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Why isn’t clean air worth front page?
Credit: The Telegraph | www.nashuatelegraph.com 25 August 2012 ~~
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Translate: FROM English | TO English
Isn’t the “CO2 emissions in US fall” story front-page news? (Aug. 19: Page C-3)
It says carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants fell to 1992 levels. That is just two years shy of the magical 1990 Kyoto Protocol target reference date.
Why did the dramatic 20-year drop catch climate scientists by surprise? Could how our air got this clean account for the lack of media reporting?
It seems U.S. power-plant operators switched to clean-burning natural gas because it is cheap and plentiful. And power plants account for 98 percent of all CO2 produced in the U.S.
So, private market forces – not government subsidies for wind farms and solar panels – have created a cleaner environment. Since that does not fit the media or “green” agenda, it must not rate a story.
There are lessons to be learned here:
• Government solution: put a $400 million scrubber on a smokestack of a coal power plant. Private-market solution: use natural gas for a clean power plant.
• We don’t need wind farms or other forms of “guaranteed” energy generation at twice the price of “private-market” energy generation.
• We don’t need $7,500 government rebates on electric cars.
• We don’t need government development of $25 a gallon bio-jet fuel when the private market price is $4 a gallon for regular jet fuel.
• We don’t need government funding more $500 million Solyndra (now in bankruptcy) solar panels.
Clean energy/air is fine. Too bad we got there the wrong way to report it.
John Conway
Nashua
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