NOW on PBS – Fracking, Natural Gas, and Renewable Energy
If you happen to be home on a Friday night, you’ll find it a great time to watch PBS, with its weekly programs: Washington Week, NOW, and Bill Moyers Journal. Generally, I think these programs depict the world fairly, and make an honest attempt to inform viewers in an objective and unbiased manner.
Yet I took exception to David Brancaccio’s NOW this week, in its gross oversimplication of the migration to renewables. In an attempt to inflame the viewer about the dangers of fracking (hydraulic fracturing, injecting water and chemicals deep underground to pry out gas locked away in tight spaces), the show told its views flatly, “We have renewable energy technology right now.”
At a certain level, this, of course, is true; there are a dozen or so clean energy technologies that are quite functional. But without context, this statement is horribly misleading. Sure we have the technology now, but there are hundreds of issues that many thousands of people are diligently working on — that will ultimately enable renewables to be deployed in an economically, legally, and ecologically sound way. As a friend of mine is fond of saying, “There’s plenty of clean energy if you don’t care how much you pay for it.”
If you want to stir up viewers, David, I would urge you to find a way to do so without feeding them a load of half-truths. I would say that to anyone — but especially to a man with a well-educated audience that can deal quite ably with the complete set of facts.
I just had a marvelous conversation with Loretta White, a deeply committed environmentalist who’s playing a major role within The 
Dr. M. King Hubbert, an American geologist and oil expert shown above, conducted extensive studies and then developed a model that became known as Hubbert’s Peak. (Photo courtesy of “Hubbert Tribute” at channelinghubbert.com). From his work, he predicted in the 1950’s that the U.S. oil production would peak in the early 1970’s. Although the professor was ridiculed at the time he released the study, he was essentially right. The U.S. never produced more oil than it did in the early 1970’s — and the country’s oil did peak.
One of my most important jobs here at 2GreenEnergy is speaking with the few dozen people who call or write each week looking for help with their clean energy projects. I conduct these interviews with an eye toward helping out in some fashion in any of the 
“China missed the first industrial revolution, missed the computer revolution, and the biology revolution – they want to be a leader in the green revolution,” said Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy. (Scientific American, “Is ARPA-E Enough to Keep the U.S. on the Cutting edge of a Clean Energy Revolution?” March 3, 2010).
