It seems that any effort to address climate change is plagued by criticism that it’ll cripple economic growth. As long as fossil fuels are cheap and abundant, not just in the United States but across the globe, that dynamic will probably continue.
For an idea why, consider the story published yesterday by the Washington Post, which says that the shale gas boom “is firing up an old-fashioned American industrial revival.” In particular, the petrochemical, nitrogen fertilizer, and plastics industries are considering bringing back domestic production facilities. And they have their eyes on areas that are producing shale gas so they can be close to the new natural gas supplies.
The Post article gives little attention to the environmental aspects of the gas boom and its potential to fuel industrial revival. But the industries in question are hardly clean. And their natural-gas consumption will result in lots of greenhouse gas emissions. The article does succinctly explain why that’s trouble for environmentalists and others who want stronger regulations of greenhouse gases and shale gas drilling.
“As new gas supplies fuel more and more industrial plants, new constituencies will have stakes in gas production, making it politically harder to impose new regulations,” says the Post article.
The scientific consensus is that to avoid the worst effects of climate change, global carbon dioxide emissions need to decrease. Yet earlier this week, Reuters reported that global carbon dioxide emissions increased 2.5 percent in 2011. The reason: increased industrial activity.
This article appears in Nov 14-20, 2012.
Natural gas has decreased CO2 emissions in the USA by displacing coal use, also mercury, particulates, and solid waste.
Natural gas is the future of energy. It is replacing dirty old coal plants, and dangerous expensive nuclear plants. It will fuel cars, vans, buses, locomotives, aircraft, ships, tractors, air conditioners, engines of all kinds. It costs far less. It will help keep us out of more useless wars, where we shed our blood and money. It lowers CO2 emissions. Over 2,700 natural gas story links on my blog. An annotated bibliography of live links, updated daily. The big picture of natural gas.
ronwagnersrants.blogspot.com
And don’t forget the shale OIL boom too. We can be the world’s largest oil producer by 2020. There is tremendous potential for a rapid rise in living standards, enormous defense savings with greater security, and a solution to our intractable fiscal and economic problems. Environmentalist ideologues absolutely must NOT be allowed to stand in the way.
When did we ever go to war over oil, say it isnt so GW
By most accounts, CO2 in the atmosphere has never decreased. The percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere has always increased. Burning natural gas, like all other fossil fuels, puts CO2 into the air. Natural gas just does that at a slower rate.
When we displace coal burning in the US with natural gas, our coal will just be burned someplace else like China. The true problem is that overall, the world will continue to burn more and more fossil fuels and while the US might be able to brag about being cleaner, we are still part of the world, which is getting dirtier and dirtier.