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 painfulpopulation 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 is a
media specialist at The Heartland Institute. This article was Originally published at Human Events.
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