On the way to work today, Dennis Prager was talking about 6 solar towers at the Long Beach Airport. The six towers have three panels each. These towers will produce enough power to run 120 laptop computers. According to Dennis, the towers are exceedingly ugly. For the blemish on the scenery, it seems a poor investment. You have those six towers that look terrible and only produce enough power to support up to 120 laptops. That is only 20 laptops each. That seems hardly worth it.

That is the problem with the left. They always seem to know what is best for you. The best for you always makes it worse for you and better some place you will never be. Dennis’ example was that in order to achieve energy independence, we have to put up with these ugly towers. Yet, the northeast corner of Alaska, where no human will ever visit, is left pristine. The justification is that it is better for the environment that it be left pristine. The problem with that argument is the caribou, the primary animal in that environment, loves the Alaska pipeline. The caribou population exploded after the Alaska pipeline was installed. The reason is the pipeline provides warmth and shelter. Both are in extremely short supply in that part of Alaska. The warmth and shelter allow the caribou to survive and thrive. We can assume the same would be true in the Arctic National Wildlife area that the drilling would take place. But, the left knows more than the caribou or us.

The towers also say that they will save carbon dioxide. We need carbon dioxide in the air. Calling carbon dioxide a pollutant is like calling oxygen a pollutant. Plants require carbon dioxide to live. They make oxygen and sugar from carbon dioxide. If we start removing all the carbon dioxide out of the air under the guise that it will lower the temperature, the plants will all die and so will we. We now have carbon dioxide levels that are near starvation levels for plants. They can handle much more oxygen. Their systems can handle up to 6% carbon dioxide in the air. It has been that in the past. Carbon dioxide has little to nothing to do with the temperature of the earth, anyway.

Wind farms are another darling of the left. It takes many square miles of land to equal one nuclear power plant. Then, if the wind does not blow the wind power plant is worthless. The nuclear power would put out electricity 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. When I have driven through the wind farms in California, many windmills are not working. That is because it is expensive to maintain windmills in working order to get maximum results. Nuclear power is also not cheap, but it is reliable. Nuclear power plants are also clean and almost pollution free. Wind farms tend to kill a lot of birds with the turning blades. They are developing expensive systems that can prevent birds from hitting the blades, but that is an additional expense. Also, liberals do not want wind farms anywhere near where THEY happen to be. Liberals do not mind putting it in your backyard, just not in theirs.

Another source of power that is relatively cheap and is extremely clean is hydro power. The liberals absolutely hate hydro power. You would think that they would love hydro power because it does not cause pollution. They hate it because the river has been stopped and that is not natural. They want most if not all dams removed so that rivers can run free and unimpeded. The fact that most of our food is produced because of water that is stored behind these dams does not seem to matter to them. When it comes to choosing between farmers and fish, the fish always win if a liberal is in charge. The farmers can starve and liberals do not care. If the fish has any problem, the liberals have big problems with that. When we start running out of food because of liberals giving all our water to the fishes and other wildlife or removing our dams, maybe they will rethink their values. I doubt it.

When I worked for the Soil Conservation Service/Natural Resources Conservation Service, I came into contact with quite a few environmentalists. Most of them had a couple of things in common: First, they knew absolutely nothing about how the environment works, but thought they knew everything; second, anything that benefitted wildlife was good, anything that benefitted the farmer/rancher was bad. Even when you would show them that both sides would benefit by doing a recommended procedure, they would balk if it meant that even one cow was allowed on the ground. That was just madness. They would settle for less wildlife habitat, if they could remove the cow from the land. It was crazy how single minded they were. As a result, I came away with a very negative opinion of the environmental movement. That is because I am a trained Environmental Scientist.

We now have these single-minded environmentalists in charge of our government agencies. What will happen to those agencies over the next four years as policies get put in place that are unscientific and unsound remains to be seen. I expect to see the environment of the United States be worse off in four years than it is today because of all the new environmental policies. The EPA already has stepped in it by calling carbon dioxide a pollutant. Any freshman biology student knows that was a stupid idea.