Former vice president and environmental campaigner Al Gore has urged young people to protest against new coal-fired power plants that don't use carbon capture and storage technology.Yes, kids, go get arrested and damage your future prospects! Miss time with family and friends, I will be supporting you from home!
Speaking at the opening plenary session of the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting in New York, Gore said: "If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration."
Nevermind that the new plants will use more efficient technologies that will create less pollution than the old plants they are replacing!
Nevermind that new and more efficient technologies will result in lower consumer prices! Consumers love paying higher energy prices!
Nevermind that more efficient and lower pollution technologies reduce the need for capture and sequestration in the first place!
Don't bother looking into any of those possibilities, just get out there and protest!
3 comments:
Well, don't completely knock civil disobedience. That's what helped push along the civil rights movement in the South and end things like segregation. I'm not saying that this cause is a worthy one to take this approach, but there are causes out there that taking these sort of risks that come with civil disobeidence are worth the potential reward those protestors. (I apologize if I spelled some things wrong - stupid comment thing doesn't have a spell check)
Though I must say, it's not often you see former heads of state (or close) calling for civil disobedience.
Then again, most communists don't win Nobel Prizes either...these are odd times, indeed.
Maybe Al will start paying more of those planet-saving carbon credits he's so fond of to pay for the infrastructure costs. The alternative energy sources are needed, but it's not as simple as Al presents. Wind farms cover huge areas (my company has a division that makes them) and not everyone thrilled having them in the backyard. Solar technology is getting better but expensive to the avg homeowner.Electric cars are not a free ride: electricity actually comes from somewhere, usually coal,oil, or nuclear power plants that Al is against, let alone the energy costs of manufacturing those batteries. Al Gore is to technology as Cheney is to hunting: follow their lead and you're liable to blow off a toe.
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