an issue. (3) Our economy is entirely based on the availability and provision of electrical and other forms of energy.

The Greens opposed nuclear energy so successfully we haven’t seen a new plant built in thirty years. If you want to reduce the cost of electricity, build a few and watch what happens. Consider what Dr. Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine has to say:

“The construction of just one nuclear power station like Palo Verde (CA) in each of the 50 states, with a full complement of 10 reactors, would supply all of the energy that the United States currently imports—with, in addition and at current prices, $300 billion per year worth of excess energy to export.”

If we can’t get nuclear facilities built and we can’t get any new coal-fired plants, what does RAN propose? The same thing as the other Greens do. So-called “renewable energy.” And “efficiency.”

Neither solar, nor wind energy is EVER going to be able to produce the amount of energy Americans use and need. The laws of physics pretty much eliminate those “solutions” to our energy needs and, in the case of wind energy, the less the better because they chop countless thousands of birds and bats to death every year.

If this keeps up, we are going to run out of energy in America and the Greens will be to blame. I hope future Americans, gathered around a fireplace for warmth and to cook dinner will appreciate what a great job the Greens did to return them to the same conditions that existed from before the Revolution to fifty years after the Civil War.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

There is a book solicited by Glenn Beck called

"Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning" by Jonah Goldberg

I have not gotten the book yet but the interview he did with the author was very interesting. He and the Author discussed a facist secret agenda behind the left. Even though they do not openly say "hey I am a facist" they hide behind the title of "progressive."

Alan Caruba said...

I tend to see the hard-core environmentalists are red-diaper babies whose parents belonged to the Communist Party in the 1930s or who grew up in the 1960s convinced that capitalism was the cause of society's problems. To me environmentalism is just another version of socialism/communism.

This attitude is widely taught on too many American college campuses, so it's easy to see how it gets passed along to each new generation.

BillD said...

Jonah Goldberg's book, "Liberal Fascism," may strike some as easy to mock, but he has a deadly serious point.

There are irreconcilable differences between collectivists and individualists that cannot be masked by co-opting our vocabulary.

Unknown said...

I was reading a paper about Political Correctness
by Philip Atkinson
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/pc.htm

Whisch is another good read.
He illistrated a form of facist tyranny known as political correctness. The antagonisms between "individualism" and "collectivism"

Individualism has natural checks and balances between individuals and the society upholds and respects these freedoms. Collectivists work much like an Islamic state, were the collective society determines what truth is and those who do not see life that way are demonized.

I tottaly agree that it is deadly serious, and society is crippled untill this is delt with if it ever can be.

Jack said...

Excellent article but for one error; the Palo Verde nuclear power plant is NOT in CA but in Arizona. From the USNRC's site: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/reactors/palo_verde.html
Palo Verde's three huge reactors give it the largest capacity of any nuclear power plant in the United States. It is located in Maricopa County, AZ on a 4,050-acre site near Wintersburg, Arizona. It generates provides electricity for 4 million customers.

Ownership: The Palo Verde plant is operated by the Arizona Nuclear Power Project and owned by Pinnacle West.