Guest Post by John Stossel
Was the power on in your house this morning?
If so, thank fossil fuels!
A few parts of America do get energy from other sources. Washington state has fast-flowing rivers that allow Washingtonians to get most of their electricity from hydroelectric power. Iowa now gets about 40% of its electricity from wind.
But most of us get power from the much-hated fossil fuels, primarily natural gas and coal.
Burning them does pollute, although government-mandated controls like scrubbers in smokestacks have nearly eliminated the dangerous pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide. (Yes, government has done some useful things.)
But fossil fuels still emit greenhouse gasses, and that probably increases global warming. Yes, I know some scientists doubt that man’s activities contribute much, but I’ll go with the large group that says we do.
Now, Black Lives Matter protesters say fossil fuels create “environmental racism” because black neighborhoods are often located in low-lying floodplains or are close to refineries and other energy infrastructure. Activist Jane Fonda recently joined them to say, “The fossil fuel industry will have to pay!”
But I suspect Fonda and other anti-fossil fuel protesters have no clue where the electricity that powers their electric cars comes from.
Today, Americans still get 81% of our energy and 62.7% of our electricity from fossil fuels. Oil fuels about 91% of all transportation.
Without fossil fuels, much of the world would freeze in the dark. We just don’t yet have enough alternatives.
One country almost does: Iceland.
Iceland has hot springs, so geothermal power provides 25% of its juice, and hydropower provides most of the rest.
But even in Iceland, that’s not enough. Iceland still burns oil.
The protesters ought to watch the new documentary, “Juice: How Electricity Explains the World.” My new video this week is a short (4 minute) version of it.
“Electricity doesn’t guarantee wealth,” says energy journalist Robert Bryce, “but not having it almost always means poverty. The defining inequality in the world today is the disparity between the electricity-rich and the electricity-poor. Three billion people in the world today use less electricity than what’s used by my kitchen refrigerator. To empower the low-watt world, we’re going to need a lot more juice.”
Hate coal all you want, but it still accounts for about 38% of global electricity production. Even Japan, home to the Kyoto Protocol, plans to build 22 new coal-fired power plants.
Pitiful and expensive American “green” mandates won’t dent the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Americans take electric light for granted, but Bryce’s film reminds us, “Electricity allowed us to conquer our oldest foe: darkness. For millennia, the cost of having well-lit spaces at night was so high, only the very rich could afford it.”
That’s still true in much of the world. About 300 million people in India have no access to electricity.
Many cook and heat their homes by burning cow dung. It’s why about 1.3 million Indians die from indoor air pollution each year. Cooking with cow dung, Bryce says, “is akin to burning 400 cigarettes an hour in your kitchen.”
Pollution like that is a much bigger threat to disadvantaged people than greenhouse gasses American activists complain about.
“Darkness kills human potential. Electricity nourishes it,” says Bryce.
But what about climate change? I’m told that’s why we must move to renewable energy.
Renewables, Bryce replies, simply cannot supply “the enormous amount of electricity the world needs at prices consumers can afford.”
Environmental activist Michael Shellenberger points out that he hears environmentalists say: “People must reduce energy consumption! [But] the only people in the world who say that are rich people.”
“Energy poverty versus climate change. There is no easy, one-size-fits-all solution,” concludes Bryce. “But there are about three billion people in the world without adequate access to electricity… and they will do whatever they have to do to get the electricity they need.”
John Stossel is author of “Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media.” For other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.
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Iowa gets 40% of it’s electricity from wind? That sounds pretty impressive actually.
Let’s see what happens to the big cities when the lights go out. You think it is bad now, just wait for the darkness.
The latest tropical storm rolled up the East Coast a few days ago. My local power was out for maybe six hours in the insufferable warmth and humidity. Some, but not all traffic lights are back on. Many people take electricity for granted because it’s so useful and widespread. I’d hate to see if the power was out for six weeks or even six months. I’d live but it wouldn’t be pleasant.
That often used quip, “the stupid, it burns” describes the energy idiots. Fossil fuel is the most widely used commodity on earth. It is wholly responsible for modern life. Without burning it 90% of us would be dead within a year.
No tractors farming, no trucks delivering goods, no electricity, heat, plastics, chemicals, drugs…… it’s endless what we get from oil.
It takes gargantuan amounts of energy (oil) to create a wind turbine, transport it into place, build the site and maintain it. Oil is what’s used throughout the process. It’s not possible for wind to generate more electricity than energy (oil) it consumes over it’s lifetime. In the future there will be rusting, useless wind farms that are too expensive to dismantle again which would require the use of oil as the primary energy source.
Here in Florida, Florida Power and Light are building something like 88(?) solar farms across the state. They too will never be more than marginally profitable if at all over their lifetime. They also require massive amounts of oil in the production and maintenance of.
The only energy created from wind and solar will be the heat generated in the burning of currency.
Far from being “fossil fuel”, hydrocarbons are not only plentiful but are being renewed by yet-unknown processes deep within the earth.
The term “fossil fuel” was coined in the 1950s when little was known about the processes by which oil is produced. Oil is “abiotic” in nature, as even depleted oil wells are “filling back up” from deep below the earth’s surface.
Oil interests are drilling wells at 5,000 feet, 10,000 feet, and 15,000 feet and deeper, and coming up with oil deposits way below the layers and levels where “fossils” were known to exist.
As Russia gained much expertise in deep-well drilling and coming up with oil deposits far deeper than that of the level of “fossils”, abiotic oil at extreme depths was actually a Russian ‘state secret” for a long time.
Not only that, but there are planetary bodies in which hydrocarbons are naturally occurring (without fossils).
“Peak oil” and “fossil fuels” are discredited concepts that environmentalists and others are latching on to, in order to display their hatred of oil being a renewable resource as well as to push prices up.
Follow the money.
Oil companies don’t like that kind of talk. There’s only so much oil, say it over and over.
NO – actually the power was NOT on in my house this morning. In fact it’s been out for 54 hours and counting thanks to tropical storm Isaias.
Don’t get me wrong. I fully support the use of fossil fuels as well as other technologies such as nuclear energy, and want to see the shift to relatively clean fusion and thorium salt reactors.
Most of all – leave us wood burners alone!! Out here in the sticks there is an amazing amount of renewable energy in the form of trees.