Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
power), it should not be surprising that energy is politically contested. A politician's most basic
tools are power and persuasion, and the ability to frame issues. And the tactics of political argument
inevitably range well beyond logic and critical thinking. Therefore politicians can and often do
make it harder for people to understand energy issues than would be the case if accurate, unbiased
information were freely available.
So here is the reason for the paradox stated in the first paragraph: As energy issues become
more critically important to society's economic and ecological survival, they become more politic-
ally contested; and as a result, they tend to become obscured by a fog of exaggeration, half-truth,
omission, and outright prevarication.
How does one cut through this fog to gain a more accurate view of what's happening in our so-
ciety's vital energy supply-and-support systems? It's helpful to start by understanding the positions
and motives of the political actors. For the sake of argument, I will caricature two political posi-
tions. Let's personify them as Politician A and Politician B.
Politician A has for many years sided with big business, and specifically with the fossil fuel
industry in all energy disputes. She sees coal, oil, and natural gas as gifts of nature to be used by
humanity to produce as much wealth as possible, as quickly as possible. She asserts that there are
sufficient supplies of these fuels to meet the needs of future generations, even if we use them at rap-
idly increasing rates. When coal, oil, and gas do eventually start to run out, Politician A says we can
always turn to nuclear energy. In her view, the harvesting and burning of fossil fuels can be accom-
plished with few incidental environmental problems, and fossil fuel companies can be trusted to use
the safest methods available. And if Earth's climate is indeed changing, she says, this is not due to
the burning of fossil fuels; therefore, policies meant to cut fossil fuel consumption are unnecessary
and economically damaging. Finally, she says renewable energy sources should not be subsidized
by government, but should stand or fall according to their own economic merits.
Politician B regards oil, coal, and natural gas as polluting substances, and society's addiction
to them as shameful. He thinks oil prices are high because petroleum companies gouge their cus-
tomers; nuclear energy is too dangerous to contemplate; and renewable energy sources are benign
(with supplies of sunlight and wind vastly exceeding our energy needs). To hear him tell it, the
only reason solar and wind still supply such a small percentage of our total energy is that fossil fuel
companies are politically powerful, benefiting from generous, often hidden, government subsidies.
Government should cut those subsidies and support renewable energy instead. He believes climate
change is a serious problem, and to mitigate it we should put a price on carbon emissions. If we
do, Politician B says, renewable energy industries will grow rapidly, creating jobs and boosting the
economy.
Who is right? Well, this should be easy to determine. Just ignore the foaming rhetoric and focus
on research findings. But in reality that's not easy at all, because research is itself often politicized.
Studies can be designed from the outset to give results that are friendly to the preconceptions and
prejudices of one partisan group or another.
For example, there are studies that appear to show that the oil and natural gas production tech-
in hand, industry representatives calmly inform us that there have been
no
confirmed instances of
fracking fluids contaminating water tables. The implication: environmentalists who complain about
the dangers of fracking simply don't know what they're talking about.
