Well, not this time, buster!

Is there anyone left in America who hasn't taken a look at California and concluded that you can't get electricity by "conserving" your way to it? California embraced every nutty conservation and alternative energy proposal that came along. And it still doesn't have enough.

Electricity happens only when you build sufficient electrical generation plants and we don't have enough right now. While we're at it, we don't need any more fuel-efficient cars. The ones we have are just fine, but we do need to make it easier for oil refineries to expand (they're currently running at 96% capacity) and to open areas to oil exploration and drilling.

Sunday's lead story in The New York Times asserted that "U.S. Scientists See Big Power Savings From Conservation." This newspaper is a contemptible reservoir of Green lies and has been for decades. There is a big price to pay for listening to and acting upon Green lies.

Writing in the Spring issue of Citizen Outlook, a newsletter published by the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, Paul Driessen examined why California is an energy basketcase. "A 1978 study for Governor Jerry Brown claimed conservation in home heating, appliances and cooling would cut California's use of natural gas and electricity by 30 percent, its peak demand by 50 percent, within 10 years. Similar pro-conservation, anti-energy development studies followed. The state believed them and acted accordingly."

So, what really happened? "Between 1988 and 2000, power consumption in California rose 22 percent. Demand for electrical power increased almost twice as fast as the national average." Twenty-one years after Californians fell for the "conservation" delusions of the Greens, The New York Times was proclaiming that, "Scientists at the country's national laboratories have projected energy savings if the government takes aggressive steps to encourage energy conservation in homes, factories, offices, appliances, cars and power plants."

Green lies die hard. In fact, they never die. The Greens are relentless in their efforts to use "government" as the means to force Americans to reduce their reliance on electrical power or to use "alternative" sources such as solar and wind power. The only problem is that these alternative sources are utter madness.

Solar and wind power are high-cost, low-efficiency energy sources. As Driessen points out "there is no way to store the electrical energy for use at night, on cloudy or windless days, and during peak usage hours; and their environmental impacts are significant." In order to produce the 218 gigawatts of additional electricity America will need by 2010, using only wind or solar panels, "we would have to blanket 9,400,000 acres with windmills or solar panels. That's an area equal to Connecticut, Delaware and Massachusetts combined."

The New York Times claims, however, that "a government-led efficiency program emphasizing research and incentives to adopt new technologies could reduce the growth in electricity demand by 20 percent to 47 percent." Lies, just lies. California went this route and now is in desperate need of new electrical generation plants. Its needs are currently draining the energy resources of neighboring states.

The Greens don't care how much you have to pay for electricity or gas or even food. Driving up the price is part of their game plan to force the government to step in and require that you start "conserving" even if their solutions will just end up costing you more in the long term.

You can bet the mainstream media will jump all over these new "studies" by "scientists" at "national laboratories" to convince you that this nation doesn't need to do anything except screw in a few new types of fluorescent light bulbs or start installing geothermal heat pumps or sealing buildings ever tighter. Maybe you can even read their "studies" while you are waiting in a line that's a mile long at your favorite gas station or stocking up on candles because of the latest rolling blackout.

This nation is home to mountains of coal. Enough to power a hundred new plants to provide low-cost electrical energy for centuries. We haven't even begun to seriously consider the potential of nuclear energy and we're still arguing about drilling for our own oil. Conserve? Do you really like paying more for every watt? And aren't you driving a technological wonder already? Or maybe you want to listen to the siren call of yet a new set of environmental studies?

Alan Caruba is founder of The National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about scare campaigns to influence public opinion and policy. The Center maintains an Internet site at www.anxietycenter.com.

Copyright, Alan Caruba, 2001
Published by permission.