Hard Choices In The Climate Fight

Another Inconvenient Truth: It’s Hard to Agree How to Fight Climate Change

John Schwartz, July 11, 2016 (NY Times)

“…[The movement to battle climate change, which started with the straightforward mission of getting more people to appreciate the dangers of climate change as a precursor to action, has gone mainstream. But it now has] pronounced schisms, with conflicting opinions on many issues, including nuclear power and natural gas, that are complicating what it means to be an environmentalist…Disasters like that at the Fukushima plant in Japan have undercut confidence in [nuclear] technology, but it remains attractive to the Obama administration and many in the environmental movement…

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“…[Recently,] the environmental effects of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which is used to extract fossil fuels, and growing worries about the greenhouse gas methane, which often leaks when natural gas is produced and transported, have led many scientists and activists to call natural gas a ‘bridge to nowhere’ [and withdraw approval]…Two distinct camps have emerged on the best strategy for dealing with companies like Exxon Mobil…[Large, traditional environmental groups try to work with them] and the scrappy campaigners who stand proudly outside…[want to attack their very existence. There are disagreements on whether these divides are hurting the climate change fight. Al Gore recently pointed out that economics may resolve the debates because plunging costs of New Energy are making it more competitive than fossil fuels and nuclear power]…” click here for more

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