'All Due Respect' 

Editor:

With all due respect to Greg King (whom I both admire and respect for all of the excellent work he has done over the years, particularly on the Headwaters Forest campaign) there are so many things wrong with these three sentences right here. ("Why Deindustrialization (not Wind) Is the Answer," April 25.)

He says:

"Yet in ongoing 'green power' debates, one important fact is consistently left out: In large part the energy produced by these projects will not supplant dirty energy, but supplement it."

This is a fatalistic argument not based on any evidence, but merely an invocation of Jevon's Paradox, which I contend is mostly a myth (ecology.iww.org/node/5532).

He then says:

"According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, national energy production has increased nearly every year, from about 40 quadrillion British thermal units in 1960 to 103 quadrillion BTUs in 2022. In February this year, the EIA estimated that U.S. energy consumption will reach 4,112 billion kilowatt hours in 2024 and 4,123 billion kwh in 2025, up from a record 4,070 billion kwh in 2022."

That's a case of correlation, but it doesn't prove causation. One doesn't inevitably lead to the other (though I agree that we should reduce energy consumption, particularly fossil fuel based energy).

Finally, he says:

"What this means is that little of the energy produced by 'green' energy technologies will serve to reduce the U.S. carbon footprint by 2050."

That is a prediction, not a scientifically unalterable fact, and again, it's fatalistic.

Then, he says:

"Yet these projects come with enormous environmental costs."

*What* "enormous" environmental costs?" The impacts of wind are not that substantial. I have written an extensive document about this (ecology.iww.org/node/5940), and I'd ask him to refute the points I make with facts and evidence rather than simply state (vaguely) that there are "enormous environmental costs" with zero specifics or evidence to support that contention.

Steve Ongerth, Richmond