The Incoherence of Greenergy

What we usually complain about when we complain about politics is hypocrisy. Politicians, parties, and interest groups piously defend principles in speech that they blithely contradict in action. More common and more interesting to me are cases where political actors are resolutely and genuinely committed to principles that are in manifest contradiction with one another. I can think of cases on both the left and the right. You will forgive me if I start with the left.

Here are three principles dear to the American Left:

1. Anthropogenic Global Warming is a threat to humanity and the ecosystem, so we should curtail burning fossil fuels and increase our investment in green energy sources.
2. Nuclear power is dangerous and bad. It ought to be phased out and certainly we should not expand nuclear power production.
3. All human societies should strive to improve the living conditions of the unprivileged masses, at least in part by taking away privileges from the wealthy minority.

Each of those principles is problematic in itself. Greenergy does not, at present, do anything to reduce carbon emissions. It probably makes them worse. Under the most optimistic assumptions, greenergy is unlike to make more than a small contribution to the world's power needs. More Americans have died in wind power accidents than in nuclear power accidents and far more Americans die from radiation in coal smoke than from radiation released by nuclear power plants.

Let's leave those points alone for the moment and consider the anti-synergy between the principles. Nuclear power is the one of the only major power technologies that does not result in greenhouse emissions. Expanding nuclear power is one of the few ways that we might seriously reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. It is possible that safer kinds of nuclear power, such as thorium reactors, are possible; but the left is uninterested in that.

What is certain is that the left's animosity toward nuclear power works directly against its desire to reduce greenhouse emissions. Both principles are genuine and honest, they are just mutually exclusive.

Or they are mutually exclusive unless the left is willing to abandon the third principle. Curtailing both fossil fuel use and nuclear power would mean a dramatic reduction in the energy available to modern civilization. Twisty light bulbs will not make up the difference. What would be the social consequences of a major contraction of the energy supply?

No large human society (and perhaps no small one) has ever managed to abolish inequality. Modern nations have managed to adequately feed, clothe, and house most of their peoples. For the first time in human history, more people suffer from obesity than from hunger. The improvement in the lot of the least has come by means of economic expansion and that has been powered by the expanded production of energy.

What will happen if indeed energy production and economic growth are curtailed either nationally or across the globe? I can tell you what won't happen. We won't suddenly become unselfish. We won't suddenly see the virtues of restraint, cooperation, and altruism. The masses may rise in anger (probably) and regimes will fall (possibly), but what emerges from the rubble won't look like Woodstock (even on a bad day).

What will happen is what always happens during social and political collapse. Some combination of daring, utter ruthlessness, and luck will put someone in a position to feather his own nest and reward his muscle. The most will go to the few and the little that remains will be pawed over by the rest. At best this will look like the Great Depression amplified, viewed through a cabaret window. At worst it will look like The Road Warrior.

It isn't going to come to that because, short of some peak oil or day after scenario, we aren't going to cut back on energy production any time soon. That is just another way of saying that the left's love of greenergy is incoherent.

Comments

[larry kurtz]

In a related story: "South Dakota among the fattest states:" http://doe.sd.gov/pressroom/educationonline/2011/Jan/art_7.asp

Don't like the results? Change the metrics.

[larry kurtz]

Evacuate all humans from north of I-90 beginning Dec. 1 to return Mar. 1: http://switchboard.nrdc.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?tag=sustainablecommunities&limit=20 and rewild that entire region.

[Donald Pay]

Your post is incoherent. It makes no sense, because your three "principles dear to the American left" is more caricature than reality.

You need to distinguish between various left groups and tendencies. The green left probably would subscribe to the three principles above, though number 3 would have to be reworked. The old left supports wasteful and polluting energy, like coal and nuclear power. Labor often lobbies on behalf of large-scale energy projects, and many support increased nuclear and fossil fuel production. There are some on the left who support supplanting fossil fuels with nuclear power.

What is more interesting to me, though, is that when it comes down to putting fossil fuel or nuclear projects near them, Republicans agree with number 1 and 2. It's only when these projects are sited away from them that they support them.

[Stan Gibilisco]

Global warming, whether anthropogenic or not, would have many consequences, but I do not believe we can predict them all.

I find it fascinating that every single possible consequence of global warming, as presented by the left, is bad. More floods, more hurricanes, more tornadoes, more droughts, more of everything terrible, but not a single good result.

Strange indeed. I can recall a time when scientist actually thought about ways that we might deliberately induce global warming, in the hope that we could thereby increase the amount of land suitable for farming. No less foolish, that, than the current hysteria, which has given rise to theories concerning how we might tamper with the atmosphere in order to cool the planet down ...

No one wants to talk about overpopulation, which, if not controlled, will doom humanity to a future more terrible than any of us want to contemplate. No, population control is way too radical for humans to undertake. Maybe we'd rather let Mother Nature implement population control for us; I assure you that if we leave it to Her, She will accept the challenge, and we will have no say concerning the methods that She decides to employ.

[Ken Blanchard]

Donald: the 'Old Left' is really old. You'd be hard put to find anyone at the Nation or the Progressive or the Washington Monthly (or KOS) who doesn't think that he or she believes all three things. I'll grant you that a few on the Left have some idea of what the end of nuclear power will mean for fossil fuel consumption.

It might well be that a lot of people on the left realize the irresolvable tension between the three and are willing to sacrifice the third for the sake of the first two. They are smart enough not to advertise the fact. I chose to advertise it.