Limiting use the best way to solve America’s energy need - letter by Monica Lucas

Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.

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It's interesting that Ms. Lucas is willing to point out a fundamental flaw with renewable energy, but fails to see the flaws with what she proposes. She is quite correct about the delusion of the advocates of renewable energy. I have commented on the delusional state of the Left many times - the way they parrot talking points, the way they march lock-step with whatever orthodoxy is being promulgated today, the way they plunge wholeheartedly into whatever theory or fad their keepers tell them is the truth. 

So, what is Ms. Lucas' flaw? She thinks that energy use reduction is the answer. And she is not talking about per-person reduction, which accounts for population increase. She's talking about an absolute reduction. There are 7 billion living on the planet today, using X amount of energy. When there are 9 billion living on the planet 20 years from now, the total amount of energy use would have to be lower. That might be considered delusional as well.

But the real problem here is the idea that reducing energy use will save the planet. Implicit in that statement is there is some amount of energy use that will not harm the planet. I doubt this is true, and I further doubt that we know or can discover what that level is. Ms. Lucas uses the editorial "we," as in "we should be making the choice." As I have mentioned in the past, the use of the word "we" is synonymous with "government." Ms. Lucas is appealing to government to force us to use less energy on an absolute level.

I am pretty sure most Americans have had enough government intervention into their lives. Likely they will bristle at yet another top-down approach to addressing these concerns. they will certainly object to expensive little cracker boxes to drive, the central regulation of their home thermostat, the changes to farming needed to produce more efficient crops, the curtailment of the manufacture of steel, and a thousand other things that would be impacted by absolute reductions in energy.

But the US is only part of the problem. There's a whole world out there, including developing nations who are pushing to finally enter the 21st century. They are the dirtiest nations in on the planet. Who is going to tell them they have to remain in the 1900s? What governing body is going to crack down on them? 

Read on:
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I would like to challenge the assumption that renewable energy sources are preferable alternatives for us in Montana. Both wind and solar have sincere problems that need to be addressed, including the huge amounts of land they take up and their inability to run consistently. When we talk about systematically replacing fossil fuels for wind and solar, we are living in a delusion.

Instead of worrying so much about the type of energy we use, we should be making the choice to reduce our energy consumption overall. Replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy will not make us greener if we keep consuming at our current rates. What we really need to do is make the choice to reduce the amount of energy we use in our everyday lives, regardless of where it comes from.

Monica Lucas - Bozeman