Just Released! Order “Waking Up to Climate Change” by George Ropes, and receive 25% Discount. Learn More

HOME          CATEGORIES          OUR TAKE

Bernie and Greta ARE Saving the Climate by ClimateYou Senior Editor George Ropes

An article in Forbes by Michael Shellenberger, who writes on energy and the environment, reveals his antipathy to climate change activists and a biased sense of the crisis. He attacks Bernie Sanders, Greta Thunberg, and the Extinction Revolution as alarmists, and disparages their calls to close all natural gas and nuclear plants. He cites selected statistics to argue that adopting those measures would make the climate crisis worse, not better. He’s wrong.

Natural gas, long touted as a lower emission “bridge” fuel between coal and zero-carbon renewables, is now considered to be even worse than coal, given the large amounts of methane (86 to 105 times more heat-trapping than CO2) vented in its production. Nuclear’s widely perceived threat of an accident is rare but real — witness Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi. Moreover, it has yet to solve how and where to store its radioactive waste for thousands of years. Besides, nuclear doesn’t come close to competing economically with renewables on a total cost basis. As the permits for nuclear plants to operate expire, they should close.

https://elpais.com/sociedad/2019/12/10/actualidad/1576011896_293446.html

Sanders and Thunberg are right about the climate crisis. It is an existential threat to life as we’ve known it. Resolving it entails reducing carbon emissions as far and as fast as possible, rapidly building out low cost – low carbon energy sources, developing and deploying means to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, and restoring the environment to sustainability. Closing natural gas and nuclear plants are reasonable steps toward controlling climate change. The world needs climate activists to overcome the skeptics and denialists. Go, Bernie. Go, Greta.

 

Comment on this article

ClimateYou moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (New York time) and can only accept comments written in English.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


The reCAPTCHA verification period has expired. Please reload the page.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE


More Posts Like This

OUR TAKE

Youth Activists Triumph in Groundbreaking Climate Trial

A landmark legal decision has overwhelmingly justified every human being’s right to a healthy environment. The huge victory by young climate activists in Montana is a win for young people all over the world whose future will undeniably be shaped by the effects of climate change. The case,

OUR TAKE

Losing our Coveted Trees to Floods

In the great aftermath of major flooding last week here in the Hudson Valley 30 miles north of New York City, towns and villages are recovering from torrential rains that dumped six to seven inches in an already saturated region. Roads dissolved under water. Streams, lakes and rivers

OUR TAKE

ClimateYou Welcomes City Tech Class of Spring 2023

Our first meeting of the semester with City Tech Students in Professor Bah’s “Natural Disasters Class” last week was a positive start to a semester. Discussed were many stimulating climate change ideas students can choose to write as new City Tech Bloggers to be posted right here on