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We live in a society that is powered by fossil fuels, but for the meantime, we're in it. Maybe there's, like, five people living in the woods off-grid, but they're spending all their time maintaining that, and they don't have much time left over for anything else.
Nuclear is the only energy source that has proven capable of fully replacing fossil fuels at low-cost in wealthy nations. While hydro-electric dams can sometimes play that role, they are limited to nations with powerful rivers, many of which have already been dammed.
The source of all the energy is the sun. The big challenge is, how do you use all of that energy? Solar power has to fascinate you. There have been strides to get the costs down, and if this will work, you have to get costs down so it is competitive with fossil fuels.
You can't turn on your television without seeing these advertisements about clean coal, clean tar sands and the claim that there's more jobs associated with fossil fuels than other industries. That's of course not true. But they're hammering that into the voters' heads.
Only when the oil and gas industry has taken full account of, and responsibility for, the impacts of exploring for and extracting fossil fuels can we engage in a serious and worthy evaluation of whether fracking can indeed provide a bridge to a sustainable energy future.
Of course climate changes. Many changes are due to factors over which humans have no control, such as winds, ocean currents, and sun activity. But the liberals want us to believe that climate change is also caused by gases expelled when humans burn so-called fossil fuels.
For the Navy, developing alternatives to fossil fuels isn't just about fighting climate change - though that's an important side benefit. Biofuels will also play a much more practical role in the Navy's fuel mix, boosting our energy security and supporting the U.S. economy.
Sunlight and wind are inherently unreliable and energy-dilute. As such, adding solar panels and wind turbines to the grid in large quantities increases the cost of generating electricity, locks in fossil fuels, and increases the environmental footprint of energy production.
The idea that human beings have changed and are changing the basic climate system of the Earth through their industrial activities and burning of fossil fuels - the essence of the Greens' theory of global warming - has about as much basis in science as Marxism and Freudianism.
Clinton understands that climate change is real, is caused by human activity and is one of the great environmental crises facing our planet. She knows that we must transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and move aggressively to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.
About half of all potential future global warming emissions from United States fossil fuels lie in oil, gas and coal buried beneath our public lands, controlled by the federal government and owned by the American people - and not yet leased to private industry for fuel extraction.
If you had no new technology, and you powered society as we do today - mostly by fossil fuels - you'd have only two choices: Doom yourself to horrific climate change by burning all that carbon and releasing all that CO2. Or power down society, reducing total energy usage around the planet.
It is very possible to have lives that are just as prosperous, and nicer, that use 5 percent of the fossil fuels and virgin materials we do now. But if we're living anything like the average McMansion-ite, SUV-driving suburbanites, there's simply no way that can be powered in a climate-friendly way.
Both the United States and the world economy have already reached - and surpassed - their sustainable physical limits. Ground water is being drawn down, soils eroded, forests cut faster than they grow, fish caught faster than they reproduce, non-renewable fossil fuels burnt without developing substitutes.
The truth is Mr. Trump could simply sit in the Oval Office for four years like a potted plant, and that would be a vast improvement over the Obama agenda, which was almost in every case - from tax increases to spending stimulus bills to Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, the war on fossil fuels, and so on - bad for growth.
If we want to address global warming, along with the other environmental problems associated with our continued rush to burn our precious fossil fuels as quickly as possible, we must learn to use our resources more wisely, kick our addiction, and quickly start turning to sources of energy that have fewer negative impacts.
In reality, Republicans have long been at war with clean energy. They have ridiculed investments in solar and wind power, bashed energy-efficiency standards, attacked state moves to promote renewable energy and championed laws that would enshrine taxpayer subsidies for fossil fuels while stripping them from wind and solar.
It's no secret that the environmental movement is ultimately designed to create new inroads into increased government control. All of the shots taken at emissions, the dependence on fossil fuels, and noise pollution are designed to paint those things as symptoms of a problem, with the government able to step in as the solution.
When it comes to fossil fuels, we're going to find more here and use less. Over time, we're going to become energy independent. I am tired of sending $300 billion overseas to buy oil from people who hate our guts. The choice between a weak economy and a strong environment is a false choice, that is not the choice I'll offer America.
The majority of America wants action on climate change. The majority of America thinks we should regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. And the majority of America thinks we should prioritize solar and wind infrastructure over fossil fuels. Those are impressive majorities, ones that every office seeker and office holder should heed.
The Paris Agreement is, in fact, a historic one because it marks the culmination of a phase of very long, drawn-out negotiations involving more than 190 countries. Why is it historic? Because it shows the way for our societies to change from the ground up, to create an economy that only depends on fossil fuels to a very slight degree.
The climate crisis is both the easiest and the hardest issue we have ever faced. The easiest because we know what we must do. We must stop the emissions of greenhouse gases. The hardest because our current economics are still totally dependent on burning fossil fuels, and thereby destroying ecosystems in order to create everlasting economic growth.