A Real New Deal
I am sure that the sponsors of the “Green New Deal” are genuinely concerned about global warming, but their proposed program looks suspiciously like they are using the threat of warming as a lever to achieve a progressive utopia. What would a program look like if we wanted to seriously address a warming planet without the Utopian goals? Here are some suggestions.
The prediction is that we will get less snow and more rain. Since snow at higher elevations is God’s reservoir, providing us with fresh water in the warm months, the logical response is that we need to be prepared to capture more fresh water with our own reservoirs. More people on earth, combined with less snow at higher elevations, will create a real water crisis if we don’t act soon.
In addition, we need to take advantage of the 2/3 of the earth’s surface covered with salt water. A system of small reservoirs, desalinization plants and solar/wind energy would allow us to make fresh water in a carbon free fashion when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.
We can generate a lot of power using moving water. We don’t have to dam rivers to generate power. A small percentage of a river can be diverted (with appropriate protection for fish) to run generators. This would be a blast from the past. One of the earliest forms of power generation was the water wheel. The great advantage of this form of generation is that it can be modulated to conform to power demand at no cost whatever.
We need to build nuclear power plants. Hysterical warnings about safety are ill-founded. In the whole history of nuclear power, there have been three serious accidents, all the result of truly obvious blunders. France gets 75% of its power from nuclear with zero problems. We can use current technology to build small and disbursed plants with fail-safe shut down and terrorist protections. We have technology to do safe storage of nuclear waste.
We could develop a product that served as both a skin and solar panel for buildings of all types. In warm climates, that would allow solar power to run HVAC in an efficient fashion. Supply and demand would be almost perfectly correlated.
We must develop better battery technology if solar and wind power are ever going to be significant providers of energy. Demand for power does not coincide with the production of solar or wind power. The government should not get into the battery business, but it could research the physics and chemistry of power storage and make the results available to all.
We need to get serious about carbon sequestration. The same technology that enables drillers to “frack” for natural gas deposits could be used to permanently bury CO2. It might be possible to use some of the extracted gas (a relatively low carbon source of power) to run a plant that sequesters CO2 and use the wells on site to pump the finished product into deep rock layers.
Finally, we are warned that sea levels will rise dramatically as a result of warming. Lots of coastal cities will have to build sea walls. Driving piles and pouring footings now would save a lot of money. Construction of the walls could wait until the sea level actually rises.
I would contend that a calm implementation of some research projects and engineering solutions would do a lot more for the cause than hysterical warnings and political solutions.
