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"Bad fuel"? All fuels have costs and benefits. Natural gas is probably the best one going. Extraction has minimal environmental impact, it burns clean with ve
by brc 12y ago
"Bad fuel"? All fuels have costs and benefits. Natural gas is probably the best one going. Extraction has minimal environmental impact, it burns clean with very little pollution and can't be spilled into the ocean like oil. It's also versatile, being suitable as a vehicle fuel, a heating / cooking fuel and as a basis for both large scale industrial and electrical production. I'd say that before an alternative large scale energy source is developed, natural gas is the best way forward.
- dTal 12y agoAll of that may be true, but it doesn't mitigate the fundamental problem: it's a CO2-releasing fossil fuel. Alternative energy sources don't just magically drop out of the sky through the inexorable march of utopian technology - they get developed through effort. The more expensive and inconvenient a fuel is, the higher the incentive to work on alternatives. Again, why widen the gap by improving extraction efficiency? In the short term, it will increase use by lowering the price, and in the long term it will slow the development of clean fuels. Neither of these is good for the environment. Incidentally, we already have an alternative large-scale energy source - nuclear. It has problems (mainly red tape and waste-disposal), but the worst-case scenario for nuclear doesn't involve the mass-destruction of ecosystems and coastal towns across the globe.