Tom McClintock Wants A Civilization That’s Cheap
This week, explaining his opposition to the Solar Technology Roadmap Act, U.S. Representative Tom McClintock said he opposes solar power because it’s too expensive. McClintock said:
The cheapest form of electricity generation is hydroelectric. It ranges from a quarter cent to 2.7 cents per kilowatt hour – average around 1.5 cents.
Then comes nuclear power, with a midrange around 1.7 cents.
After that, coal, about 1.9 cents.
Then wind at 4.6 cents and then natural gas at 10.6 cents. And finally, we get to the most expensive way to produce electricity, solar, between 13.5 cents and 42.7 cents per kilowatt hour, with a mid-range of 28.1 cents.
Those figures make the argument against solar power seem very reasonable. The trouble is that they’re not honest figures. They don’t take into account the indirect costs of energy production.
Hydroelectric energy may seem cheap, but it can’t be done everywhere, and it destroys the ecology of the rivers on which it is placed. Many of the Pacific coast’s salmon populations are on the brink of disappearing, because of changes created by widespread hydroelectric development. Along with them, other species in the rivers of the West and in the Pacific Ocean are in danger of extinction as well.
Nuclear power seems cheap, until one realizes that it creates intensely toxic substances that will have to be managed, practically speaking, nearly forever. A little bit of nuclear power now creates an expense that compounds for hundreds of generations. There are the nuclear weapons created with the leftovers of nuclear-powered video games too.
Coal comes cheap, until you consider the fact that entire mountains are
