Paul Driessen
The World Economic Forum conference in Davos, Switzerland
is billed as the globe’s most prestigious annual gathering of movers and
shakers. Its mission is to “improve the state of the world by engaging
business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global,
regional and industry agendas.”
This year’s theme was “Stakeholders for a Cohesive and
Sustainable World.” Unfortunately, the lofty rhetoric belies the misleading,
potentially disastrous realities of agendas supported by many participants.
A primary basis for this year’s theme is the repeated
assertion that the world faces a climate cataclysm. European Commission president
Ursula von der Leyen thus wants to tax carbon-based energy imports into the EU
and end humanity’s practice of “taking resources from the environment and
generating waste and pollution in the process.” She (and others) insist that
“green energy” would do no such thing.
Climate crisis claims in turn are based on computer
models that are only as good as the assumptions built into them – and on
attempts to blame temperature changes, extreme weather events and future crises
on fossil fuel emissions, because the assumptions and models say it’s a
cause-effect relationship.
The most cited model is (naturally) the most extreme:
RCP8.5, which predicts temperatures
way above what we are actually measuring and all manner of future
calamities. But it is based on the assumptions that: methane and
plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide (a tiny 0.0402% of Earth’s atmosphere) are
vastly more important than the sun in driving climate change; our planet will
have 12 billion people by 2100; there will be no energy innovations over the
next 80 years; and therefore coal
use will increase tenfold by the end of the century. On that we’re supposed
to base restrictive energy policies, and Davos meeting themes.
Who are the stakeholders that Davos attendees will
consult? Greta Thunberg was invited, to present her patented tirade that fossil
fuels are destroying her future. But no climate realists (alarmism skeptics)
were given the podium, nor were representatives of EU or US factory workers or
the world’s poorest citizens.
The good news is that several
bankers made assurances that they were not going to stop lending funds to
fossil fuel companies or “major polluters.” (Will that latter category include
the mining companies that will have to provide voluminous raw materials for a
US and global “green new deal,” as discussed below?) The bad news is that Davos
bankers and politicians allow themselves to be pressured constantly primarily
by far-left “stakeholders,” who hold the stakes that they and global ruling
elites want to drive through the hearts of developed nation living standards
and poor country aspirations for better lives.
Indeed, contrary to its assurances at Davos, despite
consultation with indigenous peoples supposedly being a core company business
principle, and without consulting with Alaska Native stakeholders who want to
drill carefully and ecologically for oil and gas on their own lands, to improve
their people’s living standards, Goldman
Sachs has decided it will no longer fund such development in the Arctic.
With “mainstream” outlets and social media
increasingly controlling news and opinion, and siding with climate alarmists
and anti-fossil activists, that pressure will continue to build – to our great
detriment.
Will Davos themes, agendas and policies usher in a more
“cohesive” world? The opposite is infinitely more likely. Deprive people of
abundant, reliable, affordable fossil fuel (and nuclear) energy, as
eco-activists seek to do – and you deprive them of jobs, living standards,
food, health and life. People die in droves (itself a goal of more rabid
environmentalists panicked about an
over-populated world). Implement “green new deal” policies, and the results
will be anything but cohesion. The policies will bring rage, protests, violence
and anarchy – as France and Chile vividly demonstrated over the past two years.
Turn African, Asian and Latin American countries into
vassal states, with enormous mines serving “ecologically responsible,
climate-focused” nations that don’t tolerate mining within their own borders –
and any cohesion will rapidly disappear. Tell American, European and other
families they must accept massive wind and solar installations in their
backyards or off their coasts, and the results will be similar.
A “sustainable” world? Yes, fossil fuels are ultimately
finite resources – hundreds of years from now, after we run out of huge coal
deposits, oil and gas from fracking, methane hydrates and other supplies,
assuming policy makers don’t lock them up and “keep them in the ground.” But
long before that happens, human innovation will create far better alternatives
than wind turbines, if we let creativity flourish.
Meanwhile, just remember: Wind and sunshine are
sustainable. But lands and raw materials required for the technologies to harness this intermittent, widely
disbursed energy absolutely are not.
Sustainability is a useful concept for assessing hidden
costs, risks and fiduciary responsibilities – such as those associated with
climate change, as we are constantly reminded. But we must apply those same
considerations to wind, solar, battery and biofuel operations; and to impacts
on habitats and wildlife, air and water quality, human health and wellbeing in
green new deal mining and manufacturing regions, and human welfare in an
energy-deprived world of increasing hunger,
death, anger, riots and chaos.
As my new Heartland
Institute reports and previous articles note, fossil fuels and nuclear currently
provide over 8 billion megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity and
electricity-equivalent power annually, to meet America’s industrial, commercial,
residential and transportation needs. Using solar to generate all that power – and
charge batteries for a week of sunless days – would require 19 billion state-of-the-art
sun-tracking photovoltaic panels, completely blanketing an area equal to all of
New York and Vermont.
But that assumes the panels are all located where the sun
shines with summertime Arizona intensity 24/7/365, which will never happen. So
we’d probably have to double (perhaps even triple) the number of panels and
affected acreage. The impacts on habitats and wildlife would be significant.
Using 1.8-MW wind turbines instead of solar panels would
require more than 4 million turbines on farm, wildlife habitat and scenic lands
equal to Arizona, Nevada, California, Oregon and part of Washington State
combined. But the more we install, the more we have to put turbines in poor
wind locations. We’d probably have to double (or even triple) the number of turbines,
and acreage impacted. Their rapidly turning blades (200 mph at their tips)
would slaughter millions of eagles, falcons, other birds and bats.
Going offshore instead would require hundreds of
thousands of 650-foot-tall 10-MW turbines. Their impact on birds, bats, marine
mammals, vistas, and ship and aircraft navigation would be intolerable.
Each 1.8-MW turbine requires some 1,200 tons of steel,
copper, aluminum, rare
earth elements, zinc, molybdenum, petroleum-based composites, reinforced concrete
and other materials. Each ton of materials requires removing thousands of tons
of rock and ore – and processing ores with fossil fuels. In fact, wind turbines
need some 200
times more material per megawatt than a modern combined-cycle gas turbine!
Storing a week of electricity for windless and sunless
periods would require some 2 billion half-ton Tesla car lithium-cobalt battery
packs – and more materials; more mining. Connecting wind, solar and battery
facilities to distant cities would require thousands of miles of new
transmission lines, and more mining.
This doesn’t include materials to replace existing cars,
trucks, heating systems and other technologies.
And that’s just for the United States. Imagine how many
turbines, panels, batteries, transmission lines, raw materials, mines,
processing plants and factories we’d need for a global transformation!
But green new deal advocates detest mining, at least by
western mining companies in western countries. So it’s mostly done in faraway
places that have virtually no environmental, health, safety, wage or child
labor rules. Places like Inner
Mongolia, where rare earth operations have fouled the air, created a huge
toxic lake, and poisoned thousands of people. And Africa’s
Congo, where 40,000 children
labor in mines just for the cobalt needed in today’s cell phones, laptops and
electric cars; not for any green new deal.
This eco-imperialism and false sustainability must end.
As to all those self-styled stakeholders, You
first. Lead by example. Slash your
energy use and living standards. Then you can (nicely) ask the rest of us to do
likewise. That means you, Greta, Leo DiCaprio, Al Gore, Emma
Thompson and all the other climate scolds. (But of course they won’t. So
why should we? And why should the world’s poor?)
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee
For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of
books and articles on environment, climate and human rights issues.
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