Contribution to climate change shouldn't be the only criteria for evaluation of an energy source. Shouldn't we also keep in mind pollution? Coal burns, it releases fine particulates into the air that cause cancer in people's lungs. Pollution sucks. We should stop talking about climate change and go back to the 70s when people were talking about pollution.
Yeah, I agree with you - there a many many reasons why we should get off fossil fuels and reduce our energy consumption beyond climate change. I was just giving an example of about the most reasonable sounding excuse for inaction in this area. Regardless of one's political views there are plenty of solutions that appeal to the full breadth of the political system but the primary thing that they can't address is oil and gas company's desire to protect quarterly growth, people's misplaced political reasoning (I'm against action because the left is for it type arguments) and the fact that some people just don't like change that may indicate the way they have previously been doing something is wrong.
I completely agree... I mainly mean that some resources are less of an impact or more cost effective than others. I'm all for working to reduce pollution for the sake of, and if that means less carbon in the air, awesome. However, if your goal is really reducing some footprints then what materials are used/needed for construction and distribution have a huge impact. Not to mention the infrastructure security of potentially key infrastructure (power grid) relying on parts from an adversarial foreign state.
