Enemies general of the human kind, to be dealt with as wolves are.
The report called Our Common Future is normally referred to as the Brundtland Report after Harlem Brundtland, a Norwegian Politician, and chairman of the committee that wrote the report. Mrs. Brundtland in the introduction to the report states that: "We became convinced that major changes were needed, both in attitudes and in the way our societies are organized."
...The Brundtland Report is often considered to mark the beginning of the modern sustainability movement. The problem with sustainability is that empirically it is just wrong. A business school professor, Julian Simon, wrote the book: The Ultimate Resource 2. His theme is that human ingenuity is the ultimate resource. We don't need to starve our economy by saving resources for future generations. Economic history shows conclusively that every resource scare is fixed by human ingenuity. Simon gives many examples. Good examples are energy shortages fixed by fracking or the impending famine fixed by genetic engineering in agriculture.
...Renewable energy is mostly applied to the generation of electricity. Electricity in the U.S. is generated by using coal, natural gas, nuclear energy and hydroelectricity. About 7% comes from wind and solar. Coal is well suited for generating electricity. We have vast resources and modern plants are nearly pollution free. But coal is being driven out of business by the Sierra Club that has a long running hysterical campaign against coal.
...Nuclear electricity does not emit CO2 or noxious substances. The fuel is extremely cheap, costing much less than already cheap natural gas. But, in the U.S. the nuclear industry has been driven to the wall by attacks from the environmental movement. Essentially, they have destroyed the industry with legal and political attacks, making it impossible to build new plants. Nuclear is prospering in Asia where they are short of indigenous fuel supplies. The environmental attacks are based on exaggerating controllable hazards such as radiation, bomb making and nuclear waste disposal.
...The promoters of renewable electricity advocate wind and solar electricity. There are other types of recognized renewable electricity but those are niche resources and are not scalable. Hydroelectricity is generally banned because the advocates of renewable electricity don't like dams. Wind and solar are scalable and you can have as much as you are willing to pay for.
Many states have established mandatory goals for what percentage of their electricity should be renewable. The leaders in what is a bizarre pursuit and the percentage of electricity expected to be renewable by 2030 are New York -70%, California -60%, and Nevada, Maryland and New Jersey, each at 50%. The catch is that it is easy to insert 5% or 10% wind or solar into the electric grid. The existing natural gas plants can compensate for the erratic and intermittent nature of wind or solar. The technical bottom line is that when the wind or solar starts being a bigger part of the grid, say 15% for solar and somewhat higher for wind, you run into difficulties. Solar and wind surge.
...Much of the waste and futility of renewable electricity is masked by federal subsidies amounting to about 75% of the cost of the plants. However, it seems that congress is losing its appetite to subsidize useless energy. The current subsidies are scheduled to decline and so far, congress is deaf to industry begging for a continuation of generous subsidies.