A Critique of Environmentalism–for Morons

A reader sent me this meme composed by British economist Richard Wellings.  My comments:

The reason we have a water shortage is prolonged droughts, largely driven by climate change.  Reservoirs hold water; they don’t make water.  I.e., we have plenty of reservoirs, but they don’t have enough water in them.  In fact, we’re considering knocking down the Glen Canyon Dam, thus combining Lake Powell and Lake Mead, so as to reduce losses due to evaporation and leakage.

The average uptime of the U.S. electrical grid is 99.96%.  Americans experience, on average, four hours of downtime per year. The only significant problem we have is in Texas, whose grid (ERCOT) is operated so as to maximize investors profits, rather than to provide reliable power.  Many of us consider this an outrage.

About 4% of U.S. farmland is dedicated to biofuels, almost all of which is corn ethanol as a gasoline additive, the laws for which were put into place in the 1970s when oil prices hiked as a result of the oil crises. They can only be repealed by an act of the U.S. Congress, which is unlikely due to the power of the farmers’ lobby.

There are aspects of the “green agenda” that are, IMO, off kilter, but people who are critical of the general concept are just as ill-informed as Richard Wellings.

My wife commented on this piece, “Yes, he’s a moron.”  I replied, “Actually, my supposition is that he himself is not a moron; he just believes, and I’m sure he’s correct, that his readers fall into this category.”

I take exception to authors whose business model boils down to angering idiots by lying to them.  How about a little intellectual integrity?