Wind & solar energy are essentially obsolete technologies as well as environmental disasters. Regardless, liberals have concocted fantasies whereby all our electricity or perhaps our entire economy, will be powered by those fickle sources.
The fact is that, in order to reach “net zero” CO2 emissions through use of so called “green” energy, which is intermittent, unreliable, low-intensity at best, outrageously expensive, and dependent on vast natural resources that may not exist, at a minimum would require the greatest explosion of mining, manufacturing and transportation in world history.
A fundamental problem with wind and solar is as extremely low-intensity energy sources, an enormous amount of land would have to be devoted to panels and turbines. If we seriously tried to get all of our
present electricity needs from those weak sources, 350,000 square miles–an area more than twice the size of California–would need to be dedicated to wind turbines and solar panels.
This just isn’t going to happen. It is rural America that bears the burden of many square miles of wind and solar installations. And it is a burden: Aside aesthetic issues, there is substantial medical evidence noise produced by turbines adversely affects human health. And, of course, wind turbines are fatal to wildlife. As a result of such concerns, hundreds of rural communities across America have risen up to oppose wind turbine developments. These efforts have largely been successful.
When “green” advocates tabulate costs, they generally don’t include the 1000s of miles of transmission lines required to bring electricity from rural areas stuck with “green” development to urban areas where the electricity is used. But such lines represent a huge economic and environmental issue: renewables conversion means adding enough high-voltage lines to circle the Earth about 10 times.
No problem! says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But any attempt to construct 240,000 more miles of high-voltage wires will, like turbines themselves, encounter local opposition that likely will make such an effort impossible. Germany undertook to mandate wind energy, but its mandates have fallen flat because of public opposition to specific wind projects. The same thing is happening in the U.S. Public opposition promises to bring the Green New Deal to a screeching halt.
Renewables are unreliable, are enviromental hazards, & produce relatively little energy. So why does the “green dream” persist? In part, because it is inflicted on kids from grade school on, but mostly because there is a great deal of money in it. “Green” energy makes a relative handful of people immensely wealthy, while impoverishing utility rate payers and taxpayers–that is to say, the rest of us.
This insanity will continue until voters wise up, or–more likely, until the laws of physics, along with land use and raw materials constraints, make it blindingly obvious that the “green dream” is just that. A nightmare. By that time, an astonishing amount of wealth will have been destroyed.
FULL STORY