Protagonist said
I kind of like them. Some of them, anyways.Back on topic, the thing about environmentalism is this:So let's say you need to power something. Naturally, you try to burn some whale oil.The Environmentalist shouts "Wait! You'll kill whales if you use that kind of power!"Concerned, you say "Oh, my bad. I'll burn coal, instead!"The Environmentalists say "B-but, then you'll cause air pollution!"You raise an eyebrow, and so you say "Very well. I'll go fracking for natural gas."The environmentalist nearly jumps. He says "No! You can't do that! That'll damage water systems!"You gasp and so "Oh dear! Very well, I'll use windmills and hydroelectric dams to power my machine."The environmentalist shakes his head and says "No, don't do that. It'll hurt the birds and the fish!"Exasperated, you say "Fine! I'm using Nuclear Power!"The environmentalist is about to sock you for suggesting such a crazy idea. "That'll irradiate the Earth!"At this point, you have just had your last straw pulled. And the giant war mech you were trying to create has already been fully powered up, and is prepared to vaporize the environmentalists.
This is an extreme Environmentalists - one which is not ready to make any compensation to address both environmental and economical problems at the same time.
Are fossil fuels bad? Yes, but the alternatives can only be implanted with a massive increase of investment both public and private founds, will and time into renewable energy. Does that mean that we should not switch to renewable? NO WAY. If the world does managed to produce more then 60% electricity from renewable inside the next 50 or so years we are screwed big time (with the rest preferably coming from gas and nuclear power) - both due the constant acceleration of the speed at which we drill oil out of its sources and the global warming produced by fossil fuels.
(Interesting fact: If all urban areas of the world would be covered in solar panels we would produce the amount of energy three times of our current needs. Since this is realistically impossible to cover all the urban areas with solar panels - the percent that cloud be covered would still amount to around 1.5-2 times of our current needs).
As for transportation - hydrogen-electric hybrids and pure hydrogen are the way forward - as long as we produce hydrogen from renewable energy sources that is. London uses hydrogen powered buses, Germans have a hydrogen-electrical hybrid hunter sub ... so the tech is here only what is left is to implement and improve.
Trust me more birds and fishes are endangered by the rising global temperature & illegal lodging in the rainforests then by all the possible hydro and wind power plants that the would cloud ever wish to build. Actually an accumulation lake can easily be turned into a haven for all kinds of animals with some good management and help from humans.
As for nuclear power - I see that somewhere in the next few decades one of the many teams working on fusion power will make a breakthrough and deliver us the wonder of fusion power plants. Fusion will be a cheep and clean way to produce energy as long as the hydrogen needed for it comes from renewable sources.
In the next few decades nanotechnology should advance enough to allows us to use nano-machinery to create anything as long as we have enough energy and materials with the right information needed to make it - pretty much in the way that replicators from Star Trek produce any desired thing from a cup of tea to new uniforms. This should mean that we don't need to produce plastics and other oil-based products via long and expensive industrial processes - just put a nice lump of the elements that you need into one of such future nano-based machines and order it to for example produce detergent and there you have detergent - if you want it can come into a nice plastic bottle at the same time. Also any of such future machines cloud be used to make anything - goodbye economy as we know it - non-raw materials and products will lose much of their value and we will be seeing a society in which the information needed to make something is the basis of economy.
One of the best example of how environmentalism and economy can work together to the batter of everyone is Japan's recycling policy. Due to mostly the lack of resources as well as environmental concerns Japan has a minimal of 5 separation categories for trash - and all is reused in some way. Some cities even have more - the top being Kobe which has 22 categories in which it organizes and recycles trash. And almost every citizen abides to this.
Compensations, give-away in certain matters and so on are going to have to be made so the big sources of problems should be taken care of first and then we can see if anything can be done about the smaller issues. So protection of environment and economy can and should work together to address the most pressing issues and their biggest causes.