The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

by Matt Ridley

To get an idea of just how landscape-eating the renewable alternatives are, consider that to supply just the current 300 million inhabitants of the United States with their current power demand of roughly 10,000 watts each (2,400 calories per second) would require: solar panels the size of Spain or wind farms the size of Kazakhstan or woodland the size of India and Pakistan or hayfields for horses the size of Russia and Canada combined or hydroelectric dams with catchments one-third larger than all the continents put together As it is, a clutch of coal and nuclear power stations and a handful of oil refineries and gas pipelines supply the 300 million Americans with nearly all their energy from an almost laughably small footprint