Green Energy Suicide: The West Pays The Price For Its Net-Zero Delusions

“Poor Jud is dead. A candle lights his head! He’s looking oh so pretty and so nice. He looks like he’s asleep. It’s a shame that he won’t keep. But it’s summer and we’re running out of ice.” [emphasis, links added]

In Oklahoma! Curly McClain almost succeeds in convincing Jud Fry to take himself (permanently) out of the competition for Laurey Williams’ hand. But Jud finally catches on to Curly’s clever scheme and angrily confronts the musical’s leading man.

Offstage, in the real world, historian Arnold Toynbee cautioned, “Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.”

Their citizens forget, or reject, the reasons for their accomplishments, health, and living standards; replace hard work with self-absorption and a sense of entitlement, and succumb to the belief that the world would be better if they eliminated evils like borders, citizenship, religion, and fossil fuels.

“Imagine there’s no countries … Nothing to kill or die for, And no religion, too.”

Indeed, the Left has been devilishly ingenious in its efforts to lure the United States, Europe, and the West into committing civilizational suicide by fearmongering that the planet’s very existence is at stake, and promising that future generations will praise us if we follow “progressive” demands.

Above all, the Left assures us, replacing oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear power with “clean, renewable, sustainable” wind and solar energy will ensure idyllic temperatures, a perfect climate all year, planetary salvation, and everlasting hosannahs.

Those tempted by these sirens’ calls should ponder my grandmother’s sage adage: “The only good thing about the ‘good old days’ is that they’re gone.”

Having grown up on a nineteenth-century farm, Grandma Anna never wanted to live again without indoor plumbing, electricity, or refrigerators that replaced ice boxes, ice houses, and the risk of “running out of ice” before the next Wisconsin winter set in.

Terror attacks, judicial interference, and Blue State resistance notwithstanding, Trump Administration and congressional actions on these fronts suggest that the United States will at least forestall, if not reject, national suicide.

Much of Europe, however, seems headed for energy and civilizational collapse.

“Grooming gangs” sexually exploiting young girls, vehicular rampages and knife attacks, frequent gang rapes, enclaves of assimilation-rejecting migrants, and native populations whose lower birthrates make it likely that legal and illegal immigrants will soon dominate demographics, cultures and elections – all are harbingers of slow but steady civilizational decline across much of Europe.

Prolonging these problems, from Britain to France to Germany, ruling liberal/socialist elites are shutting down conservative voices and even entire parties that question or challenge government ideologies on climate change, the energy “transition” to wind and solar, open borders, and free speech.

Germany’s domestic intelligence service officially classified the popular, populist, anti-green-energy Alternative fűr Deutschland as a “proven far-right extremist” organization; AfD could now be subjected to informants and secret recordings and even banned from future elections.

Perhaps worst of all, Europe may be entering not just a new intellectual Dark Age, but a North Korea-style darkness age – where energy is scarce and costly, factories close, jobs disappear, lighting and heating become luxuries, and governments increasingly control lives, livelihoods, and living standards.

Germany and Britain already have among the highest household, business, and industrial electricity prices on Earth (nearly 3x higher than average US prices; 3-4x higher than in 30 states).

Yet they refuse to frack for natural gas to power generators or build nuclear plants for reliable, affordable electricity … while demanding electric vehicles and heating, and importing more Russian gas to finance Putin’s war machine.

(US states focused on climate and “green” energy also have outrageously high electricity prices.)

Reliability is equally problematic.

On April 16, Spain was euphoric: wind, solar, and hydropower provided 100% of its electricity. Twelve days later, a long blackout plunged the country into chaos.

No lights, refrigerators, TVs, or cell phones; no trains, subways, traffic lights, or flights; cash only because credit cards didn’t work; hospitals had only limited backup power; people died.

Sunny net-zero Spain has 32 gigawatts of installed solar photovoltaic capacity, blanketing over 315 square miles (5x Washington, DC) with solar panels.

But the panels generate power intermittently, unreliably, at only 17% of their rated capacity overall. When solar generation surges (or plummets), its aging grid cannot handle the strain or meet power demands.

The heavily wind-solar Spanish electrical system lacks the “inertia” or “spinning mass” that gas and nuclear power plants provide: the innate ability to respond quickly to changes in demand, prevent fluctuations in voltage and available power, maintain grid stability, and prevent blackouts.

And Spain’s few remaining gas and nuclear plants were mostly offline when needed on April 28.

Experts estimate that the EU power grid requires at least a $1-trillion upgrade to avoid similar blackouts. The International Energy Agency says Europe must spend $600 billion a year to cover the necessary overhauls; the European Commission puts the grid-upgrade tab at over $2 trillion by 2050.

Net-zero US states risk similar electricity chaos, financial catastrophes, and economic decline.

The obvious best example is California, which already imports 20-30 percent of its electricity, depending on wind and sunshine, and increasing amounts of gasoline, as regulations, fines, and costs force more refineries to close. The state is also plagued by recurring power outages.

The looming closure of Valero’s Benicia refinery will not only eliminate local jobs and revenues.

It will leave California drivers with less fuel (just as EV drivers have to cope with reduced electricity generation), compel the oil-rich former Golden State to import even more fuel from Asia (adding tanker costs and emissions to the equation), deprive Nevada and Arizona of fuels its residents need – and leave Travis Air Force Base largely bereft of fuels for its cargo, refueling and other aircraft.

Here’s the inescapable reality: Wind, solar, and grid-scale battery power are not clean, green, renewable, or sustainable.

These installations and transmission lines blanket scenic, cropland, and habitats. They slaughter raptors and kill off other wildlife. The batteries catch fire with dangerous regularity.

Their massive raw material requirements mean mining, processing, manufacturing, pollution, and further ecosystem impacts at historically unprecedented scales to build inefficient, insufficient, but hugely expensive energy systems.

Then those systems must be backed up with additional, duplicative, reliable power generation for the hours, days, and weeks when wind and sunshine fail to do their job, adding more charges to electricity bills.

And wind and solar do nothing to replace the oil and gas feedstocks needed to manufacture over 6,000 vital everyday products.

Here’s a better idea: Keep producing coal, oil, and gas—and relying on coal, gas, and nuclear power plants.

Scrap plans for new wind, solar, and battery systems … and junk the ones we have. And stop basing energy policy on GIGO climate models that conjure up absurd temperature, weather, and other cataclysms.

That’s simple energy, economic, and scientific common sense, and that means America doesn’t have to commit economic and cultural suicide.

Paul Driessen is a senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and the author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate change, and human rights issues.