Forbes: Climate Marchers' Conundrum: Whether To Embrace Shale Gas?
President Obama, Ban Ki-moon and 300,000 others showed up in New York City this week to support the use of modern technologies and cleaner fuels. But at least four notable heads-of-state stayed home, each of whom is just as important in the battle against global warming. Missing: China, India, Russia and Canada.
While it may seem hard to reconcile that some of the globe’s biggest polluters skipped the event — they still sent delegations as a show of respect — it is not necessarily a blow to the cause. That’s because of unconventional shale gas — and the wealth of those supplies all around the world. The paradox is whether climate activists can possibly embrace natural gas a bridge fuel until greener energies would win greater market acceptance. Possible?
“We should have increasingly stringent regulations on coal to help us move away from it,” says Michael Shellenberger, president of the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental think tank. “Cheap natural gas helps a lot. But we need to ramp up our investments in renewables and nuclear energy so that they can compete with coal and natural gas.”