TUCSON, Ariz., June 14, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The drive for energy sustainability is becoming a political weapon to block progress, rather than an inspiration for a steady process of prudent conservation, writes Paul Driessen in the summer issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons .
Well-funded environmental radicals use “sustainable development” in their fight against fossil fuels, Driessen notes. He states that, according to Giving USA Institute, environmental groups received $80 billion in private grants between 2000 and 2012, or about $6.6 billion per year.
Driessen reports that today more than 80 percent of global energy still comes from fossil fuels. “Most of the ‘renewable’ energy employed worldwide is from wood, grass, and animal dung: the fuels of poverty, misery, disease and early death.”
The “Three Mantras of Planetary Destruction,” he states, are used to gain public support for the extremely costly, draconian controls that the anti-fossils agenda would require. He lists the three mantras as dangerous man-made climate change, dangerous chemicals, and resource depletion. He critiques these in turn and then addresses the question of whether “renewable” energy is sustainable, considering all phases of the fuel cycle.
For example, wind turbines to replace today’s 25 billion MWh of total annual global electricity consumption would require 1.5 billion acres. That’s 80 percent of the area of the entire lower 48 states, without including access roads and feeder lines to main transmission lines, he calculates. Manufacturing all those wind turbines would require approximately 30 billion tons of steel, copper, and alloys for the towers and turbines; 55 billion tons of steel and concrete for the foundations; 10 million tons of neodymium for turbine magnets; and 5 billion tons of complex composite petroleum-based materials for the nacelle covers and blades.
Based on similar calculations for other renewable technologies, Driessen concludes that they cannot provide the energy needed to maintain current standards in industrialized nations and lift people in the developing world out of poverty, without causing massive resource depletion and habitat destruction. He suggests that environmentalists’ true objective is gaining political control—not real sustainability.
The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons is published by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) , a national organization representing physicians in all specialties since 1943.
Association of American Physicians and Surgeons 1601 N. Tucson Blvd. Suite 9 Tucson, AZ 85716 (800) 635-1196 www.aapsonline.org
Paul Driessen, pkdriessen@gmail.com , or Jane M. Orient, M.D., (520) 323-3110, janeorientmd@gmail.com
