The largest single threat to the ecology and biodiversity of the planet in the decades to come will be global climate disruption due to the buildup of human-generated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. People around the world are beginning to address the problem by reducing their carbon footprint through less consumption and better technology. But unsustainable human population growth can overwhelm those efforts, leading us to conclude that we not only need smaller footprints, but fewer feet.
– The Center For Biological Diversity
Oakland, Utah, Wyoming, and other parts of America involved in the debate over coal need a wake up call. In the ongoing policy debate about the Insight Terminal Solutions’ Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal, the words of America’s Power President Michelle Bloodworth are a sober reminder of the need to maintain the reliable and affordable source of energy provided by coal.
In The Washington Times (sad that Michelle has to go to a conservative publication to address a problem that should not be a political issue), she wrote:
Policymakers know that our nation’s fleet of coal-fired power plants play an indispensable role in powering our lives, helping ensure that the electricity grid is both reliable and resilient. The coal fleet contributes to the nation’s fuel security and diversity, and serves as an insurance policy against electricity shortages and price spikes.
These are the functions of critical infrastructure during the best of times. In the face of the current, unprecedented crisis, the role of the coal sector assumes even greater importance.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has jurisdiction over the criteria that most of these policymakers rely upon to determine which segments of our economy represent essential enterprises, listed coal power as “uniquely critical” in guidance issued in March. Essential critical infrastructure like coal, DHS said, is “imperative during the response to the COVID-19 emergency for both public health and safety and community well-being.”
And while the nation’s power grid is diverse, no fuel source is more resilient than coal in the face of unexpected or extreme events. During the Bomb Cyclone of 2018, for example, more than 60 percent of incremental electricity demand was met by coal, while natural gas, wind and solar power faced outages.
Today, our fleet of coal power plants are playing an essential role in our nation’s response to the pandemic.
The Real Climate Change Problem Is Not Energy But World Population Growth
What is bothersome right now is that mob rule has come to have some say over America and the World’s energy future. What the mob should pay attention to is the very growth of, well, the mob. And by that, I mean world population control.
The simple fact is that climate change is due to a large and increasing Earth population density. Few want to pay attention to the real truth: we have to control future population growth. That has not been done, or pushed – reducing coal production and dreaming of a shift from traditional energy will not solve the problem; population growth control will. Calling for the “end of coal” is a silly pipe dream advanced by those who fear to see the real truth.
Stephanie Feldstein, population and sustainability director for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental groups that addresses the link between population and climate change in its work, said: “If we don’t address population growth, our efforts to reduce that pressure on the climate and habitat and water resources will always be an uphill battle.”
And the report called “Why PoPulation Matters to Climate Change” by Population Action International, had this to add to the discussion:
Areas of high population growth and high vulnerability to climate change impacts overlap. Evidence suggests that the poorest countries and poorest groups within a population are most vulnerable to climate-related hazards such as floods, droughts, and landslides.2 Many developing countries are currently experiencing rapid population growth, increasing the number of people who will be exposed to projected impacts of climate change. Other demographic trends, such as urbanization in coastal areas and encroachment of populations into ecologically marginal areas, such as hillsides or degraded land, can exacerbate climate risks.
Zennie62Media is proud to have been commissioned by Insight Terminal Solutions to use its vast media platform and technology to get out the truth about climate change, and de-politicize energy economic development so we can maintain an affordable and safe standard of living. Further, I am personally committed to an effort to change the argument to save the World. The current over-politicized energy policy environment dooms the World to an uncertain energy future amid constant climate change, completely undisrupted by decline in the use of transitional energy sources.
It’s possible to have what we are already creating: a cleaner traditional energy industry. But killing traditional energy will not solve the climate change problem – population control will. Any claim to the contrary is baseless. The simple fact that a room gets warmer with more people in it is all of the model evidence one needs to show the larger global problem. We have to stop dooming traditional energy jobs and start saving them via improving the plant and equipment used.
In closing, if you have never seen the 1973 movie Soylent Green starring Charlton Heston, that film provides a more realistic model of a future we don’t want than any other popular culture has provided:
Soylent Green is a 1973 American science fiction film directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Charlton Heston and, in his final film, Edward G. Robinson. The film overlays the police procedural and science fiction genres as it depicts the investigation into the murder of a wealthy businessman in a dystopian future suffering from pollution, overpopulation, depleted resources, poverty, dying oceans, and a hot climate due to the greenhouse effect. Much of the population survives on processed food rations, including “soylent green”.
Stay tuned.