Sierra Club Wants to Destroy Natural Gas, No Matter How Much it Costs the Rest of Us
Those are the words of former Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope in 2008, back when the Sierra Club supported natural gas as an alternative energy source. In fact, the Sierra Club accepted more than $25 million from Chesapeake Energy back in those days to help fund the Club's Beyond Coal campaign.Use renewables as much as we can. Natural gas is the next-cleanest fuel, then we have oil and then we have coal… We’re trying to make sure that we innovatively and creatively use whatever fuel we burn (and) that we rely primarily on the fuels that are the cleanest… And, among the fossil fuels, natural gas is at the top.
Nowadays the Sierra Club is singing a different tune. In fact, they have organized a "Beyond Natural Gas" campaign which they clearly hope will push natural gas companies to the brink of extinction in the same way that nuclear power and the coal industry have been impacted by similar Sierra Club efforts in the past.
Why the shift in agenda? From the Wall Street Journal:
So why is the Sierra Club suddenly portraying natural gas as a villain? The answer surely is the industry's drilling success. The greens were happy to support natural gas as a "bridge fuel to the 21st century" when it cost $8 or more per million BTUs and seemed to be in limited domestic supply.
But now that the hydraulic fracturing and shale revolution has sent gas prices down to $2.50, the lobby fears natural gas will come to dominate U.S. energy production. At that price, the Sierra Club's Valhalla of wind, solar and biofuel power may never be competitive. So the green left has decided it must do everything it can to reduce the supply of gas and keep its price as high as possible.
The losers if this effort succeeds would be the millions of Americans who are benefitting from the shale boom. Shale gas supports some 600,000 jobs in the natural gas industry, according to an analysis by the consulting firm IHS Global Insight. That's almost eight times more jobs than are employed by the wind industry.
But the losers would also include electricity consumers paying lower prices at home; the steel workers in Youngstown, Ohio who have been rehired to make pipe for gas drillers in the Marcellus Shale; and the thousands of high-paying jobs in chemicals, fertilizer and other manufacturing that is returning to the U.S. because natural gas prices are so much lower.
The Sierra Club campaign underscores that the modern green agenda is about far more than clean air and water and protecting wildlife. The real goal is to ban all fossil fuels—regardless of economic cost. It's hard to imagine a campaign that poses a greater threat to the U.S. economy, energy security and American health.
Read the rest of that article here.
So we have deep-pocketed environmentalist organizations funding movements to destroy the gas supply chain that is enabling homeowners to enjoy lower energy costs as well as providing employment to thousands and thousands of workers, after previously supporting the shift to natural gas because it is the cleanest practical energy solution available. Wonderful.
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