The Painter Albert Bierstadt Remarks from the 19th Century on the Cost of So Called "Renewable Energy."

[NNadir]

As I noted on the occasion of my 30,000th post here, I repeat myself and will do so here, remarking on the huge (and in my view) unacceptable cost of so called "renewable energy" to Wilderness owing to its vast land area requirements.

Turning a desert into an industrial park for wind turbines is decidedly not "green," but there are worse cases, one of which strikes me as particularly obscene.

My wife and I went up to see relatives in Massachusetts on the 4th of July holidays and one of the things we did together was to go to the "Five Museums" in Springfield.

One of the paintings we saw apparently resides at the Mount Holyoke College Museum, but was apparently on loan to the Sprinfield Museum where we came across it.

It's this one:



The painting's title?

Hetch Hetchy Canyon.

I took a picture of the description of the painting which I will now reproduce here:

Bierstadt made his first trip to the American West in 1859, traveling with Colonel Frederick Lander's US Government Expedition to map a wagon trail across the Rocky Mountains. The Grandeur and beauty of the unspoiled wilderness impressed the artist so much that he took par in many other treks west throughout his lifetime. Bierstadt's visits to Hetch Hetchy Valley, approxiamtely 15 miles north of Yosemite, provided ample pictorial material for some of his most well-known works. In this painting, a family of deer rests by the riverside and an almost divine light shines over the endless landscape, linking nature with the sublime. Here, Bierstadt has captured a paradise that is seemingly untouched by man. Ironically, the Hetch Hetchy Valley no longer exists. The river was damned in 1923, and the valley is now a reservoir for drinking water.

I added the bold.

It is also a hydroelectric plant.

Again, I repeat myself: I often note that John Muir founded the Sierra Club in part to try to save the Hetch Hetchy valley from developers, and lost the fight, although he did not live to see the valley destroyed.

The modern day Sierra Club never sees a wilderness, anywhere at anytime that it doesn't think should be an industrial park for so called "renewable energy," a form of energy that has soaked up trillions of dollars only to increase reliance on fossil fuels, on which it is entirely dependent.

They're not, in my opinion, "environmentalists." They're developers.

There is a movement, of which the actor Harrison Ford is a member, to restore the Valley, although demolishing the dam would not restore the valley which is probably now filled with silt and mud.

Restore Hetch Hetchy

We are, of course, actively destroying other wildernesses for similar industrial parks for energy production, including benthic ecosystems, not that we give a rat's ass.

[hunter]

1. Dams are like time bombs we've left for future generations to defuse.

Eventually they'll all have to be removed. If they fail by natural processes the loss of life will be horrendous.

If our industrial civilization fails, which seems likely, these future generations may not have the tools to accomplish it.

[elleng]

2. THANK you, he may be my favorite!!!!