If it weren’t for the opposition of stick-in-the-mud reactionaries like us, there’d be lots of clean alternative energy and no global warming, drought and hot, sticky weather with sky-high electric bills such as we’re suffering through now. We’ve heard that a lot lately. It’s a complaint shot through with misinformation.
Scientists specializing in climatology don’t know to what extent global warming is attributable to human activity and to what extent to natural causes. Nor do they have any economically feasible plan for curtailing warming. There were warming periods hundreds of years ago, before, say, China became industrialized and the leading global producer of greenhouse emissions.
More alternative energy would not mean lower utility bills. To the contrary. The states that have adopted green-energy mandates (such as New Jersey is doing) have seen electric bills rise sharply, not drop. And more green energy might mean energy shortages. If renewable production rose three times the current rate of overall energy output, it would still account for only 16 percent of supplies by 2035 (instead of the paltry 10 percent now).
As for the opposition to green energy, environmental activists have become a major obstacle standing in the way of such alternatives. That’s right, environmental activists. They’re dead set against coal, oil, nuclear, fracking and — AND — in many cases even against green energy.
