Dark Brightness

I can clearly recall the enviromentalists arguing against hydro power in my youth, and in the last year they have argued against wind power (in Otago) and are starting to argue against more dams..

I think the greens function as druids, but are not prepared to think through the theology of this. The Druids subsumed all to nature — to the point of bonefires. It takes talent and practice to habitually disgust the Romans… who exterminated this religion because of the evil they saw it doing.

We live in an energy hungry world. We are moving from fossil fuel to solar/wind/hydro: this is doable if (like in the US) you exploit your deserts. There will be a cost: here always is.

The SunZia transmission line that would link sun and wind power from central New Mexico with cities in Arizona is just the sort of energy project an environmentalist could love — or hate. And it is just the sort of line the Interior Department has been tasked with promoting — or guarding against.

If built, the 460-mile line would carry about 3,000 megawatts of power, enough to avoid the need for a handful of coal-fired plants and to help utilities meet mandated targets for use of renewable fuel. “We have to connect the sun of the deserts and the winds of the plains to places where people live,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said recently.

But the line would also cross grasslands, skirt two national wildlife refuges and traverse the Rio Grande, all habitat areas rich in wildlife. The graceful sandhill crane, for example, makes its winter home in the wetlands of New Mexico’s Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, right next to the path of the proposed power line. And much of the area falls under the protection of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

via Renewable Energy’s Environmental Paradox – washingtonpost.com.

Now if you think that this is too much, can I suggest you choose to live a neolithic lifestyle, and accept the drudgery, the sexual dimorphism in tasks, the maternal and child death rate, and the shortened life this entails. I prefer to live in the 21st century.