Replacing hydrocarbons with unreliable, subsidized “green” energy will require millions of acres of land for wind turbines, solar panels and transmission lines – plus hundreds of millions of tons of steel, copper, concrete, fiberglass and rare earth minerals for all those facilities.
Do you support delaying wind, solar and transmission projects for years, to protect the rights and property of local communities and private landowners? Or do you favor regulatory edicts and eminent domain actions, so that government can seize people’s property and expedite construction of these projects?
You don’t know of what you speak. Wind generators are all over the place, on farms and ranches, etc., and farming and ranching can be done right up to their base.
Solar panels take of a bit of space on people’s roofs – space they were NOT USING
Even the birds perch higher on our roof than the solar panels, so they aren’t even taking up bird space.
The ideal would be for as many people as possible to get off the grid and really be free of monopolies, and the powerful, bloated interests that seek to do us wrong.
While there may be some upfront costs and environmental harms in producing solar panels and wind generators that hardy compares at all with the terrific harms from extracting fossil fuels for ongoing use day in and day out of our lives, processing & the cancer alleys, combustion and the local to global harms and deaths from that, and waste disposal, spills and leaks. I would hope that as people go around in their ICE cars they occasionally think of the people and nature that gets harmed by that, and resolve to drive less, turn off engines in drive-thrus, keep tires inflated and engines tuned, hypermile (slow starts and deceleration), run multiple errands, move closer to work/shops/schools on next move, and the 100 other things they can do to reduce their harm.
A little girl in Mississippi torn up by the harms to birds from the BP spill said, “Have you ever heard of the solar spill?”
Over 1.5 billion people in Africa, Asia and Latin America still do not have electricity, for even a light bulb or tiny refrigerator. Millions die every year from diseases that would be largely eradicated with electricity for refrigeration, sanitation, modern hospitals, and industries that generate greater health and prosperity.
How can you justify telling other countries that they have to “reduce” by 50%…because YOU are worried about global warming? Doesn’t that violate their most basic human rights to improved living standards, and even life itself?
I guess you didn’t read my post, or didn’t understand what I meant. The rich folks (typical Americans and Europeans, etc) will have to reduce at least 75% in to compensate for the poor increasing their GHG emissions, since they will have to use more energy & resources to live better, more healthy lives. I hope that’s a bit clearer.
We can also help them with cleaner technology and a path that is less harmful to health and the environment than the dirty path we industrialized people took over the past 300 yrs.
For instance, I contribute to solar lights for poor African villages that don’t have electricity, so their children can study at night, etc.
Don’t forget that AGW is more greatly harming the poor of the world – as Pope Francis so rightly points out – and we owe it to them to reduce our GHG emissions AND help them in whatever ways we can…at least with all the money we save from becoming energy/resource efficient/conservative and going on alt energy.
Where there is a will and a good heart, there is a way… God will help us and bless us along the way!
