Don’t sign on [update 4]

Greenpeace reckon the government should impose a forty percent cap on carbon emissions by 2020.  They reckon, as support for this fatuous stupidity, that New Zealand should move to 100% renewable energy by 2020.  They reckon this would all be as easy as falling off a lily pad -- “easily achievable” they call it.

I reckon they’re certifiably insane. Or, like their mentors Al Gore, James Hansen and Stephen Schneider, certifiably dishonest.

A forty percent cap on emissions by 2020 is a forty percent cap on industrial and agricultural production “achieved” in just the next eleven years.  That’s pretty much signing on to another economic depression right there – right when we’re struggling to get out of this one.

And a 100% renewable energy supply by 2020 is not only very much not “easily achievable” – someone’s got to pay for it all, and since there’s no profit in any of it that money would have to come from the very industrial and agricultural production that’s just been made much smaller – and even if a profit could somehow be achieved (which would fly in the face of the evidence from places like Spain), the capital investment required to produce that capacity would pretty much denude the country of the necessary capital for anything else –  it’s not only not “easily achievable” at all, it’s not even a goal that would produce real energy, or be at all desirable.

Face it: There isn’t enough sun in the whole country for a decent crack at even 50% solar (even in California it takes around forty square miles of panels top produce the power of one coal station) .  Extensive use of geothermal energy poses serious earthquake risks around deep-bore geothermal sites. Wind-power is prohibitively expensive compared to the alternatives, it chews up landscape better than a forest fire in a high wind (one estimate for the UK reckons around one-eighth of the country’s entire land area would be needed to host the turbines and pylons to produce all its energy by wind), and since it requires backup power from real power stations, it’s “the big industry equivalent of cycling to work whilst a car journeys behind, carrying one's bags.”  And no hydro station to back up all that wind-power is going to get through the Resource Management Act in any case – certainly not any time before you and I and our grandchildren are out drawing our pensions anyway.

Face it: The definition of so called “renewable energy” can be put very simply:

Renewable energy may be defined as energy produced by means that would be uneconomic without tax breaks and subsidies.  The distinguishing characteristic of so called 'renewable energy' is not that it is renewable, but that it doesn't produce reliable energy.

Or as Keith Lockitch puts it, Green Energy is a Fantasy,

“Green energy” is at best a sophisticated make-work program.
    There is a reason why less than 2 percent of the world’s energy currently comes from “renewable” sources such as wind and solar--the very sources that are supposedly going to power the new green economy: despite billions of dollars in government subsidies, funding decades of research, they have not proven themselves to be practical sources of energy. Indeed, without government mandates forcing their adoption in most Western countries, their high cost would make them even less prevalent.

Face it: It’s not something you’d want to hang your hat on – and certainly not your children’s future.

NB: Read more rational writing on renewable energy here at the Master Resource blog.

UPDATE: Farrar goes for satire.

    New Zealanders emit 7.4 metric tons of carbon emissions per capita. The more New Zealanders we have, the more emissions we have. Hence the solution is to have fewer New Zealanders”
    We have decided abortion is the best way to reduce the number of New Zealanders, as this is preferable to euthanasia. In 2007 the abortion rate was only 22.2% of pregnancies. If we can triple that to 67%, that will mean 37,000 fewer New Zealanders every year.
    Over 10 years until 2020, that is a massive 370,000 fewer New Zealanders. That will reduce annual emissions by 2.8 million tons of carbon emissions. And by 2050 that will see annual emissions down by 14 million tons.
    The Greens wish to make it clear they are not proposing that abortion be compulsory for all New Zealanders.
    “We propose a lottery, like the US green card for immigrant visas . . .

At least, I hope it’s satire. . .

UPDATE 2:  I say above that the likes of Al Gore, James Hansen and Stephen Schneider are certifiably dishonest, and if you follow the links provided you’ll see why.

It’s not out of character;  it’s standard leftist strategy: and if they get caught they just need to lie better.  After all, as Gore and Hansen and Schneider and Greenpeace and Uncle Tom Lefty have all said at some time in their own way,“This is war, and the other side is evil, so the end justifies the means.”

But does it? Ever?

UPDATE 3:  The government hasn’t signed us on to a forty percent reduction in industrial and agricultural  production, but they have signed on for . . .  “a cut of between 10 per cent and 20 per cent by 2020,” the cost for which will be “$1400 per person, or $30 per week.”

Which is to say they don’t want to kill production completely, like Greenpeace.  They’re happy just to strangle it slowly.  Details here at the Ministry for Environment Propaganda.

UPDATE 4: And as Liberty Scott notes in the comments, the Indian Government says there is no way they will ever sign up to any reductions before 2020 - in other words, it is a faith based initiative to destroy wealth in the developed world, while allowing its creation to continue (for the moment) in some parts of the developing world.