By Rick Manning
Environmentalists are busily celebrating the destruction of the Klamath River dam system under the auspices that fish will thrive as a result.
Here is the problem.
40,000 people depend upon the Klamath River dams for their electric power. Now, 40,000 people added to the grid doesn’t seem like much, but in California and Oregon where these people live, fossil fuel and coal generated electricity are being phased out, and nuclear is verboten. So, the choice made by the ‘authorities’ was to end the only truly renewable electricity generation system – dams using turbines powered by running water – for the ultimate unreliable sources – wind and solar.
Both California and Oregon have vowed to end sales of gasoline powered vehicles by 2035 – that’s eleven years. Neither has an honest plan to produce the electricity needed to power millions of electric vehicles.
Inverse.com cites TESLA CEO Elon Musk as estimating that the grid will need to generate around twice as much electricity if all vehicles go electric and if heating also switches we will need about three times as much electricity. Musk, in the article, pushes the idea of solar energy plus batteries to meet these needs.
Of course, this would require a quantum leap in battery capacity with particularly bad effects in places like Portland, Oregon which doesn’t get much sun from the fall to the spring. Nothing like your heating being reliant on solar, when the sun doesn’t really shine in your gloomy city for six months.
Ironically or not, the heavily green coastal Northwest is almost completely dependent upon the exact hydro-electric power that has been dismantled in northern California and southern Oregon and which is proposed to be ripped out of the Snake River, which forms much of the border between the Washington-Idaho border and along the Washington-Oregon border in the eastern part of the states.
The Snake River dam system produces the equivalent of three large nuclear power plants or six medium-sized coal plants (3,000 MegaWatts). Those who seek to destroy the dams assure the public that a combination of conservation and solar/wind will replace the energy generated by the Snake River dam destruction. After all, the Spokane Spokesman-Review advises that the Snake River dams are not ‘big power producers’ but play an important regional role in a March, 2021 headline.
A reasonable person might question why people who are so clearly dependent upon hydropower dams to meet their current electricity needs would support both tearing down the dams while at the same time increasing their dependence on electricity?
It isn’t because they are ignorant or stupid as many would surmise.
It is because for the environmental left, making electricity scarce is key to controlling the usage of that electricity. This would give enviro-bureaucrats control over every factory and home in America simply through the imposition of electricity rationing.
If the goal is to de-industrialize America, then the answer is to destroy the electricity grid which is the critical component of increasing wealth in our country. After all, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt recognized this simple fact when he pushed rural electrification initiatives, like the Tennessee Valley Authority during the Great Depression. Electricity means business and enterprise as opposed to subsistence living.
The modern left sees America’s wealth as a problem to the rest of the world as they view our consumption of ‘resources’ to be unfair to the rest of the world. So, they push the idea of man-made climate change, and then seek to have those who have been indoctrinated to vote to make themselves dramatically more poor while telling them that it will be okay, there is magic in the sun and wind.
The Harris-Biden push for ending gasoline powered vehicles, along with natural gas powered stoves are perfect examples of creating a future artificial dependency which enhances the power of the self-appointed electricity gods in Washington, D.C..
Now, when you hear the dam lie that pushes the destruction of renewable hydroelectric power along with the contradictory push to create total dependency on electricity for everyday living, you can ask yourself who benefits from making Americans poor and reliant on others for their very survival?
Once you get to that question, just look at who or what country benefits from solar and wind power the most and you will understand what is really at stake.
Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.
