A continuing education program on natural gas development took place in Heritage Hills, N.Y., last night, and it was an opportunity lost for the promotion of renewable energy. The opposition to natural gas looks at a clean-burning fuel and sees only a threat to renewables, when in fact it should see tremendous potential.

Last night I took a drive over to Heritage Hills in Westchester County, N.Y., to make a presentation to a community association as part of a continuing education series. It was a well-attended meeting of some very smart people on both sides of the issue. It also led to an invigorating discussion with the audience and my anti-gas counter part, Patricia Wood, who represented a Park Foundation-funded group known as Grassroots Environmental Education. We both made presentations, which was followed by a very balanced question and answer session. You can access my presentation here, which largely speaks for itself.

What was most interesting to me, aside from the beautiful community and gracious hosts, was the nature of the opposition’s arguments. There was, as the old saying goes, “nothing new under the sun.” Much of the discussion focused on renewables, including energy from the sun, and it became crystal clear to me just how much of the opposition to natural gas is driven by fans of renewables who are scared to death the former will somehow hamstring the latter.

Of course, that’s not true at all. Indeed, the only way to hasten the development of renewables is to create a foundation on which they can rest. Sadly, our friends on the other side are Oscar Wilde type cynics who know “the price of everything and the value of nothing.” They view natural gas as a threat, when in reality it’s the ticket to their success.

http://eidmarcellus.org/marcellus-shale/nothing-new-under-the-sun-w...