After Gutenberg

Pick up the chant, “Less pollution / More solutions!” As we end the Naughties, this blog wishes to remind its readers that those solutions are available to us from efficient energy use and from renewable energy resources.

And yet, as previously noted, solar power is being constrained by “a tyranny of policies that protect competitors, subsidize wealthy polluters and disadvantage green entrepreneurs.”

Image credit: Good

Why, dear readers, is it taking so long to get our solar on? Good question Good readers.

And, it is a bit more complex than a feed-in tariff, which some states within the U.S. have adopted, and other countries put into effect a decade ago. As yet support for such a Federal initiative is lacking from our ear-tagged Congress critters.

Furthermore, “we need a new grid system that can handle large percentages of electricity that come from intermittent supply sources.” As Cyrus Wadia explains…

Large solar projects that might solve this problem are happening, but happening slowly because of the grid interconnection, storage requirements for utilities, and other issues.

Other issues, eh? Perhaps, some other issues have to do with your perspective. For instance, Wadia suggests, “Before we can decommission a polluting coal plant we need a reliable replacement.”

This blog takes issue with that statement from Wadia, who, according to the Good Blog, is an expert on energy matters. This blog may be less than an expert on energy matters. It does know the smell of Male Bovine Manure.

No longer can we claim ignorance. Denial equates to death on a planetary scale.

Mis-perception #1: “Before we can”

We can. End of statement. Forget the implicit objection.

By avoiding the shutdown of coal-fired electric power plants we continue to harm the environment A number of plants already should have been shutdown, yet some of America’s biggest polluters refuse to shutter their old coal-fired electric power plants. The federal government has allowed them to continue operation.

There even have been reports that some energy companies have run the worse polluting plants at a greater rate than other plants and / or, given such allowance, with dirtier coal. The rationale? To keep the cost of electricity down.

They omit saying that their profit depends upon increasing the use, something encouraged by artificially low prices that fail to pay for the damage done to ecosystems. They simply are getting their money’s worth. It’s just business.

Carbon dioxide emissions from human activities rose 2% in 2008 to an all-time high of 1.3 tonnes of carbon per capita per year. Upon release, carbon emissions remain in the atmosphere for 100 years. The burden upon future generations is damnatory.

Mis-perception #2: “a polluting coal plant”

There is no such thing as clean coal. This blog heeds the advice of some of the leading climate scientists who say, “No Coal.”

Pulitzer Prize winner Ross Gelbspan advocates “global public works programs.” These programs would provide renewable energy that would supplant “hundreds of old coal-fired power plants, which now provide 40 percent of the world’s power and one-third of global carbon dioxide emissions, while creating millions of new jobs.”

Gelbspan and others say that Life on the Planet as We know It could survive with 20% of base load from coal. Maybe. OTOH, almost everyone (other than energy companies and their minions) agree that coal dominated countries (users and exporters) are destroying life on the planet by continuing with BAUAAAE (Business As Usual And Above All Else).

How do you explain to your children and grandchildren that we are committing ecocide?

Mis-perception #3: “a reliable replacement”

Perhaps because of its intermittent nature, the inference is that renewable energy is somehow unreliable. Whereas coal ash impoundments are something upon which we should rely? That’s MBM (Male Bovine Manure), Clem.

Until we stop depending upon dirty coal plants to supply us electricity, until we remove economic incentives for Business As Usual, until we put into place economic disincentives for carbon emissions, we should accept that we are condeming the future of life on the planet as we know it.

Pick up the chant, “If it’s solar, make it bolder. If it’s black, it needs a tax.”