The Big ‘Green’ Lie

Does Solarizing Your Home Make Financial Sense?

A report about green energy celebrated a Hawaiian couple that “spent $23,000 to put solar panels on their house . . . . Some neighbors sniffed that only rich people could afford such a luxury.” But “The family’s utility bill dropped from $110 a month to about $23.” The couple saved $87 a month. Right? Wrong. At that rate, they’d break even in slightly over 22 years—not counting maintenance costs to keep the panels functioning efficiently, without which their savings will decline. But suppose they had invested their $23,000 at 4%. In 22 years it would have grown to over $54,508, an average gain of $119.35 a month. Rather than saving $87 a month, the couple is losing an average of $32.35 a month. Their investment will never pay off. It will impoverish them more every year. Forty years down the line (long after the panels wear out), they’ll have forgone $87,423.50 in potential earnings—an average of $182.13 a month. It may be, as the “neighbors sniffed,” that “only rich people could afford such a luxury.” But those who think it’s going to save them money won’t get rich—they’ll get poorer.

Kent comments:

I found this interesting little report at Cornwall Alliance.  This is a very worthwhile resource for those interested in a truly Christian view of ‘the environment.’

It would be interesting to see similar calculations done various other ‘green’ projects.  My best guess is that many of them would be money losers.  We need to remember that money-loser really means resource waster.  So if you think that the ‘greens’ are conservationists, think again.

There is a reason environmentalists are constantly at work to make it more difficult (and thus expensive) to produce energy.  As things now stand, the ‘green’ preferred ways of producing energy are wasteful.  But the greens irrationally hate our current ways of producing energy.  The only way they can make things like solar panels attractive to people is to artificially drive up the cost of competing ways of production by using the force of the state.

The environmentalist agenda is about the use of governmental force to control people.  This means that rainbows, mountainsides, streams, and wildlife are only the images behind which environmentalism hides.  The ‘greens’ really don’t want to save anything as much as they want to control how other people live.

That is not idyllic, pastoral, or beautiful.  It’s totalitarian.