Not the fears drummed into us over the past 20 years about impending weather catastrophes.

No. My fears of what will happen if society collapses because of an ideologically-driven determination to shut down the reliable sources of energy that have improved the lives of billions of people in our lifetimes alone, but which are now deemed so irresponsible that they are being turned off without anything like a sufficient alternative.

Every time I think they must know what they're doing, along comes something else that illuminates the mad road being taken.

IN THE NEWS:

Because the science is supposedly "settled", little of this material finds its way into mainstream media.

So, in an age when alternative opinions are dismissed as "fake news", I do what we all should do, and trace the information back to its source.

On Tuesday I was alerted to a post on that subject on the joannenova.com.au website run by Joanne Nova - an Australian commentator the left loves to hate (and on a list of 35 climate change critics reportedly deleted by Wikipedia).

The post included a Daily Mail article quoting an International Renewable Energy Agency report saying that the UK was already disposing of 100,000 tonnes of wind turbine blade waste a year, with the global total predicted to be two million tonnes a year by 2050.

For solar panels, 78 million tonnes worth would have reached their end by 2050, adding six millions of photovoltaic waste a year.

RELATED READING: The Herald's Power and the Passion series

Tracing the claims to their original source brought me to a 2021 report from the (pro-renewables) agency, which says the turbine blades will go to landfill because their "composite" nature makes them "more challenging to recycle".

Their report, available at sciencedirect.com, says that by 2050, turbine blades would take up 1 per cent of US landfill space, and that "more profound shifts in recycling technologies, blade materials, or policy may be needed to move towards a circular economy for wind turbine blades".

Every time I hear about circular economies I think back to the early days of Steel River, when a fellow named Walter Fuller was after government grants for his "revolutionary" process making building materials out of waste. I'm still waiting.

In the same way we're still waiting to see if the West will continue turning a blind eye to the African child labour mining the cobalt needed for phones, batteries and various other modern indispensables.

Not to mention the solar panels made by forced Uyghur in China . . .

But on to Ukraine.

As American author Michael Shellenberger (and yes, he's "controversial") put it on Monday in a piece titled "The West's green delusions empowered Putin", he says that while "we banned plastic straws, Russia drilled and doubled nuclear energy production".

"Putin knows that Europe produces 3.6 million barrels of oil a day but uses 15 million barrels of oil a day," Shellenberger writes.

He continues, noting Europe uses 560 billion cubic feet of gas annually and 950 million tonnes of coal but produces only half. Russia, on the other hand, produces 11 million barrels a day of oil but uses about 3.4 million.

It mines 800 million tonnes of coal (almost twice Australia's output) but uses 300 million, and produces 700 million cubic metres of gas annually but uses just 400 million.

"That's how Russia ends up supplying about 20 percent of Europe's oil, 40 percent of its gas, and 20 percent of its coal," he says.

Which is why Europe can't stand up to Russian aggression, because it needs Russia's oil and gas.

That's uncontroversial enough. The real question is why? Shellenberger again (because I can't put it any better).

"Here's how: These countries are in the grips of a delusional ideology that makes them incapable of understanding the hard realities of energy production.

"Green ideology insists we don't need nuclear and that we don't need fracking.

"It insists that it's just a matter of will and money to switch to all-renewables-and fast. It insists that we need 'degrowth' of the economy, and that we face looming human 'extinction'."

He says he "would know" because he "was once a true believer".

I wasn't, but I do part ways with him on fracking.

I was shocked at the lack of reaction in November when UK climate envoy Mark Carney, at COP26, put the cost of "a clean-energy future" at $US100 trillion - that's $140,000 billion in our money - over 30 years. Other institutions are starting to publish similar figures.

Shellenberger says Germany will have spent $US580 billion in 10 years by 2025, yet as it shuts down its nuclear industry, it is reliant on Russia for energy with some of Europe's highest electricity costs.

That's why Germany needs the Nord Stream 2 pipeline - regardless of its short-term "freeze" of the project.

Meanwhile, US climate envoy John Kerry worries that the Ukraine war will distract from the climate change "crisis" and produce "massive emissions" that could could hurt the planet.

Yeah. Right.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: