Why I Am Against Saving the Planet (and why you should be, too)
MICHAEL LIND
If the human race vanished tomorrow the climate would not “stabilize” but would continue to fluctuate dramatically over time—at least until the gradual warming of the sun evaporates the oceans and turns the Earth into a steam-shrouded desert world in half a billion years, if the predictions of contemporary astrophysicists are correct.
But there is a crucial difference, according to the belief system of environmentalists. If an asteroid annihilates the dinosaurs, that is natural and not a crime. But if a local species of frog becomes extinct because officials drain a malarial swamp and replace it with a civic water reservoir that saves millions of people from infectious diseases, that is mass murder (of frogs).
According to the peculiar ethics of mainstream environmentalism, practically any modification of “the environment” or “the ecosystem” or “the planet” or “nature” is, by definition, harmful. Developers who cut down woods and build housing subdivisions are evil, because they are displacing the local plants and wildlife. Electricity that powers life-saving hospitals and air conditioners or heaters in buildings is sinful, if it is generated by coal or oil or natural gas that emits carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Paved roads? Forget it. They turn wild animals into roadkill.
In short—every single modification of nature by humanity is evil by definition, according to the popular conception of environmentalism.
Saving the planet has become the de facto religion of politicians, business elites, and intellectuals in the West, replacing Christianity’s earlier mission of saving individual souls.
It might seem that the term “planet,” as it’s used by the greens, has no fixed meaning whatsoever. But that would be a mistake. “The planet,” in the lexicon of environmentalism, is defined in contrast with what it is not: the “Not-Planet.”
The Not-Planet includes all human beings. In environmentalist ideology, we humans are not part of “nature” or “the environment” or “the planet.” We are something outside of nature: an alien, destructive force, modifying “the planet” from without. By this standard, all buildings and cities and other human settlements that billions of people depend on for their survival are rendered alien excrescences harming “the planet.” The sand on a beach is “the planet” but the moment you build a sand castle, the sand in the castle becomes Not-Planet. You have taken sand which might have been used by a beach crab for its burrow. How dare you!
Not all plants and animals are included in “the planet,” either. For environmentalists who are romantically nostalgic for the lifestyles of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, agriculture itself is an abomination, replacing “natural” ecosystems with farms and ranches populated by human-modified strains of grains and vegetables and fruit and livestock. A wild buffalo is part of “the planet” but a free-range cow on a ranch or a cow in a feedlot is not. The coyote that dwells in a suburb and kills and eats a pet poodle is “the planet,” but the poor pet poodle, like its grieving owner, is an interloper on “the planet.”
In 2015, George Monbiot lamented in The Guardian that, measured by weight, 60% of the mammals on Earth are livestock, and that while the human population is growing at 1% a year, the livestock population is growing at 2.4%. Global average meat consumption per person is 43 kilograms a year, but swiftly heading toward the U.K. level of 82 kg. The reason is Bennett’s law: As people become richer, they eat more protein and fat, especially the meat and milk and eggs of animals.
Like chimpanzees, our closest relatives, we humans are omnivores who enjoy the taste of meat. Our precursors are thought to have hunted many large herbivores—mastodons, sloths, giant armadillos—to extinction to satisfy their appetites. In my part of central Texas, indigenous Americans drove herds of buffalo off of cliffs and killed the maimed and dying animals in order to have barbecues. Raising bovines in feedlots is more efficient, and, while cruel in many ways, it is no more cruel than stampeding them over bluffs, breaking their bones and spearing them with sharpened flints.
Humans are not the only species that hunts prey or modifies its surroundings to gain an advantage. It is our self-flagellating that sets us apart from other animals, not the fact that we change “the environment.” Is it a tragedy when a beaver family builds a dam, creating a lake that floods a field, drowning other animals and killing the plants and trees that grew there? If the answer of self-described environmentalists is no, if all animals except for humans are allowed to modify their environments for the benefit of their species at the expense of other species if necessary, then environmentalism is a weird cult that is founded on misanthropy.
By arguing that environmentalism is a post-Christian, Euro-American secular religion, hostile to society and civilization—and livestock and pets!—I do not mean to suggest that all policies advocated for by environmentalists are misguided. It is in our own self-interest to outlaw the dumping of poisonous wastes into rivers and watersheds. It may also be in our own self-interest to mitigate atmosphere-heating greenhouse gas emissions with costly measures of various kinds. But there are costs to mitigating climate change as well as benefits, and rational people can prefer a richer but warmer world to a poorer but slightly less warm one. All of these individual policies benefit humanity, so there is no need to justify them on the basis of a romantic creed that defines “the planet” or “the environment” in a way that excludes us and our works.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/against-saving-planet
****************************************************Why the intermittency problem can’t be solved
I often ask renewables enthusiasts to explain what we are supposed to do when the wind isn’t blowing if we can’t fall back on fossil fuels.
The other day, I pressed James Murray, the editor of Business Green magazine, what forms of storage he thought we could use, and this is what he said:
"… a portfolio of nuclear, demand response, grid scale batteries, other emerging forms of energy storage technologies, hydrogen, and gas, ultimately in conjunction with CCS."
Clearly, we were talking somewhat at cross purposes; my question was specifically about storage, but even if we broaden the scope to cover the general question of “what do we do when the wind isn’t blowing”, his answer suggests that he hasn’t grasped the fundamental economic problem.
That problem is that, with wind dominating the grid, for anyone looking to make money in the lulls, the economics look grim. There are two major kinds of lull that need to be filled. The first is a dunkelflaute, a lull in the winter, when solar is generating little or nothing. We get a dunkelflaute most years, and sometimes more than one. They can last from 1-3 weeks. The second is the long summer lull, with low wind generation right through the summer month, although perhaps with occasional windy interruptions. This happens every year of course, and a large amount of energy needs to be stored to cover the gap: perhaps as much as 50 days’ demand.
If we are talking about storage then, most of it will barely be used; it’s required just once a year to deal with the summer wind lull. Most of it will be filled in autumn, and will then sit there waiting for the summer, when it will be emptied to meet demand, before sitting empty again until the winds pick up again as the nights draw in.
Making money on this basis is impossible. A kilowatt hour of lithium ion battery storage might cost £350. If, optimistically, it gets perform two charge-discharge cycles per year, it will complete just 20 cycles over its lifetime. That means it needs to charge £17.50 per kilowatt hour, just to cover its capital costs; the electricity is extra! That is perhaps thirty times the level seen at the peak of the crisis last year, and 300 times the prices we used to enjoy before the advent of “cheap renewables”.
Of course, cheaper storage systems may be on the horizon, so it’s worth looking at these. The best bet on the horizon seems to be liquid air storage, which has a 25-year lifespan, so might be expected to complete 50 recharging cycles. Its capital costs are also much lower, but it will still need £1.68 to cover its capital costs. That’s three times the peak price last year, and thirty times what they were in the good old days.
Needing a large amount of electricity just a couple of times a year makes the economics impossible. It’s not just storage technologies that are affected – James’ idea that we could use nuclear to plug the gap therefore doesn’t stack up. Who is going to build a nuclear power station that only gets to run for 50 days a year? The idea is preposterous. In essence, the intermittency problem can’t be solved. The costs of doing so make it impossible, for any technology, even on the most optimistic assumptions about cost trajectories.
As a coda, it’s interesting to note that the Committee on Climate Change’s model for a net zero energy system has a vast fleet of gas turbines (122 GW of them!) burning hydrogen to deal with the intermittency of its vast fleets of wind and solar. But the power stations get run very rarely – they deliver just 2% of their capacity each year. By my calculations this means they will deliver power at around £1/kWh, or 40 times the prices from the good old days. However, the CCC, perhaps wisely, has accidentally missed the bill for these units out of the final reckoning of the cost of net zero.
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Green Britain: All major road building projects in Wales scrapped for Net Zero
The planned third Menai bridge will not go ahead and neither will the controversial "red route" in Flintshire.
The move is part of the Welsh government's National Transport Plan and follows a year-long review.
Environmental campaigners called it "world-leading and brave" but some in the construction industry warned the announcement could put jobs at risk.
It comes as the Welsh government is accused of endangering bus services as a senior minister said industry subsidies have yet to be confirmed beyond summer.
The Welsh government said all future roads must pass strict criteria which means they must not increase carbon emissions, they must not increase the number of cars on the road, they must not lead to higher speeds and higher emissions, and they must not negatively impact the environment.
Flintshire council leader Ian Roberts was disappointed by the decision.
"The council is concerned that there are currently no alternative solutions being put forward and no funding for much needed improvement works to local transport infrastructure," he said.
It comes as Ken Skates said Welsh government decisions on roads for the north should be made locally.
Freeze on all new road building projects
Shapps says UK government wants to 'fix' congestion
The Clwyd South Senedd member and former Welsh transport minister said certainty over how transport in north Wales would be improved was needed.
"I firmly believe that decisions over roads, buses, rail and active travel are best made at a regional level," he said. "It's time to devolve to the north, beginning with our major roads."
A second Labour Senedd member questioned the move by his party. Blaenau Gwent's Alun Davies called for "more joined up thinking" by ministers.
"If we're going to take services away from people in terms of distance, then what we have to be able to do is to provide the public transport options available for people to reach those services, and that hasn't happened," he added.
Deputy Minister for Climate Change Lee Waters told the Senedd the approach of the last 70 years was not working.
"We will not get to net zero unless we stop doing the same thing over and over," he said.
"None of this is easy but neither is the alternative."
To reach net zero by 2050, he said, the Welsh government must "be prepared to follow through".
The deputy minister insisted new roads would be built in future, but said the government was "raising the bar" to ensure any new road was "the right response to transport problems".
In 2021, the Welsh government announced it was conducting a roads review.
An expert panel, led by transport consultant Lynn Sloman, assessed 59 road projects and made recommendations on which projects to proceed with, which to abandon and which to reconsider in a different form.
Of these, 15 will go ahead, but all the rest have been rejected or will be revised.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-64640215?mc_cid=c9ed760f59&mc_eid=cc88839e92
***********************************************Australian supermarket giants have announced huge changes to their plastic bag policies as pressure mounts to reduce waste
The idea that paper and cloth bags are better for the environment is ideological nonsense. Producing both cotton and paper uses huge amounts of both water and bleach
Coles will be binning mesh produce bags introduced as part of a trial in the ACT last year, while Woolworths is disposing of its 15c plastic bags in Queensland and Canberra stores.
Woolworths Queensland state general manager Danny Baldwin said customer habits pushed the supermarket giant to make the move.
“Eighty per cent of our customers currently bring in their own bag, so over the number of years, I think customers have really responded to reusing bags,” he said.
“Also, a number of our customers are electing to actually not use bags at all.”
Mr Baldwin said that by removing the 15c plastic bags across the state and territory, the company would be “removing over 1600 tonnes of plastic from the system”.
It is believed that more sustainable alternatives to plastic bags will be available for purchase in-store, such as those made from paper and fabric.
Meanwhile, Coles will be swapping its trialled mesh produce bags for a compostable alternative after customers in the ACT found the transition “challenging”.
“We acknowledge a significant change of this kind was challenging for both our customers and in-store teams,” a spokesperson said.
“However, we remain committed to working towards appropriate and accessible plastic reduction initiatives for our customers moving forward.”
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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