What do environmentalists really want to constrain? Here’s a fun little item from Junk Science:
Enviros oppose carbon capture and storage — Here’s a wake-up-call for all the naive coal and electric utility folk out there who think that the enviros will ever allow the capture and underground sequestration of carbon dioxide. Check out this letter to Congress from dozens of nutjob green groups — including Greenpeace, Rainforest Action network and Friends of the Earth — announcing their opposition to carbon capture & storage (CCS). The enviros want “no new investments in major infrastructure that increases fossil fuel dependence.”
So the U.S. (and China, and Russia) are sitting on mountains and mountains of coal, but we shouldn’t figure out how to burn it cleanly, because doing so would burn too much coal . . . cleanly? Gotcha. Thanks.
Their argument is that the government subsidies should go to renewables instead, of course. And subsidies for wind energy pale in comparison to what CCS will cost at the outset (so you can refrain from writing that email). But feel free to chime in on selective outrage over government subsidies — particularly if you have links to data on the subject.