A piece from the Cascade Policy Institute is what prompted this editorial.
Oops! Renewable Energy Costs Oregon Billions

OrMag:  Greenie Oregon Progressives would like to shut off and remove all the dams on the Columbia River for "environmental reasons."  Since they already scrapped the Trojan nuclear reactor and saw to it that the attempt to enlarge/improve natural gas facilities down there were blocked, too, here's what their fondest dreams would accomplish.  Since coal is "dirty" and "oil" evil, that leaves eight thousand new wind generators built by General Electric or picking a county in Eastern Oregon, evicting all the people and covering every square inch of it with solar cells.  When the wind isn't blowing and the sun has gone down, of course, we will need five million Die Hard batteries to keep Portland from going completely dark at nine P.M. each night except in August.

This is because while water in the Columbia goes downhill both in the day and during the night, wind and sun power only works when it's windy and sunny.  No wind or no sun and the result is no power.

If it's both windless and dark, every light in the state would go out.

The Purity of the Progressive Essence

While we at Oregon Magazine have fished both commercially and as sportsmen for salmon for an accumulated three hundred years -- and support the protection of most of our wonderful smaller (than the Columbia) streams -- the Greenies want more.  We see this environmental green movement as being infested with young people with modern college degrees.

By that, we mean, roughly 99% flaming idiots.  What Marx, Lenin and Stalin called "dupes."

The ironic thing about all this is the fact that the largest source of electric power in the PacNW is already solar and wind.  It is the sun which picks up the moisture from the Pacific Ocean and the wind that carries it onshore, then drops it in the form of rain and snow on the land.  It is the sun that melts that Cascades reservoir on the mountainsides, handing it over to gravity so that it can fill all the waterways of this land, including the Columbia River.

A dual purpose solution

It is our opinion that the best way to utilize availble electric power sources hereabouts is to deny it to any citizen who votes for liberal Democrats and RINOs.   In Oregon, these people are so numerous that power usage would drop 95% the first night.  About the only problem that would come up is that Progressives do their best plotting in the dark.  On the other hand, they couldn't use their home computers to aid George Soros's attempt to collapse the national economy.  And, better yet, OPB would have to go off the air.  One of the prime media sources for socialist propaganda would disappear from the scene.

So, as with many things in life, the process would have both good and bad results.

But, some of that good would surely be saved for bad.  Since all Oregon liberals ride bicycles, they could keep OPB on the air by riding them on a giant rubber belt in the now unused public broadcasting parking lot.  That belt could turn a generator that would power their grand source of video propaganda.  We could manufacture longer bicycles with the extra electricity, too. Lower unemployment and a more beautiful state would result because Progressives look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two.

(LL)

© 2011 Oregon Magazine