@RexRed,
RexRed wrote:
The problem is we cannot be just using fossil fuels as if they are never going to run out and continue causing sever detriment to our environment.
There is a small growing portion of the energy sector that comprise of clean energy companies. These companies employ people right here at home and they provide energy at comparable prices and they are geared for the long term and often localized. Every clean energy source and solution should be boosted to eventually eclipse our need for fossil fuels. Fossil fuels should be used sparingly. Everything in our society is wasteful.
If you check as petrol has carbon monoxide that is also given off from a combustion engine so also ethanol puts off its own toxic gas. This toxic gas is related or similar to formaldehyde which has been determined to cause carcinogenic reaction in humans including birth defects.
The world has lots of fossil fuels remaining. We have used well under half the world's known recoverable petroleum and more is being found every day. We have used even less of the recoverable natural gas, and the world's coal reserves are also very substantial. We have in hand enough fissionable nuclear fuel to power the country for a century or more, and much more is readily available in known mines.
The "clean" energy sources to which your refer (wind and solar) are far too expensive (more than three times the cost of nuclear or fossil fuel per unit of energy delivered) to enable large scale replacement of our current fossil fuel resources without destroying our economy, and causing widespread unemployment and poverty. Indeed, if we start down that road we won't have enough money left to continue. Wind and solar power exist only because of government subsidies and mandates - without them they would quickly disappear due to their very high cost and low capacity factors (the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine all the time).
You are dead wrong in suggesting that most of the industries supporting these technologies are domestic. China has a near lock on the manufacture of solar cells, and about half of wind turbines are manufactured in Europe. Our limited supply of engineers and our high labor costs will remain serious impediment to a growing role for our manufacturers in this market.
The world's population in now well over six billion people (though it is forecast to peak and start a slow decline in mid century). We cannot hope to feed, clothe and house that number of people without fossil fuels. That too would be an environmental catastrophe.
