"Green" policies are destroying this country

Trains move the US grain crop and fertilisers used to grow it, which feed a significant number of people outside the US. They are very efficient at moving bulk cargos. 18 wheelers move everyhing else, including the food people buy in shops and live on and the clothes on their backs and the materials their houses are made of.

Jesus.

If countries were really serious about reducing energy consumption, they could start by mandating street lighting be turned off at 01:00 and commercial lighting at 22:00, like shop windows and advertising signs, and floodlights for yards where no one is working.

I remember as a kid, I lived in a city where the street lights were turned off, and it was wonderful. You could see the stars as it was lovely and dark and so I got to see comet Kohoutek in it's blazing glory, just standing in the street in front of my house at 4am in the near pitch black.

Seen this on another thread and thought it was quite interesting.

George monbiot: An evening with George Monbiot in Belgium – George will talk about his latest book, Regenesis ... 21st November 2022

Düsseldorf, Germany

Uppsala, Sweden

Stockholm

Amsterdam

Thats just in one month. He has flown to conferences in NZ, more than once, not to mention appearances in NY.

Elon Musk, he travels by private jet everywhere, toting up over 257,000 km in 2018 alone. I'm surprised he doesn't live in it - but you know, TESLA and american made solar panels actually made in China...

AL Gore tore into people's domestic energy consumption, while living in a 20 bedroom mansion that consumed 20 times the electricity of an average home.

Greta Thurnburg sailed to NY on a yacht, then two crew had to fly to NY to help sail it back. Yacht made of resins derived from oil of course. In another stunt sailing trip to Spain, there wasn't enough wind so two diesel engines did the job, creating more CO2 and NOX than a plane flight would have, again, the yacht was made of fibreglass.

Don`t be fooling yourself that China`s energy policy of building 43 new coal fired plants, or indeed 18 new blast furnaces all using coal as their energy source, is anything to do with providing electricity for shanty homes. Nor indeed is Japan`s new 1.07 Gigawatt coal-fired plant in Taketoyo with a further 7 either planned or under construction.

Both China and Japan, along with India, (being 3 of the leading 5 global CO2 emitters), made it clear at COP26 it was for no other reason than to protect their economies, yet here we have a Green Party hell bent on doing the opposite and wrecking ours.

The great white hope of greens here on achieving zero emissions is now offshore wind turbines. A recent presentation by the E.S.B. estimates that to do so would require offshore capacity of 30 Gigawatts. A report by BVG Associates for Catapult Offshore Renewable Energy (guidetoanoffshorewindfarm.com/wind-farm-costs) states the average U.K. CapEx alone for offshore at £2.37 Billion per Gigawatt. Based on U.K. costs for 30 Gigawatts that is a construction cost alone of €83 Billion. A sum that for just the turbines will have to be repeated at the most optimistic maximum every 27 years. That cost does not even take into account the associated cost of the hopium of hydrogen for such an intermittent and unreliable energy source as wind.

With both the E.S.B. own offshore wind partner Uquinor and Shell no longer interested in offshore here, is it not well past time time for Irish greens to cop themselves on seeing such climate diverse countries as Sweden and Egypt going the nuclear route and recognise it as the only real economic alternative when it comes to zero emissions rather than their present pie in the sky uncosted ideology ?

Given that yeah I think Ireland might not have the resources for a lot of renewable. I think the EU would be better off with a mega project (eg. Revisiting the Sahara plan with photovoltaics)

• "Ireland imports 97% of its natural gas consumption (149,524 MMcf in 2015).

Ireland has proven reserves equivalent to 1.9 times its annual consumption. This means it has about 2 years of gas left (at current consumption levels and excluding unproven reserves).

https://www.worldometers.info/gas/ireland-natural-gas/

I wouldn't underestimate how long a nuclear reactor takes to commission.

We have already thanks to Irish Green Party policy put all our eggs in the wind basket and seen how intermittent and unreliable it is, and are now seeing how economically unrealistic and ruinous the rest of that policy is for offshore without again doing the same and handing over all our energy dependency based on a half arsed E.U. proposal for an energy source that would not be even within the E.U.

The E.U. have directives on member states having individual energy security, and the least I would expect from them after following Germany`s policy on Russian gas is that they have learned that relying on an energy source outside their own borders, especially in such a politically unstable area as the Sahara, is not a great idea.

Even Egypt, where two thirds of the country is Sahara desert, is now building their first nuclear power plant. It`s long past time for Irish greens to give up their Don Quixote fixation with impractical windmills if zero omissions is really their aim rather than some weird cult like ideology and recognise that the only economically way of achieving it is nuclear.

yaaaa...

I think I'm happy to trade the expensive and careful processing of the waste for reversing the carbon/methane atmo problem. But it becomes a chronic vulnerability of the state - see Russia/Ukraine tensions around the nuclear plant there.

What a state the world is in.

I think a wind plan would take just as much time, watt per watt.

George Monbiot is a billionaire??

George Monbiot doesn't fly on private jets. He sits on a plane that would be flying regardless of whether he was sitting on the seat or not. During Covid, the airlines flew Empty planes back and forth so that the owners of the Airports didn't penalise them by removing their slots.

The whole system is ridiculous. It's not the greens who are at fault, it's the fact that for most politicians, sustainability is just a buzz word that they don't actually care about at all.

Either Capitalism sorts itself out by preventing free riders from dumping billions of tonnes of pollution into the atmosphere, or the planet is fucked, Carbon taxes are the fee for emitting pollution into the air. we need them if we want to continue as a capitalist system. The alternatives are a non capitalist system, or no longer continuing

For the year 1976 - 2016 of the 441 nuclear plants constructed during that time 374 were constructed in less than 10 years with the mean construction time being 7.5 years.

Source : IAEA Pris database.