Sierra Club Picks Its Next Fossil Fuel Target

Wall Street Journal, May 30, 2012 -- "The media are finally catching up to America's shale natural gas boom, with even Fortune magazine waddling in with a cover story. But the bigger recent news is that one of the most powerful environmental lobbies, the Sierra Club, is mounting a major campaign to kill the industry.

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Editorial board member Steve Moore on the Sierra Club's attacks on natural gas.

The battle plan is called "Beyond Natural Gas," and Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune announced the goal in an interview with the National Journal this month: "We're going to be preventing new gas plants from being built wherever we can." The big green lobbying machine has rolled out a new website that says "The natural gas industry is dirty, dangerous and running amok" and that "The closer we look at natural gas, the dirtier it appears; and the less of it we burn, the better off we will be." So the goal is to shut the industry down, not merely to impose higher safety standards.

This is no idle threat. The Sierra Club has deep pockets funded by liberal foundations and knows how to work the media and politicians. The lobby helped to block new nuclear plants for more than 30 years, it has kept much of the U.S. off-limits to oil drilling, and its "Beyond Coal" campaign has all but shut down new coal plants. One of its priorities now will be to make shale gas drilling anathema within the Democratic Party."  (read more . . .)

The panacea of renewable energy produces something far less than 10% of American's energy needs (counting the 6% of more that comes from hydroelectric power generation, which many in the fringe "environmental" movement also want to destroy).   A 90% reduction in energy means essentially no energy for the overwhelming majority of Americans.  No energy means life as we know it dies.  Hospitals don't operate. No refrigeration.  No heat.  No light.  No production.  No jobs.  Virtually, no economy.  This war on energy logically means death for millions of Americans.  Will fringe "environmentalism" be allowed to "clean" our air to death?