Is it Time to fast track renewable energy? Yes, says Michele S. Byers, Executive Director of the New Jersey Conservation Foundation. How? Not by private citizens like Byers privately investing in and developing viable alternatives and proving them on an energy free market. Oh, no! Instead, stop building the pipelines that deliver the proven reliable, plentiful, and economical energy like natural gas, and instead have the state government pass laws that will block pipelines, and guarantee clean, “renewable” energy through mandates, subsidies, and the like. How will a bunch of politicians sitting around passing laws guarantee us the massive technological breakthroughs needed to make the environmentalist Left’s “renewable” energy dream come true?
Somehow!
Byers gushes:
“Since pipelines are designed to last for about 50 years, New Jersey could be saddled for decades with the costs of an extensive network of new pipelines that become obsolete in the near future as energy efficiency and renewables increase.”
“Energy efficiency” is, of course, a euphemism for energy deprivation. It’s part of the new “Energy Master Plan” being considered by the Democrat-controlled NJ Legislature.
I left these comments:
And what happens when the “renewable” energy revolution fails, and NJ is crippled by overpriced energy scarcity thanks to a shortage of necessary infrastructure? Nowhere in the world have “renewables” proven to be any more than a supplement to fossils and nuclear—not even in Germany, the world leader in “renewables,” which is building coal-fired power plants, not “renewables,” to replace its nuclear plants.
I have no problem with so-called “renewable” energy, as such. But the twin environmentalist assaults—one on our wallets to subsidize “renewables” (euphemistically called “state investments”), and the irrationally prejudiced War on Fossil Fuels—is a major threat to our well-being. What we need is a free market in energy. No subsidies and no roadblocks to energy producers of any kind, including pipeline builders. Welcome all energy providers, and let consumers decide. No one should be allowed to use the armed power of government to favor or hinder any energy producer.
Let’s not let arbitrary claims of jobs cloud our judgement. Over time, only the most efficient, affordable, and profitable industries maximize job creation. Any government can create welfare jobs by redistributing other people’s money. As any basic economics textbook will tell you, government subsidies to support businesses that could not survive on their own kills productive, prosperity-enhancing jobs, on balance. “Renewable” job peddlers always ignore the economic opportunities that don’t get voluntarily funded by entrepreneurs and investors when wealth is forcibly transferred to corporate cronies.
And certainly, let’s ignore climate change rationalizations. Those who point to storms like [Superstorm] Sandy as evidence that we should sacrifice our well-being on the altar of climate change are peddling snake oil. Those who peddle hysterical claims like “Superstorm Sandy showed us very clearly what our coastal state has at stake from climate change” are, like witch doctors, essentially claiming some extra-sensory, “superior” source of knowledge that we normal people have no access to. How does one refute a statement like that? One can’t, because there is no evidence to refute that climate change had anything to do with Sandy. NJ’s coast has always been vulnerable to violent ocean storms like Sandy. Think “The Great Atlantic Storm” (1962). Read the book “Great Storms of the Jersey Shore.” The witch doctors see “climate change” in every extreme weather event the way religionists see “God” in any aspect of existence they happen to fancy.
Reject the energy enemies and their War on Fossil Fuels, the greatest and most human life-enhancing energy technology available today. Let the producers of “renewables” prove their products’ ability in the market. And welcome the forward-looking fossil fuel energy producers like the natgas pipeline builders, who seek to be ready to provide the energy to meet future demand as and when it develops—here in NJ, around the country, and around the world.
Related Reading:
New Jersey's Pilgrim Pipeline vs. Atlantic City Offshore Wind Farm: It Shouldn’t Be Either/Or
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