Now what? Nothing again?

They’re fighting wind turbines in Eastham and Milford, Massachusetts, and in Tyrone, Pennsylvania. There’s a petition against a Florida Power and Light wind turbine farm. Such sentiment is widespread; it contributed to the 53% drop in renewable energy investment in the first quarter.

T. Boone Pickens has abandoned – for now, anyway – his wind farm project in the Midwest plains.

Ford passed Toyota in auto sales in April; it’s a fact that small cars don’t make a dime for their builders – Toyota’s Prius included. The mantra that “Detroit hasn’t built the cars we want to buy” is pure falsehood. The fact is that they did build the cars we wanted to buy – pickups and SUV’s – and that seems to be the sin of which they are now accused.

Coal-fired generation is under attack from the Sierra Club to the White House. Congress and the coastal states have combined to block offshore oil drilling. Drilling in newly discovered gas fields in Pennsylvania and New York is encountering local opposition.

California Senator Diane Feinstein announced her opposition to solar power development in the Mohave desert. Other opposition to desert development (anywhere) means any significant solar contribution to the electric grid unlikely in the near future.

Congress has managed to kill all attempts to settle on a safe storage site for nuclear waste, and states have legislated bans – and renewed previous bans – on nuclear plants, Minnesota being the most recent.

The US has steadily reduced the amount of water-generated electricity, and there are lawsuit filed at any hint of a new damn. Recent rulings in favor of the Salmon constituency in the Northwest threaten the shutdown of the mega megawatts there. There’s a powerful movement to abandon the Hetch Hetchy reservoir.

You can argue all you want for or against nuclear, wind, and solar power; for and against hybrid vehicles. My question is different, though. If, as a practical matter, there are enough of us against each alternative, so nothing gets built, what then?