Category — ‘Green Energy’ Arguments

“Advocates of renewable energy feel cornered by the gridlock in Congress and waning interest in climate change. But arguing that renewable energy is the best way to address economic or security concerns isn’t the way to prevail. It just focuses the debate on issues where fossil fuels are almost sure to win.”

- Severin Borenstein, “Making the Wrong Case for Renewable Energy,” Bloomberg, February 13, 2012.

Severin Borenstein, Professor of Business and Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, and director of the U.C. Energy Institute, is firmly in the camp of climate alarmism and public policy activism. In a recent op-ed,  Borenstein argues that, absent the climate-change argument, the environmentalists are intellectually adrift trying to argue for their (politically correct) renewable energies–wind and solar (but not ethanol and hydroelectricity, mind you). 

Left environmentalists are in a predicament trying to converse with a public that is fatigued about climate change and is interested in affordable energy and economic prosperity. And it brings to mind what Tim Wirth, now with the United Nations Foundation but then Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs with the Clinton Administration, said back in 1990:

We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.

The problem, however, is bigger than Borenstein lets on given 1) a slowdown in real-world warming; 2) growing interest in/explanation of global lukewarming; and 3) the need to move toward adaptation (instead of mitigation) as greenhouse-gas concentrations grow in the atmosphere. Still, Borenstein’s points are valid as far as they go.

Key excerpts from Borenstein’s recent Bloomberg op-ed follow: [Read more →]