What Should We Be Doing as Temperatures Rise and Earth Becomes Less Inhabitable?

We know that the Earth is experiencing record high temperatures, and that these data points are not isolated, but are part of long-term warming trends that derive from the buildup of greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere, largely due to our civilization’s consumption of fossil fuels.

We also know that the overarching economic power structures on this planet couldn’t care less about abating the unprecedented levels of suffering that are making their way around the globe: the mass displacement of populations due to the disappearance of land masses, the storms, the wildfires, the loss of biodiversity, the acidification of our oceans, and so on.

I met a young fellow today who was interested in this subject, but believed that our response is based on lies foisted upon us by the woke socialists.  “Isn’t it true that wind turbines require a great deal of oil to manufacture the blades and maintain themselves in operation?” he challenged me.

I explained that, although there is no environmental “free lunch,” there are a great number of actual facts that matter.  When it comes to renewable energy, the most important metric is “EROI,” or “energy return on investment.”   Wind turbines return somewhere between 18:1 and 30:1 in terms of EROI, meaning that, on average, if we spend one kilowatt-hour producing and maintaining a wind turbine, we’ll get, say, 25 kilowatt-hours back over the time of its operation. Meanwhile, most of that energy displaces what would have come from coal, with its greenhouse gas emissions in terms of CO2 and methane, its heavy metals in the form of mercury, arsenic, cadmium, and selenium, as well as its incredible array of extremely toxic, carcinogenic radioactive isotopes.

Did I make an impact here?  Frankly, I’m not sure.  But if I failed, it wasn’t because I didn’t try. That’s all that can be expected of us, IMO.