2GreenEnergy Doesn’t Attend Conferences Promoting Coal
I go to a fair number of conferences on renewable energy, and sustainability more generally. A few times a year, I check out events calendars, decided where I’m going and when, and then hit up the event producers for press passes for my associates and me.
Understandably, this process winds me up on email distribution lists for all types of energy conferences, including those promoting the fortunes that can be made from fossil fuels. Here’s one I got earlier today from a certain “Peter,” to which I responded as follows. I’m not always so aggressive with these people, but somehow, the mood struck me.
Thanks for the invitation, Peter. My associates at 2GreenEnergy and I won’t be attending because we, unlike everyone associated with the entire coal industry, have scruples that preclude our profiting from the demise of our planet.
You are correct, btw, in that Trump’s election has brought with it a renewed sense of optimism concerning the coal biz. Yet, as you’re about to find out, this moral catastrophe will prove to be short-lived, and coal will soon resume its decline into oblivion, due to some degree on principles of environmental stewardship, but largely to the pressures of pure market economics.
In all, this wouldn’t be a bad time to consider a career transition. If you like, you could aspire to something with a humanitarian aspect, so as to redress the damage you’ve done thus far. If that’s not important to you, there are plenty of positions outside the coal industry for people tragically born devoid of compassion. Perhaps you could get a job euthanizing unwanted dogs at an animal shelter. The world is your oyster.
Craig,
“we, unlike everyone associated with the entire coal industry, have scruples that preclude our profiting from the demise of our planet”.
Hmmm,.. but you happily accept the benefits of the nearly one third of US power generated by the US coal industry !
Just as you loathe and despise all those immoral folk in the oil industry, but eagerly consume oil based products ! Or, how you hated fracking, until it suited you.
Unlike you, I attend all the energy and clean tech conferences I can. That’s just being open-minded, informed and realistic.
I guess that’s hard for a gung-ho crusader to understand, but balance is what prevents hypocrisy (which I regard the greatest sin) fanaticism and turning into a self-righteous moral prig.
I’ve just spent the last 2 months on an Odyssey through the Coal fields and industrial Rust belt of the USA. It’s been a fascinating and informative journey. I’ve made so many friends, while learning a great deal about some of the warmest, most hospitable, hardest working folk in America.
It’s been a journey I never thought at my time of life I would still be capable of enjoying. I’m deeply grateful to my American hosts for the knowledge and cultural experience.
I feel sorry for anyone who cuts themselves of from their fellow citizens, in order to acquire membership in small fanatical groups who only listen to each other.
The President exports US Coal to undermine the energy stranglehold Russia exerts over it’s small neighbors. This is diplomacy with teeth, not useless symbolic protests in the UN.
The Coal industry has problems, maybe insurmountable,e or may be able to be transformed by developing technology, at the moment no one can say for sure one way or the other. But I for one, am not going to condemn and essential industry on the basis of intolerance and a whole bunch of completely unsubstantiated theories.
@Craig
You are in a parallel universe Craig. There is no other explanation for your thinking.
Without fossil fuel energy generation technologies that we currently know and depend on almost entirely (remember Solar PV and Wind and other renewable energy generation technologies (amounting to about 99.9%) cannot act independently of fossil fuel generation – or at least not in the renewable energy engineering space that I operate in around the world): the entire planet would very quickly revert to a stone age existence and essentially expire.
The time it would take; probably less than 24 hours from the moment all fossil fuel generators globally simultaneously flicked the Off Switch.
There are however some much more modern and superior generation technology alternatives to fossil fuel under development Craig that also reduce GHG to insignificant levels simultaneously.
How about learning about them mate, and including factual details about their development and deployment in your blog? Is that really so difficult?
I can’t honestly believe that you are oblivious to this point though.
Perhaps the two most famous Australian sayings are at play here and I am simply not seeing it; are you merely (1) “pulling my leg” and (2) “pulling the wool over my eyes” perhaps.
LOL (3) “the penny has dropped” at last.
Lawrence Coomber
After writing 4+ million words explaining exactly how we need to be slow and mindful in weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels, it’s obvious that a comment like this comes from a troll of the fossil fuel boys, or someone who needs remedial reading in a big way. You claim that people take you seriously in academia. Totally impossible.
Craig,
I’m sure you can see how your two comments ;
A) After writing 4+ million words explaining exactly how we need to be slow and mindful in weaning ourselves off of fossil fuel
and
B) “we, unlike everyone associated with the entire coal industry, have scruples that preclude our profiting from the demise of our planet”.
And
C ) “troll of the fossil fuel boy”
are not more than a little confusing and a tad incompatible, but for the rest of us, well they just sound self serving and more than a touch intolerant.