Wind and Solar Have Won. The Beginning of the End

Published in the Laconia Daily Sun 4-27-2016
http://www.laconiadailysun.com/opinion/letters/94198-james-veverka-4-27-455

To the Editor,

The Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed by 175 nations last week. More are expected. Nobody but nobody is taking the science deniers seriously anymore. Recently, Russ Wiles and Tony Boutin paraded a statistic like its the only statistic that counts regarding warming.  That statistic is that more people die due to cold weather than hot weather. That is now, not the warmer future. But these gents from the local Chemtrail Writers Chapter don't mention that the World Health Organization studies show that up to seven million people die each year prematurely due to pollution in the air. A million alone from Coal burning.

Don Ewing submitted his usual market fundamentalist sermon about how much adjusting to climate change costs us. But Don doesn't mention the IMF global study that found that the hidden costs of fossil fuel burning is $5.3 TRILLION a year. That's Trillions, Don, Trillions! This is on top of $492 Billion in direct government subsidies worldwide. We pay that. Mr. Ewing also claims that addressing climate change has hurt jobs. More jobs were created in renewables than lost in the fossil fuel industry in both the EU and the USA. Solar Nation employs more people than the Coal industry does in the US now. Jobs always change as the world changes. Tony Boutin also claimed wrongly that renewables make energy more expensive. Bloomberg reported last April:

"The race for renewable energy has passed a turning point. The world is now adding more capacity for renewable power each year than coal, natural gas, and oil combined. And there's no going back. The shift occurred in 2013, when the world added 143 gigawatts of renewable electricity capacity, compared with 141 gigawatts in new plants that burn fossil fuels, according to an analysis presented Tuesday at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance annual summit in New York. The shift will continue to accelerate, and by 2030 more than four times as much renewable capacity will be added. "The electricity system is shifting to clean,'' Michael Liebreich, founder of BNEF, said in his keynote address. "Despite the change in oil and gas prices there is going to be a substantial buildout of renewable energy that is likely to be an order of magnitude larger than the buildout of coal and gas."

"The Beginning of the End:"

"The price of wind and solar power continues to plummet, and is now on par or cheaper than grid electricity in many areas of the world. Solar, the newest major source of energy in the mix, makes up less than 1 percent of the electricity market today but could be the world’s biggest single source by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency." (See http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-14/fossil-fuels-just-lost-the-race-against-renewables)

James Veverka