Despite the proven fact that temperatures have not increased since 1960, zero evidence that carbon dioxide has ever influenced climate change, the green lobby’s frenetic insistence that only “renewable” energy sources can save the planet, is the new pandemic called madness.
Two articles in The Mercury of July 7 reflect this. One has President Ramaphosa commenting on his Climate Commission’s report that zero emissions is both an environmental and an economic imperative. The other article has an attorney at the Centre for Environmental Rights routinely ignoring the realities about energy production in a country like South Africa while proclaiming renewable energy sources as the obvious panacea.
Citing the rising cost of fossil fuels as proof of the need for renewables has no merit. The current high fuel prices are the result of the madness of the Biden regime in sabotaging US energy independence by shutting down the Keystone oil pipeline, denying new drilling and fracking permits and deliberately ordering oil refineries to produce less fuel. So with America having to buy oil from the Arabs and Russia, those suppliers have upped their prices. Yet in 2020 under Trump, the average price of Brent crude was $42. Now it is over $100.
Daily we read the concerns of the manufacturing industry and business about load shedding and the unreliability of Eskom. Has the green energy lobby not noticed how those same complaints are made in California and Germany which have come to rely increasingly on the much-touted renewables? The intermittency of supply from renewables depending on wind and the absence of cloud cover hardly fits World Economic Forum’s green energy slogan “build back better.”
The naturally free availability of wind and solar power is touted as a big plus but what the greens don’t mention is what is involved in manufacturing turbines, panels and batteries. How do they think the elements needed for that manufacture are mined without equipment that needs fossil fuels? How do they think the heat for the manufacturing furnaces is derived if there is no coal or oil?
If lower costs are a plus for renewables, why are massive government subsidies required – $8,5 billion cited in the Ramaphosa article? Ironically, China, which produces the majority of solar panels, does not adhere to the green pandemic so benefits handsomely from the misguided adherents of the Paris Climate accord.
The biggest fallacy of the green pandemic, however, involves their keyword – “renewable.” Panels, turbine blades and batteries are not renewable and cannot be recycled. How are they to be disposed of? What kind of wasteland of non-renewable junk do the greens have in mind?
Strangely, the greens are also silent about nuclear energy generation, yet it does not produce any emissions and disposal of its waste is proven safe with minimal environmental occupation compared to the toxic wastelands produced by fossil fuel mining and disposal.
The success of Koeberg over nearly 50 years should be replicated as part of addressing our electricity demand along with more coal-fired stations since we have an abundance of coal which, in turn, provides employment, whereas solar panels don’t.
Add Comment