WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th September, 2019) A crash program to expand the number of US natural gas power plants reveals the ignorance and greed of national policymakers who are putting the entire planet at risk from uncontrollable global warming, environmental scientists told Sputnik.
According to an analysis published this week by USA Today, more than 150 new plants are currently planned to start operating in the United States over the next 14 years in addition to the almost 2,000 that are already operational.
"The greed and ignorance of a few continue to march all of us and our home planet toward catastrophe," Oasis Earth Conservation Biologist Professor Richard Steiner in Anchorage, Alaska, said. "We are consigning future generations to a desolate, uninhabitable world."
Steiner said the policy, strongly endorsed by the Trump administration and Energy Secretary Rick Parry willfully ignores warnings from scientists around the world about the need to radically reduce greenhouse gas emissions rather than increase them.
"While science points to the urgent need to reduce global carbon emissions by 50 percent in the coming decade, policymakers and industry the world-over seem to have missed the memo," he said.
The US government needed instead to turn to an integrated policy of switching away from reliance on non-renewable fossil fuels as fast as it possibly could, Steiner advised.
"We don't need more fossil fuel power plants, we need renewable energy power plants, subsidies for such, elimination of all fossil fuel subsidies, a significant carbon tax, and trillions of Dollars per year invested in renewable clean energy," he said.
John Jay College Department of Economics in City University of New York (CUNY) Professor Christian Parenti agreed that the huge US natural gas plant development program was an ominous development.
"This is very, very bad news," Parenti said.
National Center for Atmospheric Research Climate Analysis Senior Scientist Professor Kevin Trenberth warned that the natural gas plant investment program was exceptionally short-sighted and would soon prove to be ruinous.
"This relates to the current economics and is incredibly shortsighted as any fossil fuel burning electricity device does not, at the moment, pay for the downstream costs. But they will soon in the next administration. So these are very bad investments long term," Trenberth said.
The environmental costs of the program would enormous too, Trenberth cautioned.
"Of course they are very bad for the climate system," he said.
It was essential to put a price on carbon and also properly cost fossil fuels by removing subsidies of all sorts, Trenberth recommended.
"The United States should be a leader in this. It isn't and the world suffers as a result," he said.
The challenge for politicians was to make real and major changes in a way that allowed for planning and did not hurt the economy, Trenberth explained.
"This means a major commitment to change over a long period: much longer than term of someone in Congress. Can the United States do that?" he asked.
The US state of Texas currently is building the most proposed new natural gas plants, with 26 under construction, according to media reports. It is followed by the state of Pennsylvania with 24, North Carolina with 12, Florida with ten, California with nine and Montana with eight.
