Freeman Dyson, one of the most highly-regarded physicists in the world:
There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. [From, "The Question of Global Warming."]Dyson is not the first to point out that environmentalism has morphed into an actual religion in its own right. In Global Cooling Ain't so Hot, Either, I pointed out:
Michael Crichton and J.R. Dunn have written highly insightful essays about how environmentalism is a religion in its own right. See “Environmentalism as Religion” by Crichton and Dunn’s piece, “A Necessary Apocalypse,” in which he shows how gobal-warming environmentalism is not merely a religion, it is an apocalyptic religion. Its deity is Mother Earth (Gaia), for whom human beings are mortal enemies. NBC’s Matt Lauer inadvertantly gave away Gaiaism’s central article of faith thus:There is, I think, a close correspondence between the main articles of religion of Judaism-Christianity and those of contemporary environmentalism, so much so that I would say enviromentalism's religious template is culturally derived from Christianity and its parent, Judaism. However, enviromentalism offers neither paradise nor "life more abundant." But there is more than mere religiousity at work in environmentalism. H.L. Mencken observed, "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it." And so it is, I think, with environmentalism today.Earth’s intricate web of ecosystems thrived for millions of years as natural paradises, until we came along, paved paradise, and put up a parking lot. Our assault on nature is killing off the very things we depend on for our own lives … The stark reality is that there are simply too many of us, and we consume way too much, especially here at home.My second son was required to take ecology his junior year in high school; he related to me that the curriculum basically said there was nothing wrong with earth that the disappearance of humanity wouldn’t cure.
Read the rest at Sense of Events.
Yes, but by way of a bastard descent through the genealogy of historicism.
The idea of Original Sin, and ultimate redemption of that sin, appears again and again in "leftist" philosophy from its beginnings, always interpreted in a collectivist and historical sense. In Hegel, Original Sin resulted in the alienation of the "real" and the "ideal", and history is the process of putting the two back together. Jean-Paul Sartre equated the origin of human consciousness with Original Sin, though I think he dispensed with redemption.
But the most notable version is in Marx, where a primitive communist paradise is destroyed by Original Sin - the sin being the invention of property, from which humanity is absolved through history.
Environmentalist religion is in the same vein: a past that never existed, and a future that never could. But some environmentalists have added an especially nasty anti-humanist element.
Good points. I would add that Marxism is apocalyptic as well. In postulating what he claimed was the first "scientific" theory of socialism, Marx held that the violent revolution of the working class upon the capitalists was an historically-determined necessity. So much so that the communist state could not be achieved without it. This revolutionary apocalypse was both necessary for communism to be attained and inevitable as well.
Sure, and lots of people appealed to Einstein's Theories of Relativity to justify positions of moral relativity (for example), that had absolutely nothing to do with it.
But that doesn't refute Einstein's Theories of Relativity, which have stood up quite well over the years.
As people get involved in this religious dispute, on one side or the other, don't fool yourself into thinking that the science being done is irrelevant.
There are genuine phenomena out there, and scientists are gathering, analyzing, and arguing about the evidence, as they always do. This is not the same as the religious disputation by people on both sides who are blowing wind.
I am not ranting against science. I am ranting against using science badly to achieve aims that science itself does not support. Whether the earth is warming may be debatable among scientists, but, as Dyson points out in his essay, there are multiple ways to address it that do not lead to kinds of loss of liberty that seems to be so necessary by the climate change faithful.
There is another religious template adopted by environmentalis that I did not include in my post - heresy. Heretics (those who dispute the so-called "consensus" of scientists) find themselves losing funding or threatened with other sanctions by the enviro-religious faithful. This has been so well documented that I see no need to offer citations here.
Yes, and it's interesting that Marx (like his contemporary John Brown) insisted so strongly that redemption had to come through bloody upheaval.
In some of the "unscientific" socialisms that competed with Marxism, the violence became the entire point. In the the philosophy of the Russian SR terrorists, the act of shedding blood (and dying yourself in the process) was liberating, so individual salvation again became possible. The same idea is in Franz Fanon, who said that when you kill an oppressor (literally) you also kill yourself (metaphorically) and are reborn as a free man.
In Dostoevsky's The Possessed, the engineer Kirilov decides that he can become God by shooting himself in the head.
There's an individualist schism in environmentalist religion, too. The overall idea of subordinating humanity to "The Planet" is thoroughly collectivist, not to say primitive in the worst sense of the word. But for many environmentalists, a "Greener than Thou" personal purification is the main attraction. For a small minority of them, violence plays a part, too.
Agree with Andrew. Radical environmentalism, in this case, is a strawman that you fuse with responsible environmentalism.
The more powerful we get (yay technology!) the more potent our effect on the planet. We saw that effect with acid rain, CFC's, and were able to ameliorate that effect, with smart regulation and standards.
We face the same type of effects with global warming.
In this case, the world is getting smaller, because of technology. And the proposition, really, is simply - don't sh*t your bed. Clean up after yourself. Treat the planet, your environment, the same way you would treat your house or your neighborhood - don't trash the place.
That's not "radical", that's some plain common sense.
It's like you guys, when accused of littering, respond that only radicals don't litter. You'd have to be a hippie not to litter freely, and without regard to consequence.
So, simply be smart about it. Technology can and will grow alongside not trashing our environment. It's not an either-or thing.
"Scientific Socialism" didn't render the tremendous scientific advances of the 19th Century irrelevant. Neither did science justify Marx's philosophy of collectivist, coercive utopia - he hated the word utopia, but that's what it was.
Marx believed that "science" made the individual human being a thing of absolutely no meaning or objective value, with no more importance than a chemical in a jar. And yet, he envisioned a brilliant future for collective mankind. He didn't threaten them with extermination.
Andrew and Hypocrisy --
I can tell that Global Warming is nothing but a sham, a con, a way to get money from ordinary people and control their lives like a televangelist.
If Al Gore, or Sheryl Crowe, or Laurie David actually BELIEVED in what they say, they would not jet around, nor live in mansions, nor ride in limos, or live generally wasteful and profligate lives.
Global Warming is nothing more than Jimmy Swaggart writ large, for the same purpose. Preaching morality for profit and control, all the while the preachers are engaging in the equivalent of some sordid, squalid encounter in a cheap Metarie motel.
What is a shame is that CONSERVATIONISM, which is worthy, a history of stewardship, preservation, and balance of nature. People are likely to confuse the two, to the detriment of conservation. A pity but terribly predictable. The way phony televangelists make the appeal of real Christianity gone gone gone.
I think Andrew and Hypo have a point- and it encompasses probably 90% of the average persons point of view (how could it not?).
However, i think its naive not to acknowledge that there is a hardcore branch of environmentalist that dovetails an anti-capitalist, ludite philosophy... and they are the point people for the movement. For the record the anti-capitalism came first and would appear to be primary (see power, nuclear).
Moreover, this branch has strong ties to politics, especially in Europe. Slowly a philosophy that prosperity is inherintly destructive has emerged, and not magically that intersects perfectly with the marxist idea that prosperity is inherintly unjust (when outside the scope of collectivism). Not a coincidence.
And then there's this from the Australian Broadcasting Company...
A.L.
Oh, I always thought it was derived from shamanism: Mr. Gore, the shaman of the tribe, has thrown the bones and said that if we don't do what he, He, tells, it won't rain anymore, or it will rain a lot, or it will be cold or warm or...
He periodically mets with shamans from neighbouring tribes and they all ask the gods, in remote and exotic places like Bali, probably to get a better connection... the He spreads the new ideas inspired...
Holy cow... I took the test from the Australian B.C. Is it for real, or a parody?
Hypocrisy stated:
"The more powerful we get (yay technology!) the more potent our effect on the planet. We saw that effect with acid rain, CFC's, and were able to ameliorate that effect, with smart regulation and standards."
I think this is highly suspect as an assertion. Coal burning in centuries prior to the last two had a much more damaging impact on air, water, soil, than the more "clean" petroleum energy has since. (And, I would argue, Nuclear energy would have an even more diminished impact than petroleum energy sources.)
I can certainly attest to the affects of Acid rain, but close examination of recent science on the CFC/azone layer issue reveals that was almost certainly hyped and distorted beyond recognition, as we will likely find with AGW.
But thus is the potential value of science waylaid by a laity that thinks they know more than they do, and believes in an evidence that cannot be made visible. Evidence of things hoped for and unseen, indeed.
"The stark reality is that there are simply too many of us, and we consume way too much, especially here at home."
If he REALLY believes that tripe,he can stop converting oxygen into carbon dioxide and "consuming" today, and do it under a tree so his life will have some benefit to the rest of us.
FabioC:
It's aimed at teenagers, but yes, they're serious.
By their logic, everyone in Australia must die. Australia is the most arid continent on earth, with very poor weather for agriculture. Anyone living in Australia is eating food that takes a disproportionate amount of energy to grow or import.
Think that's a joke? Just wait.
Environmentalism started as a religious construct, well predating Marx.
Thomas Jefferson's advocacy of a nation of self-sufficient yeoman was based partly on the ideal that an understanding of Nature was to understand the Divine and to become a virtuous people. Nineteenth century transcendentalists, led by Unitarian minister Ralph Waldo Emerson, also stressed the importance of Nature as a source of spiritual sustenance. And then there is Thoreau, the sometimes doctrinaire hermit.
If you take as your starting point that spiritual values are revealed by or associated with nature, then your likely to follow the preservationist views of John Muir.
The contrary view, conservationism holds that nature is valuable for the benefits it provides people or the state. It further assumes that by human action, typically through powerful government agencies, Nature can be perfected for use. One is far more likely to read of apocalyptic fears of resource depletion in conservationism. For example, Jevons' 1865 book, The Coal Question, set the alarm that Britain was about to lose the resource on which everything depended. In the first conservation work, Man and Nature, G.P. Marsh argued that ancient civilizations had been undone by failure to properly manage nature and that if mankind continues on this path, the earth will look like the face of the moon.
Which is a long way to argue that not only was religious one of the earliest elements of environmentalism, its kinder, gentler scientific form, conservation, is more apparently the source of government expansion and eschatological fervor.
My personal litmus test for seriousness in environmentalism is nuclear power. It couldnt be more of a no-brainer, and the arguments against it rapidly devolve into outright falsehoods (Yucca mountain, etc). If France thinks its swell, its good enough for us.
Well, the French live in a "collectivist, coercive utopia" that allows the state to dictate outcomes to the people. America remains a subject of British propery law where even backyards have rights.
Hmm, France isn't a dictatorship where the government decides and people obey - recall the truckers' strikes, for example. I don't know what the average frenchman thinks of nuclear energy tho.
Glen W. -
We're in pretty deep shit then.
Let's look at nuclear power like good capitalists.
Suppose you are offered an investment opportunity that produces a valuable product, and its raw materials are affordable, but it can't afford to pay for its waste disposal or its liability insurance, would you invest?
The one constraint I put on you is that you don't get to treat waste disposal in a nineteenth-century fashion: "Dump it in the river (or the ocean or the atmosphere) and it will go away somehow." You have to take seriously that the stuff can remain dangerous for centuries and even millennia and you don't get to simply ignore the potential costs to our descendants. Yes, we did that in the past, but we don't get to do it any more.
Likewise liability insurance. It's just an economic calculation: probability times cost. There have been very few major nuclear accidents. Chernobyl was pretty bad. Three Mile Island was reasonably contained. What's a reasonable premium to charge for a liability insurance policy that would cover the possible outcomes? If there's a buck to be made, why aren't there investors our there offering to make a deal?
If the only way you can make the deal work is to get the government to mandate that the public has to absorb major risks or costs without compensation, then you are talking socialism (at the very least). Are you serious about that?
You don't get to say that nuclear power is such a great idea by looking just at the benefits. You have to add up the costs as well. It's not just environmental fanatics that have doomed the nuclear industry. The problem is that the deal doesn't work.
"The problem is that the deal doesn't work."
Simply completely wrong. In fact, it IS working, my lights this moment are nuclear powered in lovely Illinois.
What doesnt work in building new plants is interference in the market via environmentalist inspired red-tape that is intentionally designed to make it cost prohibitive.
Same goes for waste disposal. Companies are legally prohibited from recycling waste like France does... which is why we decided to build Yucca Mountain on the most stable peice of land on the planet (as both government and nonpartisan studies have found). But again, the vast majority of nuclear waste can be recycled on site, but the government has created another artificial barrier.
The trick is that these barriers are not 'natural' in the sense that they are either market driven or reasonable public safety measures. They were intentionally designed to make building nuclear plants impossible. Small wonder then that Beard can point out how the economics dont work. You could put a 50 billion dollar tax on small businesses and claim capitalism doesnt work too.
The devil is in the details here. What a developer considers useless red tape might be the only thing that protects me, down-stream from the development, from drinking their wastes.
Similarly, I would be interested in a non-partisan description of why these plants are prohibited from recycling nuclear waste.
You say it's all useless, obstructionist red tape, intended to prevent development, not just to protect the public. But saying so doesn't make it so. I'm prepared to be convinced, since I know there's idiots on all sides, but your unsupported word is not enough.
From the Wall Street Journal last week:
Link
These numbers make it nowhere near competitive with coal in the USA with all the existing subsidies (fast-track French designs, tax credits, insurance indemnity), an abundance of coal and a substantial existing coal-based infrastructure. Plus with something like a 20-year build out, investors have to worry about new, rival technologies. I’m pro-Nuke, but I wouldn’t put a dime in it personally. The government needs to do a lot more, though that’s technically my dime too.
What does it mean to be pro-Nuke, if it's not a good enough investment for you personally? (Actually, I know the answer to that: a longer-lived, more-heavily-capitalized entity like a government can afford to make longer investments with higher risks, in order to get higher gains, than any individual can.)
And they do make those high-risk, high-payoff investments. This has a couple of consequences:
(1) The payoff is worth it. You build the Interstate Highway System, build the Internet, or decode the human genome.
(2) High payoff requires high risk. If some of your bets aren't losers, you aren't taking enough risk. It's the nonlinearity of the payoff that makes this work. You can only lose 100% of your investment, but your profit can be 1,000,000% or more. For those kinds of winnings, you can absorb a lot of losses, but you'd better have deep pockets.
This is elementary economics of portfolio management. Ask your broker.
But this sheds some interesting light on the concept of "government waste". If you want your government to make these kinds of investments, and getting the big wins for society as a whole, some of the investments will certainly be clunkers. Does that count as waste? (Ask your broker. The answer is no.)
There certainly is waste and corruption in government. No question about it. But just because some project poured a bunch of money down the drain and got nothing for it doesn't mean it was waste. It could be that it was a worthwhile bet that just didn't work out.
I think this is highly suspect as an assertion. Coal burning in centuries prior to the last two had a much more damaging impact on air, water, soil, than the more "clean" petroleum energy has since. (And, I would argue, Nuclear energy would have an even more diminished impact than petroleum energy sources.)
Dead right, the true environmentalist should be pushing our technological development as fast as possible. The more our technology improves the smaller our overlap with the natural sphere.
A thousand years ago we were heavily overlapped with the natural sphere. Power: wood fires. Agriculture: slash and burn. Transportation: animal powered.
Now our biggest eco-problem with our power source isn't even a first order effect (like chopping down forests to stay warm in the winter), it's a second order problem, particulate emissions in the atmosphere.
I remember watching a documentary on aluminum recycling back when that was hot, stating that if we didn't start recycling aluminum cans we'd be facing an environmental disaster when we ran out of aluminum. What, were the polar bears going to go extinct if they couldn't buy Coke in a can?
Nuclear power is another fun example of the absolute inability of environmentalists to actually give a damn about the environment instead of what they prefer, gaining power over humans.
You could pour the waste from a nuclear power plant into the rivers and ground water and not bother the ecosystem at all. Don't believe me, go look at the environmental studies done post-Chernobyl. The only way to tell a difference between the safe areas and the irradiated areas is with a geiger counter.
So, I forget, aren't we supposed to be responsible and bear the costs of our own needs without inflicting it on the planet at large? Aren't we supposed to be making sacrifices to handle the external costs of our actions?
Oh, but safe handling of nuclear waste isn't cost effective, so instead we should be paying billions (if not trillions) in carbon reduction schemes and cap and trade systems that do jack to help the environment? This is a rational public policy how?
I'm afraid that the geiger counter readings would bother me. Ever heard of cancer?
I am seriously skeptical about the claim "not bother the ecosystem at all". Want to provide a link to the relevant studies?
"Similarly, I would be interested in a non-partisan description of why these plants are prohibited from recycling nuclear waste"
The policy was initiated by Carter and hasnt been revisited since. The point at the time was to limit propagation of nuclear weapons, which in Carter's (ahem) singular view could be accomplished by the US unilaterally setting the example for the world. Aside from being a laughable failure on that front it has also prevented 30 years worth of nuclear waste being reprocessed.
France is so adept at reprocessing that apparently not only do they not bother to mine their own uranium, they also reprocess other nations dirty laundry, so to speak. That in itself is fairly stunning.
As far as the start up red-tape- first off context is important. Coal plants cause nasty environmental damage. Even hydro-plants cause problems. Wind mills kill birds and nobody wants them around. So we need to compare apples to apples (which the anti-nuke advocates refuse to do), realistically there isnt a 'clean' energy production system, so we need to talk about cost vs reward.
Obviously we arent talking about tossing every safety regulation on the fire... we are today deriving over 20% of our electricity from nuclear plants built 50 years ago. Think technology may have improved a bit? Why is it ok to run over a hundred nuke plants with 50 year old technology, but its too dangerous to build new ones? That doesnt make any sense to me. Obviously the regulations and lawsuits are drastically, orders of magnitude more severe today... meanwhile 50 year old plants happily hum along with safety records that make coal look like combat.
As far as indemnity, subsidies, etc... welcome to America. If you think the petroleum industries arent benefitting from those things think again. So again we are talking about what nuclear needs just to compete fairly.
Beard: I'm pro-nuke from a public policy angle (clean, safely and relatively self-sustainable).
Fiscally, I watch the industry; they know more than I do. I live forty-five minutes from a nuke plant that was a two-reactor design, but only one reactor was ever built. The plant enjoys wide support (and employment) in the community. Last year it received the first Early Site Permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 30 years. But the company has no plans to build; they got the permit in case of future need. If a partially-completed plant isn't sure that there will be sufficient demand for its product in the future, I'm not investing.
I am seriously skeptical about the claim "not bother the ecosystem at all". Want to provide a link to the relevant studies?
The IAEA follow up report, which is an interesting read to match up what actually did happen versus the hysteria at the time. IAEA Report
Money quote:
The recovery of affected biota in the exclusion zone has been facilitated by the removal
of human activities, e.g., termination of agricultural and industrial activities. As a result,
populations of many plants and animals have eventually expanded, and the present
environmental conditions have had a positive impact on the biota in the Exclusion Zone.
Indeed, the Exclusion Zone has paradoxically become a unique sanctuary for biodiversity.
The results shouldn't be too terribly surprising. Plants are very resistant to cancers and radioactive effects. After the initial die off due to the immediate effects of the accident (orders of magnitude beyond what you're looking at in standard nuclear waste), the plant life bounced right back. Only some birds and higher order mammals live long enough for long term radioactive induced problems to set in before they complete their reproductive cycles. And since the true limiter on all animal populations is food supply, a small percentage population fertility decline isn't significant.
Chernobyl was the worst case scenario, a ground water low-level nuclear waste leak from a power plant storage facility would result in far less, far weaker contaminants over a much smaller area, and would only be an issue for humans.
A purely internal species issue if you would, which is the goal, no?
For those that didn't see it Charles Krauhammer has an article on this topic today.
Carbon Chastity -- The First Commandment of the Church of the Environment
Demand isnt the issue.
Look at it this way- you've got the opportunity for a capital investment that, once online, could last for 50 years or more in a market with demand that does nothing but grow.
But... you need a federal permit (until recently it was 2), a state permit, all kinds of environmental impact studies, a ton of capital that is INVESTED in the truest sense of the word, and is going to take years to complete.
Oh, and you ARE going to court. A lot. No matter how perfectly you obey the law. Any where along the line at any time the plug can be pulled, sometimes just by a single individual like a judge.
So those billions of dollars that are sunk into the project are at the mercy of a lot of people, some of them political appointees, some of which are bound to hate nuclear power.
But here's the real catch, even if your ducks are lined up today, President Obama and/or his Dem congress could flip the apple cart next spring (think they will give you a refund?). Or the state. At any time you are at the mercy of the politicians, and one of the two parties has a core constituency that absolutely abhors your business.
Does that sound like a great investment opportunity? The real wonder is that anybody is even considering it in this country the way things are right now, even with the recent reforms.
Well, good for them. But my family and I are part of the ecosystem, too. I'm not that sanguine about "the initial die off", and I get little consolation from the notion that I might well die of something else before the radioactive induced problems set in. My kids (and hoped-for grandkids) remain vulnerable.
The point here is not to be a scare-monger (there are plenty out there to do that job). It's clear the probability of a serious accident is low. However, it's also clear that the cost of such an accident is high.
The insurance premium is a function of expected value, which is the product of probability times cost, summed over the alternatives. What is that expected value? What share of the insurance premium will be paid by the industry, and what share must simply be off-loaded onto the public (willing or not), to make the deal economically viable?
It's hard to estimate these numbers, but this is not an ideological question. A plausible estimate of this factor lets us assess how much of the problem is due to irrational hostility, and how much is actually rational economics. Specifically, I can be rational about not wanting certain uncompensated costs and risks off-loaded onto me.
Very likely this is already happening in other energy-producing (and other) industries. Fine. Estimate the magnitude of those involuntary subsidies, and then let's compare.
"However, it's also clear that the cost of such an accident is high."
That true, certainly, but again we have to define our terms. If we buy into the Al Gore 30 wall of water crashing into Manhatten scenario from global warming... is even a Chernobyl level meltdown (inconceivable if not impossible with modern reactor designs) significant?
To frame this back to the original context- if global warming is a civilization threatening event, how can a believer possibly turn their nose up at nuclear power? Aside from nuclear weapons, nuclear power simply doesnt compare to the doomsday arguments that spur the carbon argument.
The IAEA study from 2005 stated:
"The number of deaths attributable to the Chernobyl accident has been of paramount interest to the general public, scientists, the mass media, and politicians. Claims have been made that tens or even hundreds of thousands of persons have died as a result of the accident. These claims are highly exaggerated."
And again, thats a worst case scenario from the Soviet Union from a hopelessly outdated plant.
For someone convinced that global warming is leading to starvation, pandemic, natural disasters, and all manner of destruction, you have to wonder if a half dozen Chernobyls would equal all that.
I understand that this doesnt weigh as heavily in the utility argument for the rational that simply want to reduce carbon as a precaution and limit fossil fuels in general. But it should be accounted for. Nuclear technology should not be the boogey man it is made out to be.
I'd ask the question in reverse, if environmentalists wanted to promote nuclear energy, what would they do? The Congressional Budget Office says support a substantial carbon dioxide fee. They could also support one of three Presidential Candidates that favor more nuclear power plants. You could also favor more subsidies for nuclear power.
By my count, environmentalists are two for three. And as to the last point, environmentalists point out that nuclear, coal and other nonrenewable have out-subsidized wind and solar. Without necessarily agreeing with the numbers that I've seen thrown around, they have a point. Coal, corn, oil, gas, nuclear . . . they get a lot of direct and indirect government support, probably a whole lot more than a peripheral energy source. I'm not troubled by groups rent-seeking for wind and solar unless we're going to change the rules.
OK, there is a fourth thing environmentalists could do. Invade China, the source of most green house gasses. Two for four.
"they get a lot of direct and indirect government support, probably a whole lot more than a peripheral energy source."
I think thats unlikely, at least on a percentage basis. Renewables have a ton of subsidies, grants, endowments, etc. Dont have any numbers, just my impression.
I can give you one huge thing environmentalists could do for the nuclear industry- stop demonizing nuclear power, often dishonestly.
Number 2- stop automatically issuing lawsuits at every possible step of plant construction/expansion.
Number 3- either endorse Yucca Mountain or move to revoke the Carter era order preventing nuclear fuel recycling, or both.
Oh, boy, another invasion! We've gotten so good at this from the last two that we should take on a country that has an enormous geography, enormous population, enormous economy, a space program, and nuclear weapons.
(Don't worry, PDS. I know you were joking. (I hope.))
This article seems pretty good and careful, and tells the opposite story.
Two interesting points about it. First, you would hope that government subsidies would be used primarily as investments to help promising industries get started, and move up their learning curve. But the long-lasting subsidies for oil and gas are now built into their steady-state economic model.
Second, if you want to encourage a promising new industry to get started, you need to provide continuing subsidies (or a continuing market for initially high-priced goods) over a stable period to allow the industry to grow. However, what subsidies the renewable industries do get, come and go as the price of oil rises and falls. When the price falls, if the fledgling industry isn't ready to fly yet, it dies. (This happened in the 1980s.)
Incidentally, this early-investment model worked very well for the semiconductor industry. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, when computer memory cost $1.00 or more per memory word (about 4 bytes), NASA and the military reliably bought a significant amount, keeping the industry, and R+D going. Think about that next time you plunk down $50-100 for 2 GB of memory.
BTW, it's notable that Barack Obama dispenses almost entirely with the global warming rationale and skips straight to the "America is eating the world!" idiotarian socialism. But then, he already has his own religion.
Got a source for that claim, Glen?
- Environmentalism is absolutely a religion.
- Marxism is absolutely a religion.
- Both are flawed because they are religions masquerading as political movements
- Freedom of Religion is guaranteed by the Constitution
- The separation of Church and State is demanded by the Constitution
- Religious belief has no place in political debate
- That includes environmental politics and all other politics as well
Second, if you want to encourage a promising new industry to get started
The question is that it is not promising but for some investment banks that will finally get the cash of those subsidies.
Neither windenergy nor photovoltaic are profitable in most parts of the world, that can be easily proved, as it can be easily proved that climate has not remain constant even during the recent history of mankind.
If such noise from investment banks and apocalyptic sects receded, one could check that, for instance, solar heat is a developed and profitable technology for most of the world. It is easily to finance, and from the seventh year you can enjoy a profit.
Maybe that is the problem.
An astonishing amount of solar energy falls on each square meter of the Earth's surface. Harnessing this for our benefit should be a no-brainer.
If heat is what you want, then capturing that energy as heat turns out to be relatively easy and low-tech. So, yes, it has become profitable relatively easily.
If electricity is what you want, then you have to decide how to turn sunlight into electricity. The traditional approach is to get heat, then turn heat into electricity in a variety of ways. (Not terribly efficient, whether you get your heat from sunlight, oil, or nuclear.)
An alternate approach is to use the "photovoltaic effect" to turn sunlight into electricity directly. Moderately obscure, and definitely high-tech, but now you've got these cells all over the place.
Read Wikipedia's Solar Cell article to learn lots about this, including a nice graph showing progress in efficiency over the years. It's not (yet) cost effective compared with electricity from your local grid, but it's very cost-effective compared with batteries, which is why most calculators have solar cells in them these days. (I've even seen a really cool solar-powered flashlight! Leave it in the sun all day to charge its battery, then use it for several hours at night to see and work with. Not so critical in suburban America, but quite a big deal for the Third World.)
And, before you dismiss this technology as impractical, you might consider that it builds on progress in semi-conductor physics and engineering. I would bet on the side of progress in that area.
If heat is what you want, then capturing that energy as heat turns out to be relatively easy and low-tech. So, yes, it has become profitable relatively easily.
Heat pipe vaccuum tube solar collectors are not exactly simple or low tech, what they are is profitable for some solar heat applications. For me, that is not a drawback.
but now you've got these cells all over the place.
Well, if you subsidize the kWh at 45 cents whilst a nuclear produced one costs 3 cents, I am sure photovoltaic panels will pop up even in Ireland.
And, before you dismiss this technology as impractical, you might consider that it builds on progress in semi-conductor physics and engineering. I would bet on the side of progress in that area.
I've calculated the figures myself and it is clear that for most of the places with access to the grid, it won't be a competitive source of energy unless it reaches an efficiency of more than 75% (today's 20-25%). That is a lot of studies and a lot of panel production and photovoltaic facilities to be subsidized, a bright future for the sector, indeed.
There's a lot more to energy usage than plugging into the grid. That's why there are batteries. And why you see solar-powered devices along highways and the like.
Meanwhile, consider the national defense implications of decentralized energy generation. Right now, you can take down the grid with a relatively small number of bombs, to generating stations, transmission stations, and switching points. Wouldn't it be nice to have an Internet-like structure where a large fraction of the population is producing most of its electricity? Some draw extra from the grid; some pump some in. The extra gets sent short distances to nearby consumers, so the transmission losses are less.
If done right, you could end up with an energy system that was extremely robust to attack, from any source.
Think that might be worth investing in, even if it takes a few decades to get it right?