Blethen Maine Newspapers Gots to Go

The Stupid ... It Burns.

"After all relevant concerns have been addressed, society's need for more power will still remain."

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Why?

Says who?

Based on what evidence?

The linchpin of a green society is to reduce energy consumption, not to increase it. All of the windmills in the world will do no good if unchecked energy consumption outpaces their construction and causes all of the other energy sources (oil, coal, etc.) to remain on-line at full capacity.

Your closing statement is what logicians call an unproven assumption. It is assumed to be true, is never proven to be true, and your entire argument relies upon its truth.

And in this case, it is not true.

There is no reason why "society's need for more power will remain."

You submit this argument as if it were a force of nature, like "gravity will always pull objects toward the center of the Earth."

It is not. There is no reason why a society will always require more power. A smart society will strive to use less power, by using power more efficiently, and developing technologies and techniques to use every bit of power we have as effectively as possible. This eliminates waste, saves money, and allows that money to be invested in more productive avenues. This is the essence of pollution prevention. All power sources pollute. Energy efficiency is pollution prevention.

Your presumption precludes that future from happening, by automatically assuming we will "always" need more power.

You are as wrong as the people in Maine in 1991 who said compact fluorescent lightbulbs would never catch on and never be affordable to the average consumer.