The Sick Stupidity of Big Green Hypocrisy

Now that "permitting reform" for electric transmission (and gas pipelines) has failed, the environmental advocate hypocrites are busy trying to make a case why electric transmission permitting "reform" (read federal usurpation) should happen, but not fossil fuel permitting.  There's really no way to try to do this without looking like a giant hypocrite.  It's NIMBY of the highest order -- they love this stuff as long as it's "not in my back yard," but in yours instead.

This guy went way overboard, claiming that electric transmission is "sexy."  Umm, dude, if "big ass" transmission lines make you feel all tingly down there, you need to get your head examined.  I suspect, though, that you're just trying a little too hard.  You probably have a loud fake laugh for your boss's bad jokes, too.  That's really SICK!

I do have to laugh at the way you try just a little too hard to convince Congress (not the legislature, which is a state body) that landowners would be better off if their rights were limited by the federal government.  This is probably the epitome of self-serving justification:

It’s not just state regulatory authorities that reject transmission projects when they don’t see a benefit. Ranchers and other local landowners are sometimes put off by how these (admittedly hulking) metal constructs will look on their property. The lines can be buried underground—or even underwater—but it’s more expensive. Everybody has a price, and you might just as easily find success paying the landowner what you would’ve spent burying the line.

It's just not true that "everybody has a price."  The vast majority of landowners threatened with eminent domain for new transmission line easements say that their property isn't for sale at any price.  And furthermore, it's up to the landowner, not you or any government functionary, whether the money is better spent on landowner compensation or burial to avoid impacts.  If you ask a landowner, they'd rather have it buried on an existing right of way, such as highway or rail, than to have it impeding their use of their land.

​And here's another brainlessly stupid thought:

That makes using existing infrastructure corridors so enticing. We’ve already got tracts of land connecting different parts of the country that are pre-approved for public works projects, like highways and railroads. If we could layer in transmission lines, it would avoid a lot of these land-use conflicts. We could also use existing electricity corridors to pump through a lot more power using modern technology. Issues remain: Our roadways are usually designed with shoulders where people can regain control of their cars if they veer off the road, which doesn’t always leave room for power lines. But many places, such as along railroads, should have sufficient capacity. You could run high voltage, direct current lines through those areas to high-population centers in need of clean energy.

Uhh... weren't we talking about burying transmission on highway and rail corridors?  You can still regain control of your car when you veer off onto the shoulder if the transmission is buried within the right of way but not on the paved shoulder of the highway.  See this report to find out how it can be done.  No one ever suggested that we build electric transmission towers on the paved highway shoulder.  Are you insane?  And, btw, where did you learn to drive?  Anyone who regularly veers off the highway and onto the shoulder to regain control shouldn't be driving in the first place.  You really had to dig to manufacture that "convincing" talking point, right?

This is a good place for an old joke:  Being stupid is like being dead.  When you are dead, you do not know you are dead. It's only painful & difficult for others.

And how stupid is it to willingly be brainwashed by a couple of guys with a political agenda without looking at an opposing view?  And how parochial is it to believe that rural America is your willing production slave for everything from the food you cram into your gaping maw to the power you use to write brainless things on the internet?

And the most productive solar and wind farms will not be located right next door to our population centers. Broadly speaking, they’ll be in more rural areas in the middle of the country, while the majority of people live on the coasts. Many of the rest live in metro areas inland. We need to move clean power from the places where we’ll harvest the bulk of it to the places where we’ll consume the bulk of it.

Wanna bet this guy will be at the head of the protest parade against offshore wind located just a few miles from his coastal home?  Offshore wind is a more reliable resource, too.  This statement is just total and complete garbage:

“Transmission, these big regional lines, often have benefit-cost ratios of 2:1 or 3:1, and that's because you can access resources that are on really low-cost land. Sometimes these solar and wind plants produce twice as much power at a given location than if you get closer to [where it’s used].”

This is just a NIMBY argument of the big green folks who live near the coasts.  And what's that about "really low-cost land"?  You think farmland is cheap?  It shouldn't be.  It's just that is it undervalued when the utility has the ability to simply take it using condemnation and eminent domain.  What makes city land so "high-cost"?  Availability.  At the rate farmland is disappearing, its value is set to skyrocket.  And, btw, what are you going to eat once you've covered all the prime farmland with turbines, solar panels, and transmission lines?  Don't suggest that farmers can simply work around all these impediments.  It would cost them more in time and effort, not to mention the necessities that would be made impossible, such as aerial applications and irrigation.

Betcha can't guess where the author of this idiotic blather lives?

​In practice, these lines would primarily carry energy from the center of the country—between Texas and North Dakota, where the wind really blows—to the East.  Others would carry energy from solar facilities in the South—particularly the Southwest, but also the Southeast—northwards.

So, we need to "build things."

The old environmental movement was about stopping things from getting built. The new environmental movement's about building stuff.

Well, unless those things involve fossil fuels, then we can't build them at all.  We can only build things "for clean energy".  But they can't package their hypocrisy that way because it's much too obvious.  

Turns out they're not really fooling anyone.  It's hypocrisy of the highest order.  And it's really not convincing at all.

The fix is to make it easier to build large transmission lines in anticipation of need, like an interstate highway, and allow power markets to spring up near them like communities along the road. Sen. Joe Manchin’s larger permitting reform bill goes some way in this direction, making it easier to site these lines and setting time limits for the environmental review and stakeholder comment periods. (It would do the same for fossil-fuel projects, which climate activists are not happy about. The bill is on hold after Manchin agreed to pull it from a larger funding bill at the end of September.) The bill would develop predefined corridors where this stuff can go on federal land and make it easier to create these corridors in general. Finally, Gramlich says, it will help with cost allocation, creating a regulatory framework to recover the upfront cost of these large interstate lines.

First of all, this piece is supposed to be a plug for DC transmission lines.  It even blathers on about needing to be converted from AC/DC/AC.  But then it is magically  servicing a power market along the line without being converted back into usable AC.  Whoopsie!  Logic fail!

Second, there's way too much word salad here about what Manchin's permitting reform bill would do.  How does it do those things?  Did you actually READ it and put on your thinking cap?  No, of course not.  You're trying to convince people stupider than you and I posit that that audience is small and shrinking at an amazing rate.  Absolutely nothing you've written about this bill is true.  It's simply not there!

Keeping the lights on is a matter of life and death, and so is transforming our energy system.

Do I need to repeat the joke about how being stupid is like being dead?