Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket. – Eric Hoffer, The Temper of Our Time (1967)

The annual Earth Day will occur on April 22. Earth Day Network, the nonprofit that manages the event, has selected this as their theme: “OUR POWER, OUR PLANET, inviting everyone around the globe to unite behind renewable energy. . . .”

In the spring of 1970, the editors of Ramparts, a now-defunct New Left publication, predicted that the inaugural Earth Day would become “the first step in a con game that will do little more than abuse the environment even further.”

Earth Day Network has fulfilled the prophecy.

The photo of mountains posted above is used by multiple Bureau of Land Management websites to promote BLM’s programs for filling up  public lands with so-called “renewable energy.” The picture accurately shows  weather-dependent power systems must chew up far too much of what is decidedly not renewable: Earth’s landscapes.

Alternatively, a typical natural gas power plant needs just 0.2 acres to operate. That’s roughly the land needed for a modest suburban homesite, and it doesn’t need to sit in front of windy—and otherwise pretty—mountains. To get equivalent power from wind turbines requires 370 times as much land use, with—as shown in the photo—turbines towering 300 feet into the sky.