Is Going Green enough to save the world from its energy consumption? Not according to some, including, apparently, Jesse Ausubel, a researcher at the Rockefeller University in New York.
As reported by Sara Goudarzi in a special Thursday (July 26) to LiveScience.com, “Renewable energy could wreck the environment, according to a study that examined how much land it would take to generate the renewable resources that would make a difference in the global energy system.
“Building enough wind farms, damming adequate number of rivers and growing sufficient biomass to produce ample kilowatts to make a difference in meeting global energy demands would involve a huge invasion of nature, according to Jesse Ausubel, a researcher at the Rockefeller University in New York.
Ausubel came to this conclusion by calculating the amount of energy that each renewable source can produce in terms of area of land disturbed.”
“’We looked at the different major alternatives for renewable energies and we measured [the power output] for each of them and how much land it will rape,’ Ausubel told LiveScience.”
Do you suppose, given Ausubel’s choice of the word “rape,” that he is revealing his own opinion here?
The story cites the following statistics as being reported in the current issue of International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology:
• In order to meet the 2005 electricity demand for the United States, an area the size of Texas would need to be covered with wind structures running round the clock to extract, store and transport the energy.
• New York City would require the entire area of Connecticut to become a wind farm to fully power all its electrical equipment and gadgets.
Well, the story goes on. My problem with the study is that according to the limited amount I read I don’t see mention of energy conservation efforts. For that matter I don’t find mention of the scenario in which the amount of infrastructure we have to create in order to support our current habits itself forces us to change our habits.
Thoughts?