Spark It Up!!!: The High Price Of Going Green

A wonderful LTE.

Alternative energy sources too ‘green’

For $106,000 we can convert our 2,400-square-foot home to 100 percent solar power. The “green” we would lay out would not cover shipping and handling nor installation of the solar panels and required wiring. We can go for wind power and purchase six wind turbines (the neighbors will love these) for $30,000 — that wouldn’t cover shipping, handling or installation — requiring a constant 12 mile-per-hour wind. We would recover the cost in 21 years.

The electric car has been around since 1883, and the only one that can claim highway performance sells for $109,000. After over 100 years of development, in fits and starts, we have yet to produce an electric car that can match and sustain the performance of gas-powered automobiles. Detroit and the “green” folk will tell you that they are working on a plug-in electric car. With the exception of the big bucks bad boy, there is not an electric car on the horizon that can be safely driven on other than residential streets. Research is under way on a hydrogen car, a compressed air car, and variations of the electric car.

The inconvenient truth is that the so called alternative sources of energy are neither cheap nor adaptable to widespread application. Our Congress, mainly one party, is ready to spend billions of our green tax dollars on alternative sources of energy. We have a presidential candidate who wants to spend $150 billion over ten years on a “green energy sector.” Perhaps one of these politicians who is ready to throw our “green” down a green hole could tell us, specifically, when and what alternative sources will be available. “Well, we have under development, etc, etc,” won’t get it. Conserve? You bet. Curtailing our driving has been a big factor in reducing the price at the pump. But once the gas surplus is gone, the price will go back up. In the final analysis, the alternative sources are coal, gas and oil.

John Willis

Kingsport

Mr Willis nails it.