Do You Agree or Disagree With the Sierra Club Declaring War on Natural Gas?
Steverno~POTL~PWCM~JLA
2012/05/09 06:48:31
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Beating up on coal, America’s most-used source for electricity, wasn’t enough for the Sierra Club. They now declared war on natural gas. From National Journal :
The Sierra Club is intensifying its natural-gas reform campaign and renaming it “Beyond Gas,” a spin-off of its decade-old “Beyond Coal” campaign seeking the phaseout of coal-fired power plants.
“As we push to retire coal plants, we’re going to work to make sure we’re not simultaneously switching to natural-gas infrastructure,” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune told National Journal in an interview on Wednesday.
Brune declared that his organization’s mission is about [emphasis mine] “preventing new gas plants from being built wherever we can.”
This is a classic bait-and-switch. Not long ago, the Sierra Club pushed natural gas as an alternative to coal. It would be a bridge to renewable energy like wind and solar. In 2008, Carl Pope, then executive director, told Oil and Gas Investor Report that the Sierra Club was all for natural gas [emphasis mine]: “Among the fossil fuels, natural gas is at the top.” He went on to say, “There's a lot of opportunity -- people in the natural gas industry tell me -- to produce more natural gas domestically by using new technologies, and we're in favor of that.”
In the last few years, we’ve witnessed a boom in natural gas production. The Marcelleus Shale in the Northeast, Barnett Shale in Texas, and other areas across the country are producingmillions of cubic feet of natural gas and creating thousands of jobs. However, the Sierra Club switched course. Now natural gas is a villain.
This is rich. When their friends in EPA drop job-killing rules to make coal power plants extinct, the Sierra Club moves the goalposts and wants to eliminate the replacement. They oppose coal, they oppose oil, and now natural gas is off limits. To them, it’s wind and solar and that’s about it. But if they have their way and we start to get more of our electricity from wind and solar, expect them to move the goalposts again. In fact, maybe they already have. Local Sierra Clubs have been and continue to work to block solar and wind projects in Maryland, Texas, Florida,all over California, and elsewhere.
They’ll say anything to appear to be reasonable, but in the end, their answer is, “No, no, no.” The Sierra Club is simply anti-energy, and has no credibility.
The honest answer to our energy problems lies in using all of America’s energy resources: coal; oil; natural gas; wind; solar; hydro; and nuclear. Not limiting ourselves, but wisely seeing how each energy source fits in the marketplace and the environment, will protect jobs and ensure we have enough affordable energy to keep America moving.
From: Free Enterprise
By: Sean Hackbarth
Read More: http://www.freeenterprise.com/energy-environment/s...
Top Opinion
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Brian Tristan MacQuillan 2012/05/09 09:46:30
Until then we have to find the cheapest, easiest, cleanest ways to produce the maximum energy AVAILABLE TO US NOW.
Natural Gas is one way. And it turns out we here in North America have a whole lot more than we once thought. And we really are improving the technology and efficiency and the safety and 'bang for the buck'.
It's how we have hospitals, schools, the internet, the car driving to the Phish concert, the warm (or cooled) building the Sierra Club can meet in, cold-kept antibiotics, ships to go do Africa Relief mission, condoms for you and your Sierra Club 'life partner' and so on.
It isn't 'magic'. It isn't because we are just so special on earth we deserve it or are granted these things. They come from something. There has to be someone who dug a hole, got some energy from the ground, processed it, made it turn on lights so a machine could turn on that then spins some chemicals that turn into medicine. But someone had to dig a hole first.
Natural gas burns much cleaner than coal, and there appears to be a lot of it in the ground.
However, I'm not thrilled at all about fracking. Some people are selling rights to use their land to companies drilling for natgas, but I worry about the chemicals that are shot into the earth along with water to help get to the gas.
I worry about water and land contamination, and would like to see more regulations in place to make sure the companies drilling for the gas are held accountable if and when a disaster strikes.
The Gulf oil spill was bad enough; let's at least try to keep our ground water and land resources clean.
Fracking uses incredible amounts of water AND it pollutes the ground water. No matter how much we think we need the natural gas, what are we doing to our children by using up their drinking water to meet our craving for "cheap" fossil fuels? Do you think future generations will look kindly on us for fouling their world?
The EPA has had to drop every case against fracking because there has been no evidence that fracking was responsible for the alleged charges.
Here is an article which appeared shortly after the EPA was forced to drop its allegations:
A couple of things to note in the article, 1) Fracking takes place below aquifers, and 2) the industry is tasked to prove a negative (impossible).
Hay just saying.
Analyst, Ph.D.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/e...
we need to move beyond fossil fuels.. .its killing the planet.
there is only ONE Earth.
there's a legacy to be proud of.