The American people are taking part in a massive beta test of so-called green energy technology that is extremely buggy and unreliable, while infrastructure the public knows and trusts, including old-fashioned electricity, is increasingly devalued by leaders and activists.

Ordinarily, beta testing allows users to work with a product in real-world conditions, uncovering bugs before the product is released to the marketplace. That’s not what is happening today. Policymakers and companies are rushing out products and policies before they are adequately tested, without asking the question, “What could go wrong?” Overpromising and underdelivering are taking a toll on society.

Where did these risky and pricey policies come from? In the manner of a good stage magician, implacable greens and their media allies have misdirected the audience, focusing attention away from dramatic improvements in water, air, and habitats in the Western world from strategic infrastructure and toward the vagaries of climate change. At the same time, they have convinced most of us that strategic infrastructure to mitigate the dangers caused by natural events—big storms (Florida) or persistently parched conditions (Arizona)—produces unacceptable environmental impacts.

By calling them “implacable” greens, we draw a distinction between those willing to accept wind and solar as part of a broad infrastructure or energy package and wind/solar energy advocates who demand fossil fuels be promptly eliminated without identifying the real consequences.

How can strategic infrastructure in the 2020s be distinguished from implacable demands for an immediate transition from fossil fuels to wind and solar?

1. Strategic infrastructure performance is predictable for defined events, whereas wind and solar development depends on uncontrollable environmental and climatic factors.

2. Strategic infrastructure incorporates clean energy when reliable and affordable. Implacable net zero carbon emission activists resist fossil fuels and (often) nuclear energy, even though these provide the reliable energy society requires.

3. Strategic infrastructure innovations are typically incremental, meaning new technology shortfalls in performance and outcomes can be accommodated. In contrast, implacable wind/solar activists keep pushing an immediate transition to untested new energy infrastructure.

4. Strategic infrastructure maintains (or improves) society’s standard of living. To meet political goals of eliminating fossil and nuclear energy, implacable greens are willing to accept a decline in living standards caused by reduced reliability and higher costs.

5. Strategic infrastructure accepts, minimizes, and manages environmental impacts. Implacable greens downplay the environmental and human impacts of their preferred energy generation technologies: child/slave labor, mining, wildlife impacts, land use, etc.

Strategic infrastructure delivers results when properly conceived and implemented, and technological advances frequently reduce costs while improving outcomes. Extensive strategic infrastructure, built across the Netherlands and America, prevents flooding and enables beneficial use of potentially damaging waters. Aqueducts deliver water inland for local treatment, dikes and canals control flooding, and membranes produce drinking water in water-starved areas, even from wastewater. Forest thinning and maintenance of electric grids mitigate wildfires and enhance energy reliability. While even the best strategic infrastructure is imperfect, perfection is a high standard and zero (as in flaws) is a low number.

All of these improvements have occurred in the 20th and 21st centuries. At the same time, water, air, and habitats have also improved across the Western world.

Many of us still see the environment and climate change as an issue like the economy or gun rights. But for others today, the condition of the natural world is an existential, all-encompassing question. Environmental matters are a religion, with tenets as firmly held as those of any traditional religion. Challenging conventional wisdom about the environment, climate, water, and air often means contesting dogmatic beliefs rather than evidence. People who believe the water quality in the Detroit River and Great Lakes is worse than ever can’t be persuaded otherwise because their convictions are not rooted in science and evidence.

Strategic infrastructure can prevent or mitigate the threat of damage caused by a changing climate or extreme weather. Using proven infrastructure to address these threats makes more sense than implementing green-in-name-only practices that have proved increasingly expensive and unreliable.

In Michigan and Detroit, strategic infrastructure includes water and wastewater treatment, which have virtually eradicated drinking water-borne diseases. Some treatment facilities built before 1950 along the Detroit River and Lake Erie are still in use today. The Mackinac Bridge is a practical and economically advantageous solution for crossing the Straits of Mackinac. Energy plants with advanced emission abatement replaced home coal furnaces that filled the state’s air with soot. Such projects were strategic because they achieved far more than just repairing or replacing pipes, roads, pumps that failed or aged out.

Today, rent-seeking companies, lobbyists, activists, and government agencies promote climate technologies and policies. However, as the gap grows between what implacable wind and solar advocates promise and what is delivered, people are more likely to want beneficial policies that don’t lower our standard of living and can be relied on to deliver what they promise.

Westernized societies have become too accustomed to mass beta testing and promises of a green utopia. But we rarely hear that this leaves us vulnerable to inadequate grids, product failures, poor utility service, and sub-standard performance. Moreover, mass beta testing exposes us to mischief that can damage our economy and threaten security.

Low- and zero-emissions technologies have a place in infrastructure projects where feasible. But, as with airplanes and other high-impact innovations, it is unsafe and ill-advised to mandate mass beta testing on system-critical technologies needed for public safety and economic prosperity. Now is the time to lean into strategic infrastructure.

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