I am sort of ambivalent about nuclear energy. It has always cost more than predicted and there are certainly health issues related to uranium mining that are probably avoidable but at a higher cost. Any nuclear plant disaster is a real disaster.
The fossil fuel industries and its customers have never paid their full fare, and when they even come close, it is because they are forced to by citizen pressure. It just isn't possible to extract, transport and refine or process those fuels without imposing an environmental cost.
It is a fantasy to pretend we can utterly destroy 100's of square miles of the boreal forest in Alberta, Canada to extract tar sands without paying an environmental price, for example. The same is true of mountain top removal or entering wilderness habitat for drilling. Our mere presence, whether spills occur or not, in wilderness areas is destructive. There are no oil rigs, pipelines, trucks and planes in true wilderness.
There is a high environmental and human health cost when fossil fuels are utilized (burned). The cost of utilization can be mitigated to a degree, but doing so makes them much more expensive; their clean-use and carbon mitigated costs approach or exceed alternative energy sources.
We need fossil fuels, but we also need to constrain their uses to areas where no reasonable alternatives exist. Put another way, why would we degrade or destroy the environment and impair our own health when that isn't necessary?
Why do people have the attitude that "If solar isn't a great money making investment for me, I won't do it?" I think it is because people just do not see the environment in a global, long-term perspective. If my backyard looks pretty much like it did five years ago, nothing bad is happening anywhere--is false.
I don't want this thread to turn into another global warming echo chamber or a debate about the environment. I hope if you are here, it is because you have an interest in, experience, or information to share about alternative energy, energy use strategies and conservation.
