Over a dozen years ago, the environmental cause celebre was women driving Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs) destroying the world; they guzzled gas and polluted at a copious rate. The high value target of the environmental purists was the Chevrolet Suburban, an SUV still produced today, being driven by “Soccer Moms.”
A leader of the environmental movement in San Francisco held a press conference railing about the horrors of the Chevrolet Suburban. After the conference he departed and drove off in his Suburban! When confronted about the hypocrisy, he maintained that he needed one because he in lived in the Hollywood hills — so it was fine for him, just not for “Soccer Moms” in the suburbs.
The Unabomber, Mr. Theodore Kaczynski, an Ivy League graduate BA Harvard; MA, PhD, University of Michigan, and a former professor at the University of California, Berkeley was a dedicated environmentalist who sent mail bombs to various people he felt were sinning against the environment. Killing three and wounding 23, his career as an eco-terrorist spanned 17 years. Say what you wish concerning Professor Kaczynski, but he practiced what he preached; he lived in a ten- by twelve-foot cabin deep in the woods with no electricity or running water, he owned no car, traveled by bicycle or bus, heated with wood and left a very small carbon footprint.
Hollywood celebrities flying 8,000 miles in a private jet to receive an award for the work they have done to cut carbon emissions should be an action criticized, not celebrated. The earth/climate scientists who drive a half mile to a convenience store to purchase a single item think nothing of condemning the rest of us for destroying mother earth with our carbon footprint. If the world cuts carbon emissions in half, a very unlikely thing, by the year 2050, carbon emissions will still increase due to the growing population.
The folks being born in Asia, India and Africa want the good life we enjoy, and that takes fuel,
but mostly electricity. Most nations in the world can generate massive amounts of electricity with hydroelectric, but the very people who condemn carbon emissions will chain themselves to a rock being moved to make way for a dam.
A well-built hydroelectric dam can operate for centuries with very little carbon emissions. Irrigation dams built in Egypt in 2950-2750 B.C. are still working today. The clean energy generated with renewable fuel (water, we have 326 million trillion gallons) is not damaged or used up; when water evaporates at the molecular level it rises to become clouds and comes down once again as rain, the ultimate recycling.
During a debate with a colleague on renewable energy, he maintained wind power was bad because it killed birds and destroyed the view. Nuclear energy was out of the question, and solar was bad because the manufacturing process of solar collectors polluted the planet and the panels needed to be rebuilt or replaced after 10 years. Hydro killed fish/birds and destroyed the “natural environment;” fossil fuel was the worst. Asked what we could do, he fell back on the old staple that we should find alternative sources of energy that do not pollute. Actually finding them is not the environmental warriors’ concern; it is easier to be the “nattering nabobs of negativity” than do anything concrete.
Hydroelectric power works, producing 12 percent of our current electrical power needs and 70% of the world’s renewable electricity. The Sierra Club Incorporated and other environmental corporations need to get on board with hydroelectric power. More important, environmentalists need to wake up and be pragmatic; will they? No, there is too much money to be made in the anti-everything movement.
The $18.4 billion we spend on energy subsidies each year could build a non-polluting hydroelectric dam each year. Cheap efficient hydroelectric power could make fossil fuels a footnote in American history within three decades. Sadly, short term pain for long term gain is just not a thing that most eco-corporations, their corporate management, and their members will accept.
One dam in China, the Three Georges Dam, produces 10% of the nation’s electric needs, power for 138,000,000 people.
Is hydroelectric perfect? No, but it is the best long-term solution for the world’s increasing electric needs. Unless we use nuclear, but that’s never going to happen.
