Further Thoughts on Green Energy

My calendar tells me last Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2019, I was to be at Loyola University Law School in New Orleans giving a talk on energy, environmental quality, and global warming. Alas, due to subzero weather and blowing snow we missed our flight by a few minutes.  My theme was energy conservation and the proposed Green New Deal.  These are fine topics for me, an economic anthropologist who lives and works on a Gallatin Valley Montana ranch. So sorry to not to have been in New Orleans to enjoy the warm weather.  

In the 1980s I served two terms on the National Petroleum Council and wrote on energy for the Wall Street Journal.  A bit later the foundation I chair, FREE, produced several seminars on energy and climate for Article III federal judges.  All were held on ranches and inns located near Bozeman and in the headwaters of the Gallatin River.  

When discussing climate, location matters.  Our ranch is a mile high while New Orleans averages sixteen feet.  We rarely worry about summer heat and never about rising oceans.  (As Steinbeck noted, Montana would be like heaven if it only had an ocean.  But if it had an ocean it wouldn’t be Montana.)  Forty miles west of our place, at Three Forks, Montana, the Gallatin joins the Jefferson and Madison rivers to form the Missouri River.  Its waters enter the Gulf of Mexico at New Orleans.  

Everything promised to come together.   Ramona and I would have a respite from Montana’s winter (It’s been too cold to ski) and we’d enjoy friends, food, and the WWII Museum in New Orleans.  

Alas, we did not get to New Orleans.  Instead I was feeding steers and plowing snow in the cold wind.  In the afternoon I enjoyed being in a warm study pondering and writing about alternatives to fossil fuel energy.  

Loyola University asked me to discuss climate change, green energy, and the impacts of global warming.  I find these topics fascinating on analytical, cultural, and practical dimensions.   Analytically, climate is hyper complex and vastly important.  Fifteen thousand years ago our ranch was covered by a sheet of ice over a quarter mile thick.  Not good grazing there.  Apart from a few mini-ice ages, the climate has been warming ever since.  Thank God!

The hype of climate change is a dramatic cultural phenomenon.  Climate is critically important to human wellbeing and change is compellingly obvious.  In our valley green grass comes a week or two earlier than forty years ago and the first frost a week later. We have had some quite cold weather for us-- a number of -20 days, and mostly nights.  However, this was the norm prior to recent climate change.  Apparently, the millennials in the US of the Snowflake variety are freaking out as they have never experienced such cold weather.  

A warming climate attracts lots of media and political attention, the great majority is fearful and opportunistic.   On December 3rd, 2018, the youngest member of Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced the Green New Deal (GND).  It responds to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  As usual with political climate reports, humanity has only a decade to control carbon emissions.  If we don’t, catastrophic climate change impacts are unavoidable.  The key GND proposal is to eliminate the use of coal, natural gas, and petroleum by 2030.  The alternatives are biomass, hydropower, solar, and wind.  (Here is a picture of one windmill we installed on our ranch 15 years ago.)

Widespread enthusiasm for The Green New Deal demonstrates the strength of culture over analysis.  While citizens know little about the science of climate change threats, in one opinion poll the GND had nearly 80% approval.  The threat is disaster and the costs of dealing with it are discounted, ignored, or described as large short- and long-term benefits.  Hence, the media and politicians face persistent and pervasive incentives to posture concern and vote support for GND regulations and mandates.   

Ramona and I acted well in advance of this green power movement. Unfortunately, our creeks lack the fall and volume required to run generators.  However, we gradually adopted solar and wind power when and where it made sense. Our residential buildings are super insulated and oriented to capture solar energy.  Here is a photo of the thermometer in the sunroom of our Pond Cabin taken on a sunny, windless day when the outside temperature was 10ºF.  We also use solar power to power our big bale feeder. Bales average 1250 lbs. each.

The GND fails to take Mother Nature into account.  Wind generators only make electricity when the wind blows.  Solar power only produces when the sun shines. And for the past week it rarely has.  Hence, all our residential heat is coming from natural gas.  And this morning when I checked our steers, the feeder lift didn’t work.  Battery power drops with the temperature and there was too little sun to recharge it. 

I had to manually distribute hay from a 1250 lb. bale.  

The great majority of those favoring GND regulations and mandates are substantially disconnected from the working world and nature.  Many are scornful of those who reject their plans, calling them uncaring “deniers” or worse.  

There is no easy cure for their naivete about our economy, ecology, and energy.  America is evolving toward their green energy ideal but we can’t legislate unicorns on treadmills as sources of pollution free power.   Related in time to the unicorn folktale, recall the shepherd boy who falsely cried wolf.  He repeatedly tricked villagers into thinking wolves were eating their sheep.  When a wolf actually appeared, and the boy called for help, the villagers thought it was another false alarm. 

Climate change is indeed real and poses genuine long-term threats.  It also has substantial benefits. ***  Unfortunately, the threat of climate change also is employed as a rationale to use popular opinion and regulation to cause other people to behave as progressive elites think they should.  Another thing it produces is resentment and resistance to constructive energy policies.  

* f.n.  The Federalist Society sponsored this law school program.  

** f.n. This is from a note Ramona wrote to a friend.  

*** f.n.  In May of 2015 Science Daily reported that: “Cold weather kills 20 times as many people as hot weather, according to an international study analyzing over 74 million deaths in 384 locations across 13 countries.”