NYTimes - Why a Big Utility Is Embracing Wind and Solar

[hunter]

2. "...possibly some natural gas." Well there's an understatement.

This wonderful renewable energy economy doesn't work without natural gas because the sun doesn't always shine, the wind doesn't always blow, and the rain doesn't always fall as expected.

A purely renewable energy economy would look nothing like the high energy industrial consumer economy so many of us now enjoy.

In the long run an expanding hybrid fracked gas / renewable energy economy is just as deadly as a coal economy.

An analogy would be cigarette smoking. Sure, going from a three pack a day habit to a one or two pack a day habit is an improvement, but if you really want to reduce the odds your smoking will kill you you have to quit smoking.

The only way to quit fossil fuels is to quit fossil fuels. Wind and solar energy will not magically displace fossil fuels. To the extent hybrid electric power systems are engines of economic growth, they'll actually increase the use of fossil fuels.

There are billions of people on earth who would love to live as the more affluent people of Colorado do, solar panels on their roofs, wind turbines on their hillsides, consuming huge amounts of fracked natural gas and oil. Thus the mass extinction event accelerates.