Contrary to popular belief, power plants are not the greatest contributor to CO2 emissions

I’m close to turning 50 years old and I’m having energy déjà vu. Over the winter, fears of oil shortages put prices through the roof and energy production is being blamed for the climatic changes around the world. Chicken Little keeps telling us the sky is falling, yet forty years have gone by and the sky is still blue. Another thing that hasn’t changed is that we still don’t have an energy plan. How can we not have a strategy in place to quell the fear and stop the pain?

For those who don’t remember, in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s it was predicted that oil wouldn’t last until the end of the 20th century, and that CO2 emissions were going to put us into the next ice age. Yes, you heard me right. See, we were in a climatic cooling cycle, so the colder winters gave rise to the pseudo scientific appraisal that the polar caps would expand and cover most of North America if we didn’t control our pollution. Funny, how so many scientists abandoned that research in order to capture grants for the more popular “Global Warming” hypothesis. Let’s not forget all of the warnings to turn off lights when you leave a room and to keep your thermostats at 68˚ or below in the winter. My question is; “Why is it always about the consumer?”

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Don’t get me wrong, some good came out of the hysterical outcry of the 1970’s to clean up our planet. With the horrific examples of pollution gone wild, like the Love Canal chemical dumping and Lake Erie catching on fire, it became easy for people to step back and realize something needed to be done.

The youth of the 1970’s embraced the idea of a cleaner