Numbers Mean Something & Magic is Not Real

Another look at the so-called Green New Deal. An in-depth look at what saving the planet and starting here at home, would actually take.

You may have heard recently that a member or two from the incoming class of Congress-persons from the Democratic party have been pushing hard to get the United States to flip to 100% green energy within the next 10 years. (Read Chris Baugh's article on The Green New Deal to better understand what I'm talking about) When I hear strongly worded messaging and fervent support for anything nature related, my ears perk up. See, I’m one of those ‘tree huggers’ those people --who’d rather chop down trees and fashion a cabin for the sole purpose of displaying their menagerie of mounted endangered animal heads-- make fun of. So do I like the idea of going 100% green in 10 years? Yea, abso-f*cking-lutely. Is it remotely possible? Abso-f*cking-lutely not. Let’s step into my wheel house for a few minutes and talk about science and the issues facing the environment.

Look if I could wander down an ancient alley way to a mystical shop and purchase a wand that would grant me the ability to channel my energies and transform the U.S. 100% Green, I would do it now. (Sorry, that was likely a personal note I just shared with you all to remind myself to go see the new Fantastic Beasts movie) The problem with people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not their vision, but their plan of attack, or lack thereof. I too want to NOT DIE, and leave a planet looking for like Terabithia and less like the Capitol Wasteland. See the problem with a 10 year 100% goal is that it completely ignores several scientific principles & laws, namely all of them. And if we’re going to be 100% transparent here, let’s also admit that it ignores all of economics as well. You will find close to zero scientists and engineers who would tell you that reaching such a goal, in such a short time is possible, and if you do manage to find such a person I strongly recommend you inspect their degree more closely as I suspect Adobe PhotoShop does not currently have an accredited University. Because in order to understand what it would take to accomplish such a feat, you must first understand how many different sources there are that we get our energy from, how much ‘dirty’ energy is out there, and what are the built in costs to flip everything. Answer: A lot.

In 2015 Stanford’s Mark Z. Jacobson and nine colleagues penned a study featured in Energy & Environmental Science. Jacobson is the same guy who published a detailed framework on the “feasibility” of moving California and New York toward 100% renewables; frameworks which today are being implemented, albeit, slowly. It is no secret that Mark Z. Jacobson is an ardent champion of fast developing and ambitious green energy projects, but even he came to the conclusion that the most realistic timetable for the United States to reach 100% green or renewable energy would be around the year...2050. For the sake of argument, let’s lop off 20 years from his timetable. At even that rate, we still have double the time it would take to reach the goal! If for some reason you’re sitting there right now stroking your chin saying, “Bah, there’s probably a lot of factors this Jacobson guy didn’t consider”, let me turn your attention to the summary of the 2015 study:

The paper contains 50 such road maps, one for every state, with detailed modeling on how to get to the U.S. energy system powered entirely by wind, water, and solar (up to 85% of existing energy could be replaced by wind, water, and solar by 2030, and to 100% by 2050), which includes no oil, no coal, no natural gas, no nuclear power, no carbon capture and sequestration, and no bio-fuels. In addition it is with the understanding that the resulting land footprint of energy is manageable, our energy grid output and reliability is maintained, and more jobs would be created in the renewable industry than those fossil fuel jobs being destroyed.

It would mean the middle class would have to bear the brunt of a tax increase to pay for it all. An increase so high, that families wouldn’t be able to survive.

Forgetting about a timetable for a minute, truly, what would it take to go 100% green? We would need to factor in:

•1.) The costs & logistics associated with construction, labor, training, insurance, management, marketing & educating the public, raw materials, factory production, the building of new factories to meet demand, shipping, land clearing and/or re-purposing, new international trade negotiations to cut costs & insure supply, rebuilding & redesigning the existing power grid, rerouting or implementing new water routes, and disposal of toxic waste & dirty materials from old plants.

•2.) More on logistics...A.) Developing green technology that can match, at the very least, the minimum required energy output of old power plants with the understanding that it would take around 4 wind & solar farms to match the output of a single nuclear plant, AND that depending on weather conditions that output will vary, B.) Finding thousands and thousands of acres of available land necessary to build wind and solar farms in the first place, with the understanding that: B1.) we can not just populate entire seacoasts with wind turbines due to the immense additional costs and interference with aquatic life and marine travel, B2.) we need to minimize the clearing of forests and agricultural land to build such farms, B3.) the understanding that this would often require transporting workers and materials through sparsely inhabited land and the dangers of disrupting wildlife.

Although the net cost savings would be enormous considering long term energy expenditures, increased revenue & jobs, and improved human heath, there remains a tremendous initial cost to make any of this possible. When all is said and done, even if we had available to us every qualified worker and company working around the clock, and partnerships from all over the world, on what would be the largest public works project in world history, the cost would be in the tens of trillions. It would mean the middle class would have to bear the brunt of a tax increase to pay for it all. An increase so high, that families wouldn’t be able to survive. A project of this scale would take years, or to repeat what Mark Z. Jacobson said, until around the year 2050. Countless generations of families would surely benefit from such a technological feat, but at the cost of killing off many of them before we even arrived to completion, or if America didn’t already begin to cannibalize itself from a suffocating tax burden.

See this is the problem with Bernie-nomics: The fiscal policies he [Bernie Sanders] and people like his protégé Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez espouse can & do work sometimes, but when a problem requires a larger scale (in this case a MUCH larger scale) those policies ignore the reality that money needs to come from somewhere and thin air won’t do. It requires much more than just taxing the richest of Americans. Look, this is not me waving a white flag. Far from it. I’ve gone on public record numerous times saying that I’ve always hated that for decades politicians clutch to the tired campaign promise of “more jobs” and “grow the economy”, because to me what kills jobs and the economy more than anything is, no planet! But what we need are better ideas; Bold, but realistic ideas that can be achieved in the very near future and actually make a difference.

Will we all have to make sacrifices financially or otherwise to save our one and only home planet? Yes, there is just no way around that. We can --and I’m confident we will-- get it done, especially with the new blood transfusion being injected into our politics. Gen-xers and Millennials have all the ideas, and the energy to see it through, but it requires we actually listen and trust the bean counters and pencil pushers that a better approach is needed. We will not however find the solution at the bottom of a wishing well.

-Eddie Reyes