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Topic:   Clean, green power - but at what price?

Jeff Norman Moderator

posted 10-08-2007 11:14 AM             Clean, green power - but at what price? is an interesting article about potential hydroelectric developments in northern Ontario. Interesting to me anyway. What I'd particularly like to draw attention is to the part where they assert: quote: Electricity generation is never "clean and green," they say. Every fuel – wind, solar, nuclear, wood waste, coal or water – has impacts. Some are more harmful than others, but none, apart from energy conservation and efficiency, are benign. The main advantage of the northern rivers appears to be that they're far away and out of sight of most of the population.<my emphasis> Is energy conservation and efficiency truly benign? From a purely theoretical standpoint, using less energy to do the same things (improved efficiency) is in my opinion a benign ideal. However, in practice I cannot see how it could be truly benign. Our industrial culture has evolved into society that uses a lot of energy for seemingly meaningless purposes. An idealogue would see this as a waste and a potential for reducing consumption. This evolutionary process continues with the development of appliances with improved efficiencies. But idealogues tend to want to hurry things in the direction they see as being the best and thereby declare things like "conservation and efficiency are benign". I think they can and generally are benign at this moment in time but at some point you can get into rationing schemes, people and jurisdictions having their energy requirements dictated to them with slogans like "less is more". This is not benign and can have detrimental impacts on individual freedoms and well being. IP: Logged

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