Environmentalist: How Wind and Solar Power Harm the Environment

Michael Shellenberger’s points (not necessarily agreeing with all of them):

Wind and solar power:
1. Unreliable. Generate energy only 10-40% of the year.
2. Have low energy density, thus require more natural resources as productive inputs.

Nuclear power:
1. Safer than widely perceived.
2. Higher energy density translates to less air pollution.

Green New Dealers fear/hate nuclear energy because they:
1. Associate it with nuclear weapons.  (Wrong, they’re 2 different technologies overall.)
2. Too much cheap energy translates to overpopulation, overconsumption.
3. Want to harness energy generated by the forces of nature (wind, solar).  (This is counterintuitively wrong;
the greater natural resource use required to harness these natural energies is worse for the natural environment.)

Michael’s article in Quillette is here.

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