All-the-Above Is No Energy Policy; It’s Merely Politics
Posted on December 12, 2022 by Natural Gas Now Guest Blogger
Dr. Indur Goklany
Member, CO2 Coalition
[Editor’s Note: This wonderful post addresses a human weakness; that we tend to compromise to save political face when we shouldn’t. “All-the Above” is simply ignorant energy policy.]
The Net Zero energy policy pursued by the current administration would essentially, sooner or later, phase out fossil fuels. That would roll back much of the progress America and the world has witnessed since the 19th century in economic and human well-being while increasing pressures on the rest of nature.
An alternative, embraced by many conservatives, is the “all-the-above” (ATA) policy. This approach preserves the option of using fossil fuels but with strict limitations that, however, are not founded on empirical science. Moreover, ATA would hamstring economic growth, increase the cost of living, and particularly hurt those on the lower economic rungs. We all would be poorer.
All-the-above
Figure 10 from “Impacts of Climate Change: Perception and Reality, Report 46, The Global Warming Policy Foundation.” Ratio of deaths attributable to colder- than-optimum versus those attributable to warmer-than-optimum temperatures. Source: Gasparrini et al. (2015), except India, from Fu et al. (2018). The total bar is based on the aggregate deaths for countries in dark blue.
New power plants using fossil fuels would have to employ technologies to capture CO2 emissions, perhaps convert them, if necessary, to other forms, and store them in stable geological formations or use them in commercial products. To date, however, there have been no successful demonstrations that such technologies, while technically feasible, are economically viable at the scale needed to significantly reduce CO2 emissions.
https://naturalgasnow.org/all-the-above-is-no-energy-policy-its-merely-politics/
