One of the most valuable lessons I have learned in life is not to see things as presented or as they are. That’s because things or events that we see or sense does not cover on how they existed or how they got there in the first place.
I am indebted to the late great proto-Austrian Frederic Bastiat, who inspired an overhaul of life’s outlook personified by this stirring passage
In the department of economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects. Of these effects, the first only is immediate; it manifests itself simultaneously with its cause - it is seen. The others unfold in succession - they are not seen: it is well for us, if they are foreseen. Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference - the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen, and also of those which it is necessary to foresee. Now this difference is enormous, for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favourable, the ultimate consequences are fatal, and the converse. Hence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come, - at the risk of a small present evil.
This applies to everything we do.
And these have been most pronounced especially in the domain of politics where populist political solutions are sold on the merits of superficiality or visibility.
In the realm of environmental politics, one good example would be the politically correct populist practice of ‘Earth Hour’.
We are told to close lights for an hour so that we can symbolically celebrate on ‘saving the environment’ by reducing carbon footprints.
However in reality, unless we decide to stop living, we will be using energy. PERIOD.
And the alternative to using ‘environmental hazardous’ conventional fossil based energy would be to revert to the medieval age and use candles. People hardly see that candles signify as more environmental unfriendly than the conventional energy.
Of course by proposing to cut lights also extrapolates to stopping or to reducing production and trade. Doing so means creating shortages in people’s needs. This means widespread hunger and famine. This brings the Malthusian nightmare to a reality.
How do you suppose that we would be able to survive 6.77 billion people by reverting to the medieval age of economic system?
So saving the environment means we end up killing one another (politics of plunder-via war) or killing ourselves (man made catastrophe).
It isn’t that Malthus was right. Instead, it is because political correctness founded the concept of saving earth signifies as concealed misanthropy.
The same blight haunts proponents of renewable energy.
From the surface, renewable energy would seem as environmental friendly. That is what is seen. What is not seen is how environmental damaging renewable energy would be when they are constructed for commercial operations.
Matt Ridley eloquently explains, (bold emphasis added)
It turns out that the great majority of this energy, 10.2% out of the 13.8% share, comes from biomass, mainly wood (often transformed into charcoal) and dung. Most of the rest is hydro; less than 0.5% of the world's energy comes from wind, tide, wave, solar and geothermal put together. Wood and dung are indeed renewable, in the sense that they reappear as fast as you use them. Or do they? It depends on how fast you use them.
One of the greatest threats to rain forests is the cutting of wood for fuel by impoverished people. Haiti meets about 60% of its energy needs with charcoal produced from forests. Even bakeries, laundries, sugar refineries and rum distilleries run on the stuff. Full marks to renewable Haiti, the harbinger of a sustainable future! Or maybe not: Haiti has felled 98% of its tree cover and counting; it's an ecological disaster compared with its fossil-fuel burning neighbor, the Dominican Republic, whose forest cover is 41% and stable. Haitians are now burning tree roots to make charcoal.
You can likewise question the green and clean credentials of other renewables. The wind may never stop blowing, but the wind industry depends on steel, concrete and rare-earth metals (for the turbine magnets), none of which are renewable. Wind generates 0.2% of the world's energy at present. Assuming that energy needs double in coming decades, we would have to build 100 times as many wind farms as we have today just to get to a paltry 10% from wind. We'd run out of non-renewable places to put them.
You may think I'm splitting hairs. Iron ore for making steel is unlikely to run out any time soon. True, but you can say the same about fossil fuels. The hydrocarbons in the earth's crust amount to more than 500,000 exajoules of energy. (This includes methane clathrates—gas on the ocean floor in solid, ice-like form—which may or may not be accessible as fuel someday.) The whole planet uses about 500 exajoules a year, so there may be a millennium's worth of hydrocarbons left at current rates.
Read the rest here.
What you see isn’t always what you get.
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