Earth Day 2016 has come and gone with great fanfare and hordes of crony-fueled policy prescriptions from fascistic politicians around the world. But nowhere is the threat of environmental collectivism more pronounced than the state of Vermont.
For Earth Day this year, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin patted himself on the back for having the courage to fly to Paris, France, where he attended the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference. In addition to spending other people’s money on flights to religious cult meetings, Mr. Shumlin plans to make his visit pay off by turning Vermont into the first “all-green” energy state by 2050.
But, according to Watchdog.org, Shumlin’s idea to “grow jobs” (and who doesn’t love the rhetorical awkwardness of that phrase?) and turn the Green Mountain State into a Parisian climate wonderland will require some pretty heavy-duty makeovers to the rustic beauty of Vermont.
According to Ben Luce, an associate physics professor at Lyndon State College, in order to meet the state’s energy needs and conform with Governor Shumlin’s goal for 2050, 90,000 acres of land would have to be covered by solar panels, or one-third of the ridgelines in the state would have to be devoted to wind turbines.
That’s a lot of shiny fields and dead birds.
It is possible that solar panels and wind turbines will become more viable someday. But politically-driven, taxpayer-funded machinations to shift citizens’ money into “sustainable” energy sinkholes clearly redirect current usable capital away from the areas where market participants would prefer to send their money. Since the only way value can be shown is by individuals spending their own money on what they determine helpful to their lives, the only way to show that solar and wind energy have value is to allow individuals to invest -- or not invest -- their own funds.
To force them to pay for such technologies before they would choose to do so means that politicians like Mr. Shumlin are imposing their own preferences on others. By definition, this negates valuation in the economy.
And that’s not how progress is achieved.
But the crony “Green Energy” movement marches on, with help from Governor Shumlin’s central planning and pop media figures who rarely, if ever, question the movement’s unfounded claims.
Since that seems to be the case for the foreseeable future, Vermonters might want to change their motto from “The Green Mountain State” to “The Waste of Space State.”
While Governor Shumlin pats himself on the back.