a modern day oil rush. but there s something else locked up in the shale, natural gas. and natural gas is only half as much co 2coal, so it s a cleaner fossil fuel. in over a decade, u.s. production of shale gas has increased 12 times. meanwhile, u.s. carbon emissions are at their lowest level since 1994. we ve had a pretty significant reduction on our carbon dioxide emissions from fuel burning and it s because of the boom in natural gas which is cheaper than coal, so companies running power plants say, hey, why are we burning coal when we can burn natural gas? some people see natural gas as a so-called bridge fuel to get us where we need to two, toward renewable sources of energy such as sun, wind and water. that implies that we have time to walk the bridge. that implies that climate change is not yet upon us, but it is upon us and we have to worry about it today.
why are we burning coal when we can burn natural gas? some people see natural gas as a so-called bridge fuel to get us where we need to two, toward renewable sources of energy such as sun, wind and water. that implies that we have time to walk the bridge. that implies that climate change is not yet upon us, but it is upon us and we have to worry about it today. there s no solution other than stopping burning coal and gas and oil and doing it fast. we re past the point where we re going to stop global warming. i mean, we already melted the arctic, okay? what really hurts us and makes us vulnerable to the climate is not the average. it s the extremes. and it s the extremes that change a lot when the average just changes a little. so even if earth only warms about 5 degrees fahrenheit which is the average predictions i fo this century, we re going to see sea level rising because of the warming by an amount of 2, 3, 4
fact, an nbc nightly news, they reported that over the next two years, a thousand new wells could be drilled in eastern ohio, adding tens of thousand was of new jobs there. so how might we balance these concerns, environmental and the economic ones? well, this takes planning and thoughtful planning. my argument is natural gas could be the so-called bridge fuel to take us from fossil fuels to a completely renewable future whereas mining coal and burning coal is not forward thinking. i know many people are employed in those industries. but we re talking about we re not talking about especially long-term planning. we re talking about what i would call medium-term planning, decades, not centuries. so the concern is for any progressives and environmentalists and the scientific community is that this production of duty has
root of the problem is we are addicted to carbon-faced fuel in a way that is grotesque. we had the biggest recession in 80 years, and still our carbons emission jumped 6%. climate change is real. it s happening. it s happening to america today and americans today. we need a renewable national energy policy, and that is where this is all headed. carbon is not the answer. another 30 years of burning gas in the $700 billion infrastructure change to use natural gas as bridge fuel is not the answer. we can go directly to the renewables today and we have the technology and that s where the movement is going. people want climate change dealt with. they know it s happening. chris, compare that view with rick perry s view right now, and ask yourself, is rick perry
they can t make it without federal loan guarantees and pretty significant federal subsidies. i think you have to make legal reforms in there to deal with the liability issue. is the liability on the utility or is the liability on the government? and i think if you deal with some of those issues, if you commoditize the design and the manufacturing of the parts, you can take all kinds of costs out of the system. we have 30 seconds left. i want to talk on two sources. solar, what s the prospect for solar? you don t see it plays big in the next 10 or 15 years. not in the next 10 or 15. in the 25 to 50 year period, absolutely. we get serious about wind and solar and tidal sources. you haven t mentioned natural gas which is what everybody is looking at these days with shale deposits. it laces throughout. it s the bridge fuel. it s not a function it s not all by itself it aids and abets the supply, the reliability of the supply as we transition the other sources.