Extreme “greenies” are demanding the destruction of that the four Lower Snake River dams – of course, as a direct consequence of such folly, all the carbon-free energy the dams create would be destroyed as well.
It’s enough to make even Al Gore ask, “Why”?
The demand to destroy the dames comes after a push by the extreme enviros and a political decision handed down by U.S. District Court Judge Michael Simon that “dam destruction must be considered to help salmon.”
Ironically enough, destroying the dams would not only be very expensive, it would also be at the expense of clean energy. The Washington Policy Center’s Todd Myers recently explained via the Seattle Times:
“Annually, the dams generate about 8.3 million megawatt hours of electricity, or 8 percent of Washington’s energy. That is more clean energy than is provided by all the wind and solar facilities in Washington state added together…
“Additionally, replacing the carbon-free energy from the dams would have enormous costs. Using data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, an analysis I completed for an upcoming edition of the University of Idaho Law Review found that replacing the dams would add more than $200 million a year to energy costs.”
As Myers goes on to explain, the consequences of these costs are significant. They include the reduction of potential funding for other environmental protection projects in order and the elimination of “one of the best reasons to move manufacturing and jobs to Washington state — our low electricity costs.”
Extreme “greenies” latest demand is just another example of they often place pure ideology ahead of logic… at the expense of our state’s future wellbeing.
