Endless growth pundit mischaracterizes the "green" movement

If only what he claims were true!

Alex Epstein, author of Fossil Future, argues that solar and wind energy is not reliable, cost-efficient, or “green.” In short, when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow, we lose power at great cost to society. Of course, Epstein is not alone with such criticisms.

Green conspiracy theory

Epstein takes his crusade against renewable energy a lot further. According to him, the real mission of today’s “green” movement is to force degrowth and ultimately undermine our civilization. He implies that all the talk we hear about the virtues of renewable energy is actually a hoax; and that the power elites in society that promote “green” growth must be luddites or hippies in disguise.

Epstein claims that if solar and wind became cost-effective and are deployed on a large scale, there would be “a level of ‘environmental impact’ from mining and land use that would make the ‘green movement’ oppose them.” He states this is already happening. “Green” means “minimal or nonexistent environmental impact” which “is a fundamentally anti-energy idea…If you don’t want us to impact Earth you ultimately must oppose every form of energy.”

Epstein is either hallucinating or not paying attention to climate change politics if he believes that “green energy…faces huge [my italics] ‘green’ opposition to its land use, mining, and transmission-line-building requirements.”

Apart from a small minority of people like Derrick Jensen (Bright Green Lies), Brian Czech (Steady State Economy), some academicians, Native Americans, and those of us on Scale Down, the environmental movement is solidly behind renewable energy and “green” industrialization, notwithstanding its dire ecological consequences.

Spinning a tale of conspiracy, Epstein asserts that the “green” movement supports renewables at this point in time only “to hide its real goal: radically reducing energy use.”

Epstein forces his point with a 1970s quote from environmentalist Amory Lovins, "If you ask me, it'd be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we would do with it."

I doubt that any major environmental figure, including Lovins, would say such a thing today. Think how far the environmental movement has strayed from understanding Limits to Growth. By the way, Amory Lovins is currently energy advisor to major firms and governments across the world.

Concluding his article, Epstein urges that we defeat his alleged degrowth conspiracy:

“The world needs to reject the ‘green’ movement and instead embrace a ‘human flourishing’ movement that embraces intelligent human impact on Earth as a good thing. It's one that both embraces today’s most cost-effective energy sources—including fossil fuels—and is eager to improve on them.“

That’s pretty much the same "sustainability" talk we hear from the Corporate State establishment that’s wrecking the world.

“Green” is not green

One has to hand it to Alex Epstein, however—at least he pulls no punches in forecasting some of the gross consequences of renewable energy industrialism:

Because sunlight and wind are dilute sources of energy—they take up more space and use more of many materials than fossil fuels or nuclear. This massive "environmental impact" is not at all "green."  

Consider the land use requirements of solar. The world uses over 165,000 TWh of energy per year, which requires ~19 billion kW of power on average. An optimistic, real-world power density for solar projects is 10 Watts per square meter. To power the world, you’d need ~1.8 million square kilometers of solar PV projects.  

If 1.8 million square kilometers of solar panels doesn’t seem like much, note that it is more than all cities, towns, villages, and human infrastructure combined (~1.5 million square kilometers).  

And this excludes the huge footprints of solar and battery mining, manufacturing, and transmission. Consider the mining requirements of solar, wind, and batteries. An International Energy Agency projection for a "net zero" scenario shows an increase in mining and processing of minerals such as lithium, graphite, nickel, and rare earths by 4,200%, 2,500%, 1,900%, and 700% by 2040. 

Think!

Everyone in the media and in politics is pushing a climate narrative. It’s become a partisan political pastime. It’s become insane. In the U.S., Democrats and most of mainstream media insist there’s a climate emergency (but don’t act that way) while Republicans and allies on Fox News either deny that humans cause climate change or claim it’s no big deal.

Groupthink has always troubled me. Sad to say, I see today’s climate debate steeped in it. As one who strives toward open mindedness, I’ve been asking myself of late whether climate change is as bad as they say. I’ve pretty much accepted that it is, but honestly without sufficiently evaluating climate change reporting and research.

So I decided to dive deeper into the matter of climate change. The first authoritative graph I pulled up online shows the history of the Earth’s climate going back 800,000 years. Here it is:

Source

At the far end of the graph, the modern era, the global temperature rises sharply just as it did many times in the past. Here’s a challenge question: Given this data, what do you say to those who suspect that the recent temperature increase may have little or nothing to do with human activity?

Unless we’re very trusting in an increasingly untrustworthy information world, we better sharpen our analytical skills and take that deeper dive.

Postscripts

To be clear, I continue to believe that we are seeing rapid climate change and it’s caused by humans. That’s because the burning of fossil fuels really shot up starting in the mid-1960s, and that corresponds with increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and a rapidly rising global temperature, as shown in this graph:

Yearly temperature compared to the twentieth-century average (red bars mean warmer than average, blue bars mean colder than average) from 1850–2022 and atmospheric carbon dioxide amounts (gray line): 1850-1958 from IAC, 1959-2019 from NOAA ESRL. Original graph by Dr. Howard Diamond (NOAA ARL), and adapted by NOAA Climate.gov.

Still, an inquiring mind might ask the question as to whether there’s a bias from locations where the data were collected over time. In earlier decades, were data more likely to come from northern latitudes (and from more developed countries) where temperatures are cooler than in tropical regions? That’s something to look into. (For more, visit NASA and note the graph on “Temperature Change for Three Latitude Bands,” which suggests the researchers accounted for that possibility.)

Perhaps the most striking thing about the graph is how carbon emissions sharply began to accelerate in the 1970s—just after the first “Earth Day.” How ironically crazy is that!

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There are two kinds of climate hyperbole that really annoy me. First, political leaders who constantly warn us about the “climate crisis” but hypocritically do nothing to get society to reduce energy consumption (their policies typically encourage more consumption). Meanwhile, global carbon emissions continue to rise due to overconsumption of energy and continued reliance on fossil fuels. Second, media articles that push the climate change narrative in ways that fly in the face of accurate reporting and common sense. Here’s one example:

The title of the article attributes recent deaths of Everest climbers to climate change based on what “experts” say. It blames “variable weather” but, without presenting a shred of evidence, claims it’s caused by climate change. No “experts” (note plural) are quoted in the article except perhaps the director of Nepal’s tourism department. Readers who get past the first six paragraphs will find that, in fact, variable weather is one among “many reasons” for the high number of climber deaths, including overcrowding and too many inexperienced people on the mountain. 

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Have a good weekend, dear friends. Wishing you fair weather!