Our future pays the price for the fossil fuel industry's irresponsibility; imagine if America shouldered the real price today...

[Robb Hirsch]

While natural gas could serve as an interim energy source that could among other things help in our vehicle fleet as we transition away from the dirtier C02 emitting fossil fuels of oil & coal and while it can also help provide us energy independence, the natural gas industry must come clean with the American public.  President Obama's inclusion of natural gas as a "clean energy" in his State of the Union is untrue and inappapropriate because the industry is concealing the truth and shamefully failing to clean up its act. The low price for natural gas is also inappropriate because it does not reflect the necessary clean-up costs involved in gas extraction and pollution prevention. These costs are being stealthily avoided by the industry at the expense of our health, well being and long term prosperity.  The following investigative report http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/us/04gas.html reveals not only the industry contstantly wiggling out of meeting the very basic standards for clean air and clean water, but also that the natural gas lobbyists and proponents - with a nod from both our elected and federal officials - are hiding from the public the hard scientific facts about the industry's messy extraction, its hydrofracking pracitices and its many other pollution outputs.

Once the fossil fuel industry and the public pays the true price for these pollution ridden fuels (instead of kicking the cost can down the road for the next generation to pay for) then we will at last face our moment of truth and perhaps then once and for all we'll move to establish a new energy normal based on renewable energies, innovation, conservation and state of the art efficiency. When the fossil fuel industry stands on its own two feet without its desperate need for political favors, waivers, exemptions, subsidies and the like, but rather is really held to account and forced to clean up its act, then there will no longer be a need for the relatively minor amount of subsisdies for clean power providers - they will do fine in the free market on their own thank you very much - because the true price of oil, coal and yes even natural gas will be higher than what America's clean energy sector will deliver and the marketplace will chose the cleaner, cheaper variety.