THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume IX, Issue # 227, December 5, 2007
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE TRUTH ABOUT "ALTERNATIVE ENERGY":
Why Coal-Generated Electricity Is Vital to Our Energy Security
By Roy Innis
AMERICA'S ENERGY NEEDS & REALISTIC ENERGY POLICY: WHY COAL-GENERATED ELECTRICITY IS ESSENTIAL TO
U.S. ENERGY SECURITY -- WHY WIND & SOLAR POWER CANNOT ADEQUATELY PROVIDE FOR PRESENT & FUTURE U.S.
ENERGY NEEDS -- WHY ENERGY POLICIES ADVOCATED BY POLITICAL ENVIRONMENTALISTS ARE UNREALISTIC & SHOULD
BE REJECTED -- THE FATAL WEAKNESS OF THE THEORY OF GLOBAL WARMING & CATASTROPHIC CLIMATE CHANGE AS AN
ARGUMENT FOR ADOPTING ENERGY POLICIES FAVORED BY POLITICAL ENVIRONMENTALISTS
FULL STORY:
We often hear that clean, free, inexhaustible renewable energy can replace the “dirty” fossil fuels that sustain our economy.
A healthy dose of Energy Reality is needed.
Over half of our electricity comes from coal. Natural gas and nuclear fission generate 36% of our electricity. Barely 1% comes
from wind and solar. Coal-generated power typically costs less per kilowatt hour than alternatives, leaving families with more
money for food, housing, transportation, and healthcare.
By 2020, the United States will need 100,000 megawatts of new electricity, Energy Information Administration, industry, and
utility company analysts forecast. Unreliable wind power simply cannot meet these demands.
Wind farms require subsidies and vast stretches of land. To meet New York City’s electricity needs alone would require
blanketing the entire state of Connecticut with towering turbines, says Rockefeller University Professor Jesse Ausubel.
They kill raptors and other birds, and must be backed up by expensive coal or gas power plants that mostly sit idle, but kick
in whenever the wind dies down, so factories, schools, offices, and homes don’t shut down.
On a scale sufficient to meet the electricity needs of a modern society, wind power is just not sustainable.
For three decades, U.S. demand for natural gas has outpaced production. In fact, gas prices have tripled since 1998, to $13
per thousand cubic feet today, and every $1 increase costs U.S. consumers an additional $22 billion a year.
With Congress and states making more gas prospects off limits every year, this trend is likely to continue, further driving up
prices and forcing us to import increasing amounts of expensive liquefied natural gas, often from less than friendly nations.
We simply cannot afford to halt the construction of new coal-fired power plants, though some are trying to do exactly that.
Chesapeake Energy Corporation supported anti-coal initiatives in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas. The scheme was intended
to drive up the price of natural gas, and thus profits, by making coal less available and more expensive – with little regard
for poor families.
As Kansas discovered after its environmental chief blocked a proposed new coal generator, coal projects also come with
transmission lines to carry intermittent wind-generated electricity and more reliable coal-generated power. Wind farms
typically do not. Now a dozen Kansas wind projects are also on hold.
Former Clinton administration environment staffer Katy McGinty engineered the lockup of 7 billion tons of low sulfur Utah
coal, worth $1 trillion. Current and proposed air and water quality regulations would make it even more difficult and
expensive to provide adequate coal-fired electricity. But the facts support more coal use, not less.
Power plants fueled by coal are far less polluting than 30 years ago. Just since 1998, their annual sulfur dioxide and nitrogen
oxide emissions have declined another 28% and 43% respectively, according to air quality expert Joel Schwartz, and new
rules will eliminate most remaining emissions by 2015.
Coal-fired power plants are now the primary source of U.S. mercury emissions only because the major sources (incinerating
wastes and processing ores containing mercury) have been eliminated. U.S. mercury emissions are now down 82% since the
early 1980s; America accounts for only 2% of all global mercury emissions; 55% of global emissions come from volcanoes,
oceans, and forest fires; and two-thirds of mercury deposition in America comes from other countries, Schwartz adds.
(Compact fluorescent lightbulbs, or CFLs, could become a more serious potential source of mercury than power plants.)
Nevertheless, new EPA rules require a further 70% reduction in mercury from power plants by 2015.
That leaves carbon dioxide and catastrophic climate change as rationales for opposing coal. The latest UN-IPCC report
again reduces projections for future temperature increases, polar melting, and sea level rise. Moreover, increasing scientific
evidence suggests only slight warming, climate change controlled primarily by solar cycles, and no storm, drought, or sea
level trends that exceed historical experience.
Yet, claims about imminent catastrophes have become increasingly hysterical, as a prelude to international climate
negotiations in Bali. (The fact that delegates to this event will spew forth an estimated 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide during
their air travel to and from the island paradise is apparently irrelevant, at least to them and the news media.)
The inconvenient truth is that these climate chaos horror stories are based almost entirely on computer models and digital
disaster scenarios. They are no more real than the raptors in “Jurassic Park.”
Nevertheless, politicians are promoting initiatives like the Lieberman-Warner bill and Midwestern Governors Association
climate pact, which they say will prevent a cataclysm, by slashing CO2 emissions by 60-80% and generating “thousands of
megawatts” from wind energy.
If these initiatives become law, experts say electricity rates would soar another 50% by 2012. Labor unions predict millions
of lost jobs, as companies shift operations to foreign countries.
Preeminent alarmists Al Gore and Hillary Clinton emit more CO2 in a week from the private jets they take to campaign, lecture
and fund-raising events, than the average American does in a year. And yet they’re demanding a wholesale “transformation”
of our economy and living standards.
Mrs. Clinton says she is switching to CFLs, to save a few kilowatts, which brings us full circle on the mercury issue. Mr. Gore
justifies his emissions by noting that he gets (free) “carbon offset” indulgences from his company.
China and other rapidly developing countries will build 1,000 new coal plants during the next five years, with few of the
pollution controls that we require. That means even major sacrifices by American workers and families won’t affect global
temperatures, even if CO2 is the primary cause of global warming – which many scientists say is not the case.
We need every energy resource: oil, gas, coal, hydroelectric, nuclear – and wind, solar and geothermal.
We cannot replace 52% of our electricity (the coal-based portion) with technologies that currently provide only 1% of that
power (mainly wind). Wind is a supplement, not an alternative.
We cannot generate electricity with hot air from politicians eager to create tax breaks, subsidies, and “renewable energy
mandates” for companies that produce alternative energy technologies – in exchange for campaign contributions from those
companies.
We cannot afford to trash the energy we have, and substitute energy that exists only in campaign speeches and legislative
decrees.
Doing so would leave a huge Energy Gap between what we need and what we will have.
Poor and minority families can least afford such “energy policies.”
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
The Earth's Natural History, Global Climate Changes,
& the Future of Human Life & Civilization on the Planet:
Science, Ideology, & Public Policy
Political Economy -- Philosophies, Systems, & Public Policies:
Government, the Economy, & Economic Prosperity
Roy Innis is National Chairman of the New York-based Congress of Racial Equality, one of America’s oldest and most
respected civil rights organizations. The foregoing article by Innis is based on testimony he presented to a U.S. House of
Representatives energy forum in December, 2007.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Conservative & Free-Market Analysis of Government, Politics & Public Policy, Covering Political, Legal, Constitutional, Economic,
Cultural, Military, International, Strategic, & Geopolitical Issues
Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity