What he said — Glenn Reynolds: “To be fair, they don’t actually want to cut carbon emissions, they just want to make your life worse.”
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everything old is new again. Prairie homesteaders, S. Dakota, 1910
The biggest roadblock that the green movement has thrown in front of cutting emissions is its long-standing opposition to nuclear energy. Leading environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the League of Conservation Voters, have been fighting nuclear power since the 1970s.
…. Even after decades of research into alternative energy, nuclear power remains the only proven means to produce electricity that is at once reliable, emissions-free, and capable of being scaled up to meet growing demand. But decades of antinuclear activism have eroded public support. After the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents, the U.S. and other countries imposed regulatory burdens that go far beyond legitimate safety needs. In most Western nations, nuclear-plant construction has largely ground to a halt.
But what if nuclear research and plant construction had continued to advance at the pace seen in the 1970s? One Australian researcher concluded: “Had the early rates continued, nuclear power could now be around 10 percent of its current cost.” That cheap, clean power would have made the use of coal—and, in many cases, even natural gas—unnecessary for power generation. In turn, this hypothetical nuclear revolution would have eliminated roughly five years’ worth of global emissions from fossil fuels and prevented more than 9 million deaths caused by air pollution. Most green activists today would see such numbers as nothing short of a miracle. Yet it was environmentalists who led the campaign to halt the rollout of the cleanest, and greenest, of all power sources.
…. But when Indian Point shut down for good in April 2021, all the wind and solar facilities in New York State combined were producing less than a third of the power churned out by that single plant. So, just as in other regions where nuclear plants have closed, grid operators turned to natural gas to fill the gap. Statewide grid-related CO2 emissions shot up by 15 percent. Analysts warned of potential blackouts. Electricity prices rose, too, jumping 50 percent for New York City residents. Then Riverkeeper executed a brazen maneuver: with Indian Point now closed, the organization began lobbying New York’s Public Service Commission against the proposed power line from Canada that it had previously supported. The group announced that it had “the courage to take a second hard look at this project.”
Riverkeeper’s about-face reveals a troubling contradiction at the heart of the climate movement. Green technocrats say that we must “electrify everything,” shifting cars and trucks, home heating, industrial processes, and more to electric power instead of fossil fuels. In a world of ample, cheap electricity, that process might be feasible, even desirable. But while activists support renewable energy in theory, they consistently oppose the infrastructure needed—not just to produce that energy but to deliver it to consumers. For example, a mostly renewable-power grid would require hundreds of thousands of miles of new high-voltage transmission lines. But environmental groups have filed lawsuits against a proposed line designed to carry wind power from New Mexico to Arizona and a similar transmission corridor linking Iowa and Wisconsin. Following a Sierra Club campaign against the project, Maine voters recently rejected a planned power line designed to deliver Canadian hydropower to New England.
…. The green economy that activists envision would also entail a massive network of high-speed rail lines to help replace air travel. But NIMBY activists are fighting every mile of California’s planned high-speed rail system. That project’s estimated costs have ballooned to $100 billion, with no reasonable expectation that it will ever be completed. Electric vehicle batteries and components for wind and solar facilities will require millions of tons of minerals: lithium, cobalt, rare-earth metals, and more. Maine has one of the world’s richest deposits of lithium, but a 2017 law makes mining in that state virtually impossible. Activists are fighting other proposed mines in Nevada, North Carolina, and other states. In Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, habitués of the Burning Man festival are suing to stop a proposed geothermal energy project. Greenpeace and other groups oppose research into technologies that can capture and store the carbon in fossil fuels, or even strip CO2 from the atmosphere. Critics worry that CCS technologies could “prolong demand for fossil fuels,” according to Inside Climate News.
In 2000, Germany announced its ambition to become the world leader in developing renewable energy, while renouncing fossil fuels and nuclear power. … Two decades later, Germany has spent well more than 500 billion euros on wind and solar infrastructure, biofuels, and other initiatives. Even so, Energiewende is an environmental, economic, and geopolitical train wreck. By 2019, Smil notes, the country’s total share of energy produced by fossil fuels had fallen from—wait for it—84 percent to 78 percent. Despite its huge commitment to renewable energy, Germany hasn’t managed to reduce its carbon emissions any faster than the U.S. has. The country still mines and imports mountains of dirty coal. Even before the Ukraine crisis, German consumers were paying the highest electricity rates in Europe. And shortfalls in domestic energy production have made Germany desperately dependent on coal—and on natural gas from Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Faced with that cascade of undesirable outcomes, you might think that Germany’s leaders would reassess. But no. In January 2022—as energy anxieties mounted, and Putin amassed his troops—Germany closed three of its last six remaining nuclear plants. The rest were scheduled to shut down by the end of the year. At that point, Germany would have eliminated in a single year 12 percent of its total electrical generating capacity—all safe, reliable, and carbon-free. The action was “applauded by environmentalists,” wrote the New York Times. After Russia’s Ukraine invasion, the German government still rejected calls to keep the plants open. But after Putin began throttling gas supplies, the country’s leaders finally realized they are facing “a wave of poverty.” In July, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced his government would “have a look at” the possibility of keeping the plants operating.
