Interesting Debate in Economist (Jan11) - But Missing The Main Issue

At the end of January 2011 The Economist ran a debate on:

Will natural gas do more than renewables to limit the world's carbon emissions?

An interesting discussion, but one which misses the fundamental starting point for our current global situation.

The following was my contribution on the 27th January, 2011:

Dear Sir,

An interesting debate, but one that is missing the actual nub of the energy use & environmental impact issue.

It's a fact that natural gas is less polluting than oil or coal. Whether it's less polluting than renewable energy sources, is somewhat academic if you agree that it's not possible to compare these without factoring in the total cost of pollution generated by each source of energy.

Put simply, if we are to address the issue of energy usage and environmental impact, the sole mechanism is to agree that the cost of any energy source has to include the cost of dealing with pollution caused by using said energy.

So we need a consensus that the full costs of energy (including the cost of dealing with it's pollution) is essential in order to start dealing with the environmental impact.  Without this we won't come anywhere near addressing it.

Many people will say this cannot be achieved.

It can.

I challenge all scientists, economists or politicians to disagree with the statement:

"All energy usage should be environmentally neutral, so the costs of dealing with energy pollution are included in the cost of the energy itself"

This could be a more interesting debate than whether natural gas is better than renewables!

If we can agree that the world needs a consistent basis for costing energy sources and this basis includes the cost of dealing with pollution, then simple economics will demonstrate which types of energy have the lowest total costs.

Without knowing the full costs for each type of energy, it is not possible to construct an environmentally neutral energy policy.

The good news is that the science and economics are pretty much unequivocal, which should mean this is politically straight-forward. But, of course this isn't the case.

Just imagine politicians seeing and more importantly understanding the simplicity of this and instigating, perhaps via an international organization (for example the yet to be formed International Energy Commision), the full cost of all major energy sources, which would show the actual cost of using coal, oil, gas, nuclear, geothermal, hydro, wind, wave and solar, in an environmentally neutral mode.