The Heart to Help
2008-08-05

The Heart to Help

If the globaloneyists had their way, a man named Jed would still be “a poor mountaineer who barely kept his family fed.” In the short span of 30 years, the Greens have cooked up massive global warming hysteria, stood in the way additional oil exploration and gasoline refinement, and refused to allow viable alternatives to oil (nuclear, coal, natural gas, etc.) to even be seriously considered.

As Americans consider proposals for a national energy policy, it is important to keep in mind the words of Lincoln: “He has the right to criticize who has the heart to help.”

For all of the blanket nay-says heard today from the Greens in terms of the viable energy options, not nearly enough time is spent considering the alternatives they have proposed, and their inherent unviability:

  • Solar energy is not really ready for the commercial market, and its yield, while improving, would be unable to meet global demand for energy. It would require extensive use of land and sea space in order to put out enough solar panels. It would require dramatically redesigning metropolitan areas so buildings do not block out each other’s sunlight. The set-up costs for solar panels are astronomical. And so are the costs and energy required for producing conversion units.
  • Biofuels have been a catastrophe for agriculture production and have had a disastrous impact upon food prices. And while not significantly increasing gas mileage, biofuel mandates have added unnecessary costs to the price of fuel.
  • Wind power is an unreliable source of energy. Simply put: what if the wind stops blowing? As a result, wind requires a backup base-load of energy from some other source. And like solar, it requires acres of equipment for kilowatts of energy.
  • Electric cars still depend upon there being a base-load of energy in order to recharge, and in their pure form, have a very limited range (about 100 to 120 miles) before it is necessary to recharge again.
  • Hydrogen is not at all ready to go to market, is still highly unstable, and requires more development to be competitive with conventional energy sources.
So much for the hard Left’s chic-chic energy “alternatives.” The truth is, ere all the output from these sources put together in one place today, they likely couldn’t generate enough power to blow a fuse. Not a one of these energy sources is thus far as productive as oil, coal, nuclear energy, or natural gas. And there, full utility could be decades away.

In short, it’s time for the Greens to put up or shut up. Those proposing that their stop-gap “alternatives” are anywhere near ready to supplant oil and coal are not, as they portray themselves, ingenious. They’re disingenuous. They know that if their risky schemes were mandated by law, it would result in a catastrophic reduction in Americans’ standard of living, which is coveted throughout the world.

One line the Greens like to continually bandy about is that the environment must be protected for the children. “Do it for the children,” they say, smiling beatifically. Meanwhile, they are consigning future generations to misery by using government to create an energy crisis artificially limiting an adequate supply. Their myopic obsession with their own ideas is driving up prices. And they are deliberately stymieing the efficient development of available energy resources desperately needed “for the children.”

More than 40 years ago, John Kennedy wrote that the dream of every generation is “to build a good world for ourselves and a better world for our children.” The hard Left has now put the lie to that once reliable axiom, preferring to foist a myth on the world today – and leave tomorrow’s children to fend for themselves in the darkened shell of a primitive nightmare.

ALG Perspective: This is a prescient example of a flawed, fraudulent public policy where handcuffing free markets has plunged the Western World into a deepening, darkening abyss. Now is the time to increase the supply of the viable energy sources we do have and to expand dramatically the alternative energy more viable than any conventional form of energy: nuclear. Bottom line: America has had a fossil fuel alternative for over sixty years. Whether we use it or not is not a question of capability but will.