It's Seems Hard to Agree on How to Fight Climate Change
Posted on: Thursday, July 14, 2016 Comments
Apparently the movement to battle climate change has grown so large that the truths of Al Gore’s decade-old movie now seem more mainstream than inconvenient.
However, as it turns out, the movement that started with a straightforward mission - to get more people to appreciate the dangers of climate change as a precursor to action - is feeling growing pains. What may seem like a unified front has pronounced schisms, with conflicting opinions on many issues, including nuclear power and natural gas that are complicating what it means to be an environmentalist in this day and age.
The factional boundaries are not hard and fast, with groups shifting their positions as the science and waves of activism evolve. The environmental movement has always been a congregation of many voices, and some disagreement should be expected on such complex and intractable problems as saving the planet. Still, the tensions remain strong.
Consider some of the biggest points of argument:
1. Nuclear power
There are sharp disagreements over whether nuclear plants should be part of the energy mix to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Supporters argue that nuclear plants can produce huge amounts of power without the carbon dioxide that burning coal and natural gas produce.
Opponents of nuclear energy argue that the move to renewable energy sources would not require a new generation of nuclear plants.
2. Natural gas
Burning natural gas produces less carbon dioxide and smog-producing pollutants than burning coal, so environmental groups and even President Obama once praised it as a "bridge" to renewable fuels: that natural gas plants could replace coal plants until alternate sources like solar and wind power could take over.
Recently, however, the environmental effects of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which is used to extract fossil fuels, and growing worries about the greenhouse gas methane, which often leaks when natural gas is produced and transported, have led many scientists and activists to call natural gas a "bridge to nowhere."
3. Fossil-fuel companies
Two distinct camps have emerged on the best strategy for dealing with companies like Exxon Mobil. One camp wants to attack their very existence, and to hurt their businesses and reputations as a way of accelerating the transition to renewable technologies like wind and solar.
Universities and institutional shareholders like pensions and church endowments are being pressed to sell their stock in fossil-fuel companies, to fight projects like the Keystone XL pipeline and to disrupt construction of fossil-fuel facilities.
On the other side is the camp that wants to engage with the companies, specifically through shareholder proxies, to push for action on climate change.
As it turns out, there are insiders vs outsiders - more fundamentally, a split is growing between the large, traditional environmental groups that try to work with companies and the scrappy campaigners who stand proudly outside.
The movement to combat climate change is building an even bigger tent as more nations, businesses, religious groups and even conservatives have committed to dealing with the threat of rising seas and changing weather.
Mr. Gore stated in a recent telephone interview, economics may accomplish much of what governments have so far failed to do. Plunging costs of renewable energy make it more competitive than ever with fossil fuels. Similarly, the former vice president said, the biggest obstacle for nuclear power could be the expense of building new reactors.
According to Mr. Gore, tensions among climate change activists follow the traditions of the civil rights movement, abolition, women’s suffrage and gay and lesbian rights. "In all such movements, there have been schisms, and minor splits as well," he added. "It’s just a natural feature of the human condition." Oh, well...
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