Last week I was in a small group that met with an assemblywoman whom I’ll refer to as Ms. B. Ms. B represents the district that is the most vocal critic
of shale development in New York.
Activists in this district are responsible for funding the shale protest
and masterminding the 90 bans and moratoriums on shale development that have been passed here.
As her website states, Ms. B was first elected in 2002 and is now starting her
fifth term.
Ms. B began the meeting by telling my group
that climate change is her number one issue. She declared that her reading tells her that the United
States must completely de-carbonize its economy by 2020. If it doesn’t, it will be responsible
for catastrophic collapse of the environment. Ms. B, who holds an M.A. in English and taught high school
English before she was elected to the legislature, knows this because she reads
it. Unfortunately, she just
doesn’t read anything that doesn’t agree with this view.
What’s more, Ms.B’s well-educated constituents
–- the faculty, students and staff of a well-known university where my daughter
will matriculate in the fall –- agree with her, which is why they keep
re-electing her. If her
constituents get their way, hydrocarbons will be headed for the dumpster. Forget the industrial revolution; never
mind the cost or intermittency of alternatives; Mother Nature is terminally ill
and can only be saved by drastic action!
Ms. B also demonstrated how she lives by her
convictions. She refused to turn
on the lights even though her office was dark. When one person reached for the switch, she muttered under
her breath, “We don’t do that
around here.” Instead, she tried
to open the blinds, which would have been a good idea, except they didn’t work.
When I suggested she read Sustainable Energy
Without the Hot Air by David J C MacKay in order to understand what
de-carbonization will take, Ms. B said that she had never heard of
it. MacKay wrote the book for
British policy makers when he became alarmed at the physical impossibility and
excessively optimistic claims of most renewable energy. He is professor of natural philosophy in the department of physics at the University of Cambridge and chief scientific adviser to the UK Department of Energy and Climate. The book is available for free
at this link: http://www.withouthotair.com/. I recommend it for any person passionate about de-carbonization like Ms. B.
In Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air,
MacKay shows that only nuclear power generates enough energy to replace hydrocarbons. The world already knows this.
After 40-years of trying to replace hydrocarbons after the 1973 Arab oil embargo, the only
non-hydrocarbon source of fuel of any significance in the world is nuclear
power. Today nuclear power makes up 10% of
the world’s fuel supply, while the other 90% is hydrocarbons. The figures are on the IEA (International Energy Agency) website.
Wind resources are simply not in the right
place. Turbine farms take up valuable land
and generate most of their output at night when it’s not needed. Solar is good for the desert, but
if the panel is shaded, pitched or oriented in any direction except South,
output declines significantly. Bio-fuels
raise food prices. Wave energy is
in its infancy. Then there is my
personal favorite: hydroelectric dams. My great-grandfather lost his farm to
one of these projects in the 1940s.
So has Ms. B thought through the implications of her position? She kept saying that the United States does not have an energy policy. Does Ms. B have a coherent energy policy? Does Ms. B support nuclear power?
No. In fact, she hates nuclear power, too.
Till Next Time,
Energy Mom
