Neither hydro, wind nor solar are actually toxic by nature, even though they have their own environmental impact, at least they can be considered _renewable_.

Neither hydro, wind nor solar are actually toxic by nature, even though they have their own environmental impact, at least they can be considered _renewable_. With fossil fuels and nuclear not only the fuel itself is toxic, but when the energy is released it produces an equal amount of bad stuff. Petroleum fuel is toxic in more than one way, coal not so much, but the waste carbon monoxide is a well known poison which accompanies the waste CO2 in the exhaust. Every atom of carbon in all of the fossil fuel burnt puts an equal number of atoms of carbon into the atmosphere in the form of CO2. But carbon is actually the smaller less massive component of CO2. Oxygen atoms are a bit heavier than carbons, and there's two oxygens. So CO2 calculates to contain only about 27 percent carbon. That means for every huge dump truck full of coal, which is basically pure carbon to start with, when burnt it will put almost 4 huge dump trucks in tonnage of CO2 into the atmosphere. Petroleum is only about 85 percent carbon so an oil well will need to produce about 15 percent more tons of fuel in order to get an equal amount of CO2 into the air compared to coal Nuclear waste is deadly toxic & radioactive which is the same insidious combination as its fuel, but no one can honestly say the waste has historically been handled as carefully as the nuclear fuel. And the hazard is similar but the waste is more difficult to handle so it should be done more carefully not just as carefully. Also, some people will never imagine that Chernobyl or Fukushima were complete failures, since they could have been worse. Anyway, the non-renewables have so far fallen into a similar category where more money can be made because full liability of the waste stream is not accounted for in the cost per kWh. Future generations will pay whatever price regardless, they have no say in the matter. If nuclear was really the lowest cost option, or the slam-dunk shareholder opportunity, that would make it the Wal-Mart of power choices. Too bad Gates is not rich enough yet or he could splurge a little at this point, and do things for clean energy that no one else could afford single-handedly unless they got it made.