First there was Michael Moore’s Planet of the Humans, then came Bjorn Lomborg’s False Alarm, and now Michael Schellenberger’s Apocalypse Never. All three authors sound the common theme that the hyper-green environmental activists who have captured, politicized, and monetized the concern for the environment have created a false climate alarm which has “costs us trillions, hurts the poor, and fails to fix the planet.” To varying degrees, all three authors come from a strong environmental activist background, which observation makes their public revelations even more noteworthy.
Planet of the Humans, confirmed renewables do not displace reliable fossil-fuel power plants. Consumers energy bills do not go down, but go up. Renewables require large amounts of rare earths, cement, and fossil fuel energy in their production. They are both notoriously inefficient in land use, and impose destruction of large areas of native habitats. Further environmental destruction is due to the fact that the best wind or solar location is often remote from the most needed consumer base, thereby requiring the construction of massive electric transmission lines. “Factories claiming to have gone ‘beyond coal’ again and again turn out to be relying on natural gas.”
False Alarm argues that there are more productive ways to aid humanity than spending billions trying to influence climate change, such as improving sanitation, clean water supplies, basic nutrition, and providing paths out of poverty.
Lomborg states, “Climate change is real, it is caused predominantly by carbon emissions from humans burning fossil fuels….” but is not the apocalyptic threat so widely advertised. Land falling hurricanes in the US are not more frequent than in the past. Droughts here are shorter, less frequent, and cover a smaller area. Seventeen times more people currently die from cold than heat, and these people will benefit from moderate warming. Global climate related deaths are an all-time low.”
Apocalypse Never echoes the similar conclusions as Planet of the Humans and False Alarm. Michael Shellenberger with long time green activist credentials had an environmental reality epiphany. He told The Australian: "I realized you can't power a modern economy on solar and wind.... All they do is make the electricity system chaotic and provide green wash for fossil fuels." He has made numerous efforts to support nuclear power.
Schellenberger documented much of the money for many of the renewable energy proposals adopted by the Obama administration went to “companies that enriched donors to the Obama campaign” but failed to produce the promised renewable energy advances. He concludes that “the trouble with the new environmental religion is that it has become increasingly apocalyptic, destructive, and self-defeating.”
No comments:
Post a Comment