Editor:
Regarding Paul Rhodes’ anti-renewables letter last week (“Bit player in power game”). We looked for his claimed facts but found mostly stale camouflage. Hard to know where to start.
Yes, China and India have large populations, but their per-capita GHG contributions are 2.5 and 9 times less than Canada (and that includes all the GHG they emit making the things we buy every day).
Yes, the Paris Agreement is on the honour system and the U.S. may indeed pull out but that is just a “talking point.” Who would police a binding treaty? If Mr. Rhodes favours an international police force, he should say so.
Yes, many (not all) countries lag in meeting Paris but, as the costs of not responding become ever more evident, they are now getting serious.
In fact, the rate at which new coal plants exceed the demolition of old ones has rapidly declined. Major coal projects in Australia and China have been shelved. Trump’s pro-coal efforts in the U.S. are failing. Even Wall Street can see writing on a wall this big. Mr. Rhodes’ claim of 47 GW of coal plants should be compared with the 58 GW of solar (and a bit less in wind turbines) installed last year by China alone. Supposing Pakistan did get $35 million for coal, is that a lot? Not even five per cent of one modern coal plant.
Yes, preoccupied with Brexit and the decline of North Sea oil, Theresa May’s Conservatives approved messy fracking, but there has been much local opposition and little uptake.
Mr. Rhodes complains about subsidies for solar and wind. He ignores the subsidies given to coal, not just in terms of the deaths and illness caused by air pollution, but the cost of the ever-increasing mass migration of refugees from lands desolated by drought.
Rhodes is right about one thing: a modern civilization needs a source of energy. As we can no longer use fossil fuel, we need to get busy and figure out how to couple the various forms of renewable energy with a major effort to stop wasting that which is no longer cheap and easy. Citing one-sided statistics probably doesn’t help.
James Pawley, Sechelt
