Neighborhood Ministries

While environmentalists push for electric cars and wind turbines to help the environment, they ignore the environmental problems they cause. The batteries for electric cars and turbine blades for wind  turbines have a very short lifespan but cannot be recycled. Many are being buried. Lithium for batteries is also very environmentally destructive to mine. In addition, solar and wind energy are undependable and depend on weather while gas and oil are not. In addition, wind turbines and electric cars are very expensive. The battery for an electric car now costs more than we used to pay for the whole car. In addition, solar fields are destroying large areas of environment and wind turbines endanger birds who are killed by the spinning blades. We are being forced into a program which is undependable and very expensive with very little thought to the problems involved and are not waiting for the problems to be solved. In addition, the changeover is benefiting those who produce the energy. Many of these programs are subsidized with federal money but benefit private companies. There has been a big push to help companies create wind and solar fields but little to help individuals. California produced a solar field covering 150,000 acres in the desert. That energy has to be transmitted over a long distance to faraway cities. Energy is lost in the transmission and there is the possibility of disruption by weather and other factors. Yet, individuals and businesses have large areas of roof and parking lots that could be used to produce electricity and would not have to be transmitted over long distances. While California claims to be trying to help the environment, they reduced the payback for excess energy produced by individual solar panels and wind turbines which hurts individuals by making it more difficult to recoup the costs of installing them, discouraging individuals from purchasing them. As a result, companies are buying cheap electricity from individuals and selling it for a profit.

While we should seek to protect the environment, we should research what we do to make sure it actually helps. Ethanol was promoted by environmentalists as the answer to global warming. It was supposedly clean burning, would produce less pollution, and was renewable. Unlike our petroleum supply, which is not renewable, Ethanol is produced from grain and is therefore in infinite supply. Those are lofty goals and worth pursuing. However, like many liberal promotions, truth is in short supply. In fact, it corroded the engines so engines had to be redesigned to accommodate it. While I would like to help the environment when I can, I could not afford a car that took it for a long time. However, it didn’t go far with the public and today few stations carry it. When I got a car that could use it, I looked for a local station that carried it. I finally found a station that sold it and was glad to find that it cost about one fourth of the cost of regular gas, which I estimated would save me about $9.00 a week, so I started using it. After using it for a few months, I found that my gas mileage had dropped. Apparently, it produces less energy and takes more gas to get the same power. In fact, it cost me $3.00 more per week. Needless to say, I no longer use it. In addition, it was supposed to be cleaner burning but produced so much pollution in my engine that  I was not able to get normal gas mileage until months after I returned to using regular fuel.

While environmentalists blame man’s pollution for global warming, they ignore other possible causes. The earth’s temperature seems to vary according to the intensity of sunspots.  There has been a great deal of sunspot activity in recent years, but in the early 2000’s when the temperature of the earth suddenly dropped, there was a lull in sunspot activity on the sun.  Volcanoes also pour out huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the air. One volcano can pour out more gases than all the cars and trucks on the road and we have seen a great increase in volcanic activity in recent years. If you don’t believe in God, you could attribute it to an aging sun and an aging earth. However, if you believe that God is real and is concerned about us, you could think that God might be trying to tell us something. God allowed the enemies of Israel to take her people captive because they sacrificed their children to false idols, and we are seeing over a million of our children in America who are sacrificed through abortion to the idol of pleasure to free them from responsibility for their sins. Since 9-11-2001 when the planes struck the twin towers, the United States has seen an increase in both numbers and intensity of floods, droughts, snow storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters. Maybe God is withholding His hand of protection in the hope that we will turn from our wicked ways, repent of our sins, and seek Him, so that He might turn away His anger from us.

Over the years, we have suffered a constant barrage of warnings about global warming. However, pollution of the atmosphere would affect the world fairly uniformly. Even though the world’s temperature seems to be getting generally warmer, and some areas in the northern U.S. have seen warmer temperatures, other northern areas in the U.S. in recent years have experienced colder weather where they found themselves digging their cars out of snow like they haven’t seen for many years. Many places, in the normally warm Deep South, have experienced that great Northern treat (threat) called snow for the first time in the memory of anyone living outside a nursing home. Pollution of the atmosphere would cause long term effects. Weather changes are not consistent and do not seem to have any relationship to pollution or the lack of it. California had terrible pollution but has since cleaned up their air, yet recent temperatures have been higher than in recorded history. Global Warming theories also don’t explain why the average temperature of the earth in the mid 2000’s had raised 1 degree in the previous 10 years and Global Warming supporters warned of great consequences from man’s pollution, but the average earth temperature suddenly dropped 1 degree the following year alone. It seems like environmentalists are too quick to blame man and too slow to examine other factors.

California has proposed a ban on sale of cars and small trucks with internal combustion engines by 2035. Such proposals show how far environmentalists are willing to go. Previous advancements in pollution control eliminated California’s smog problem so that  isn’t a major concern anymore. They are merely pursuing it to control global warming. In addition, the proposal has far reaching effects because 17 other States are also considering similar proposals.  Combined, they would effect 40% of  car sales. The elimination of that many cars and small trucks will have very little effect on the environment. The United States produces only about 2% of the world’s man-made pollution and due to pollution controls currently in place, cars only produce a small percentage of that.  It would flood the market with obsolete cars that could not be sold to help buy the new cars so it would literally leave most people in those States without transportation. In addition, California and other States are struggling to maintain their electric grids due to increased demand and limits on coal and gas burning plants forced on them by environmentalists and could not handle the increased demand of so many cars having to be charged. In effect, it would destroy the American economy while producing no real benefits to them. The only ones that would benefit are the car manufacturers who produce the environmentally friendly cars. Republican Congressmen have proposed  a bill called the “Preserving Choice in Vehicle Purchase Act” to protect consumers.

While many promote solar panels as the energy source of the future, there is strong resistance by rural people to having solar fields in their backyards. Opponents say it takes away farmland and is an eyesore that lowers property values, however they are non-polluting and create no noise. They oppose wind turbines because they are an eyesore and kill birds that get too close. There are other solutions but very few are taking advantage of them. There is roofing that produces solar energy and could practically eliminate power outages due to downed power lines,  as well as eliminate electric bills. There are also individual wind turbines which I would think every farm would jump at. They used to have windmills which pumped water and later were converted to generate electricity before power lines reached the rural areas. Anything you generate over what you need, you actually get paid for. While they are cleaner than power plants, they do have drawbacks. Texas found out the hard way when they got a big snow and big freeze. The wind turbines froze up and the solar panels got covered with snow causing a major and prolonged blackout. The goal of going totally natural electric is a pipe dream we may never be able to realize. We need conventional power plants as backup to handle when  turbines and solar panels can’t but it will help our energy crisis. It is interesting to hear the big push for electric cars while pushing to close power plants. We have had several major power outages because our electric grid is barely producing adequate electricity and any problem pushes it over the edge. Where are we going to get the energy to charge all those electric cars?