Finally They Admit Renewables Are Terrible For The Environment
Over the last few years, I have been pushing back against the idea that renewables are good for the environment. In 2019 I published, “Why Renewables Can’t Save the Planet,” which was the most-read article of the year at Quillette, and gave a TEDx talk by the same name, which today has 2.5 million views. And last year, in Apocalypse Never, I pointed out that wind and solar projects require 300 to 400 times more land than nuclear or natural gas plants, and that 100% renewables would require increasing land used for energy from 0.5% today to 25% to 50%.
Needless to say, the renewable energy industry and its boosters haven’t liked what I’ve written, and have sought to cancel me. Last year, a group of activist scientists denounced me as factually wrong, and demanded that I be censored by Facebook. They drew on junk science to claim that solar required just 3.6 times more land and wind just 5.8 times more than nuclear and natural gas plants. In response, Facebook censored me and denied me the right to appeal their verdict.
But now researchers at Princeton University and Bloomberg News have admitted that I was right and my critics were wrong. They have just published research showing that wind farms require 370 times more land than nuclear plants, and that shifting away from nuclear and toward renewables, as Biden’s climate plan would do, would have a devastating impact on America’s natural environments.
