Gerald Brooks: Materials needed to create infrastructure for renewable energy are not renewable

To The Daily Sun,

Actually the 3.9 trillion kilowatt hours (United States yearly consumption estimate) doesn’t cover the additional amount needed to "fuel" the vehicles replacing all non-electric vehicles plus the additional ones needed by the time such is able to be achieved. At least an additional 373,059,000,000 kWh a month if not more. Currently wind produces 9.2% a year of U.S. consumption or 380 billion kWh. A road to go down or up with a silent hum through a field of noisy wind turbines. Wind turbines which stand on a concrete base. Cement includes limestone, shells, and chalk or marl combined with shale, clay, slate, blast furnace slag, silica sand, and iron ore. Concrete is a mixture of cement, air, water, sand, and gravel — it's as simple as that. Not exactly. The typical concrete mix is made up of roughly 10% cement, 20% air and water, 30% sand, and 40% gravel. Tens of thousands of concrete bases (weighted to keep them upright).

Just a thought but the sand from the river bed is transported to the top of the mountain to hold the towers upright; I suppose the next ice age will slowly break them down to wash back to the old river bed, but then it will not be the same as the original granite but waste debris of a dream long gone by. A forgotten effort to "save" the planet.

The roads we take were founded, improved, leveled and straightened. Today for most just passing through, none to stay, but to pass again the next day, again. What once took several days is done in hours. One certainty, one constant is change and resistance to it. The blind are those that believe in control of it. Current ideologues as those past assume the tide rises and falls at their will.

Gerald Brooks

Meredith