Environmentalist, Michael Shellenberger, Explains to Tucker Carlson Why Renewable Energy Can’t Save the Planet
To comply with FTC regulations, all links could lead to commissions paid to the publisher. Please see Advertising Disclosure in sidebar.
NEW YORK – Environmental activist Michael Shellenberger explained to Fox News host Tucker Carlson that it’s not possible to shift the country’s grid completely to renewable energy.
“I was one of the founders of, sort of, the first Green New Deal back in 2003, 2007,” Shellenberger, the founder of Environmental Progress, began. “People don’t remember President Obama, we spent about $150 billion on renewables between 2009 and 2015, and we just kept encountering the same kind of problems.”
Shellenberger laid out the two main problems that plague wind turbines and solar panels: unreliability and low energy density.
“They just depend on when the sun is shining and when the wind is blowing, which is 10 to 40 percent of the year,” he said, demonstrating how the intermittent energy production of wind and solar makes them unreliable sources of power. “Something people are not as aware of: the low energy density of sunlight and wind. Basically what we’ve been finding is that the lower the energy density of the fuel … the bigger the environmental impact.”
Because solar and wind produce such small amounts of energy, according to Shellenberger, they require a much larger amount of land to generate electricity.
FREE DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTION: GET ONLY 'FEATURED' STORIES BY EMAIL
Big Tech is using a content filtering system for online censorship. Watch our short video about NewsGuard to learn how they control the narrative for the Lamestream Media and help keep you in the dark. NewsGuard works with Big-Tech to make it harder for you to find certain content they feel is 'missing context' or stories their editors deem "not in your best interest" - regardless of whether they are true and/or factually accurate. They also work with payment processors and ad-networks to cut off revenue streams to publications they rate poorly by their same bias standards. This should be criminal in America. You can bypass this third-world nonsense by signing up for featured stories by email and get the good stuff delivered right to your inbox.
Instead, the Environmental Progress founder touted the benefits of nuclear energy, a source of power that can generate large amounts of reliable energy while emitting zero carbon emissions. However, Shellenberger said the public has yet to fully embrace nuclear energy because they associate it with nuclear bombs, past nuclear accidents and a desire to use energy that harmonizes with the natural world.”
“That turns out to be a bad idea because the more natural resource we use, the worse it is for the natural environment,” he said.
As environmental activists become more alarmed about the threat of climate change, many are re-evaluating how they perceive nuclear power. The U.S. nuclear industry currently supplies about 20 percent of the country’s total electricity, but it provides roughly 60 percent of its zero-carbon electricity. A growing number of climate change-oriented lawmakers are now passing subsidies and support programs to keep nuclear plants in operation.
Shellenberger went on to say it was “very disappointing” that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s widely publicized Green New Deal does not include provisions for nuclear energy.
Ocasio-Cortez’s original FAQ document on the Green New Deal, in fact, called for a phase out of nuclear power. However, following the botched roll out of the deal, her team took the anti-nuclear language off their website.
Follow Jason on Twitter.
Get great news content like this for your business website. Search engines love sites with frequently updated quality content and reward them with better search rankings. Get High Quality Content Updates for your site.
or a specific category with our 
