Lomborg on Green Energy Costs
Tuesday, February 22, 2022
Although Bjorn Lomborg does not address the fact that green energy policies violate individual rights, his most recent op-ed in the New York Post is full of facts and figures that will interest anyone opposing such policies.
The major thrust of the argument is cost, with the following critique likely to disturb many Americans:
In addition to the staggering costs, Lomborg argues that these will accomplish next to nothing towards their stated goal of reducing emissions:Research published in Nature finds that reducing emissions just 80% will cost the United States more than $2.1 trillion every year from 2050, or more than $5,000 per person, per year. The cost of achieving Biden's promised 100% reductions will be far higher.
How to top off a coal-powered car. (Image by Possessed Photography, via Unsplash, license.)
To put this in context, the annual US cost of World War II is estimated at $1 trillion in today's money. Every year by 2050, climate policy could cost Americans more than twice what they paid during the Second World War. [links omitted, format edits, bold added]
That estimate [$150 trillion over 30 years worldwide to reduce emissions] is based on the fanciful assumption that costs are spread efficiently, with big emitters China and India cutting the most. But India says it will only keep moving toward net-zero if the rest of the world pays it $1 trillion by 2030 -- something that won't happen. Most cuts will likely only happen in rich countries, which will mean a relatively trifling cut to global emissions. The rich world will get all pain for little gain. [bold added]And this is on top of the West crippling itself with reliability problems. Batteries, for example, are nowhere near ready to help in that department:
... Batteries are inadequate and expensive, easily quadrupling solar electricity costs and failing to provide much power. In 2021, Europe only had battery capacity to backup less than 1 1/2 minutes of its average electricity usage. By 2030, with 10 times the stock of batteries, and somewhat more usage needed, they'll have enough for 12 minutes. [bold added]That last was perhaps the most striking to me in terms of showing how not "ready for prime time" batteries are.
There are moral and political reasons for opposing environmentalism, and this piece does not address those, but it can still be useful as a means of helping get the attention of complacent or undecided people who might be sympathetic to such arguments.
-- CAV
6 comments:
I had two thoughts on reading this.
1) This no doubt over-estimates the amount of reduction in CO2 emissions switching to "green" energy sources would produce. The problem is that "green" sources of energy require vast amounts of land and/or equipment. You need to grade land for solar panels, build access roads for wind turbines, build dams for hydroelectric (though that's no longer considered green)--and you need to build and maintain power lines to transmit the power, our current infrastructure being inadequate for this purpose. I've never seen an electric excavator or dozer, much less some of the larger scrapers! It can take months to build a single wind farm or solar array, which means it's months of diesel engines spewing smoke. Then you have to remove the broken components throughout the lifespan of the plant, and decommission it.
2) Environmentalism is the conspicuous spending of a culture. It's only possible among cultures where basic needs are amply met. The press may paint a grim picture of the USA, but when your country has an obesity epidemic you're doing okay (remember, most of humanity throughout most of history lived on the edge of starvation). And technology makes things more efficient over time. Thus the only countries that care about reducing environmental impacts are those that contribute the least to the problem. This is seen in multiple ways. 95% of plastic in the ocean comes from three rivers, for example--none of which are in Western countries. There are more trees in North America now than when Europeans re-discovered the continent; deforestation is occurring in second- and third-world countries. If we eliminate USA contributions to pretty much any global environmental issue, the results would be a rounding error. An argument can be made that we merely outsource the problem, but the fact remains that the problems aren't coming from North America.
These, along with a number of other things I've observed over the years, demonstrate that the typical Environmentalist is an incredibly shallow thinker. They are aware only of those things that are immediately obvious or which have become slogans swallowed wholesale. They simply refuse to examine the complexities of the issues involved, despite all their discussions of externalities and the like. And unfortunately this is preventing us from fixing real problems. One of the few areas where I disagree with Ayn Rand is ecology--I contend that it's a legitimate field of study, provided one remembers that ALL organisms, including humans, have a nature and act according to it. But since ecology has been co-opted, even in science, by people who can't think beyond campaign slogans and what's in front of their noses, no one is interested in actual, rigorous, scientific study of the issues.
That last sentence nearly brings me to tears. We are witnessing an ecological transition on par with any of the Big Five mass extinctions--we are seeing the rise of entirely new biomes, and observing macroevolution in real time!--yet our myopic obsession with a trace gas in the atmosphere has blinded us to this unprecedented and truly astonishing opportunity.
Good points regarding unaccounted-for carbon footprints of "clean" energy sources.
I like your point about environmentalism as conspicuous consumption, but I think it's also a way for affluent, shallow-thinking people to pretend to others and themselves that they are moral (which they equate with altruist). It is both a luxury and a way to make a sacrifice that the world can see, sort of like an affluent version of a hair shirt, but with a less scratchy inner lining for those who can afford it.
You raise an interesting issue with Ayn Rand's view of ecology -- or at least what most people took that word for in her time, which would probably map onto now. I don't know this, but I suspect she would have no problem with the branch of biology known as ecology. (That said, she refused to take a stand on evolution because she hadn't studied it, which is a perfectly reasonable stand, but not the same as opposing the whole idea.)
s/ map onto now/map onto environmetalism now/
Yo, Gus, just as a minor example of environmentalist priorities, one watermelon of my acquaintance was talking about how the Russian attack on Ukraine suggests that Biden will need to open the strategic petroleum reserves. Not allow fracking or anything resembling a free energy policy, since that should not be allowed so as to maintain the accomplishments of the government in saving the planet, just a bit of largesse from our overlords.
That suggestion is so clueless as to be functionally treasonous.
Yo, Gus, you write, "That suggestion is so clueless as to be functionally treasonous." Which makes a change, because he's usually dysfunctionally treasonous. Miao!
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