OPINION: On energy thinking, a narrowing gap?
Where you stand on climate change depends largely on where you sit. If you sit on the Pacific island chain of Kiribati or on the coastal regions of Florida or the Carolinas, you regularly watch the ocean batter the shoreline and wash over roads and fields. Your next move might be to higher ground. If you work at an oil company in the Rockies or a plastics plant in India, you know that lowering carbon emissions could add expense and cost business and jobs.
The fundamental tension in the climate change debate is between environment and economy. Even with the ongoing gains of renewable energy, hydrocarbons still power the global economy. The U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts that the use of renewable energy will grow faster than the use of fossil fuels over the next 15 years but that fossil fuels will still account for 78 percent of energy used in 2040.
In a Monitor cover story, Amanda Paulson shows how that dichotomy plays out in side-by-side communities in northern Colorado. Weld and Larimer counties coexist in a state that is both urban and rural; a state that has shops that sell western wear and shops that sell marijuana; a state where mountain bikes and hybrids share the road with dual-wheeled pickup trucks; a state with oil wells, solar arrays, wind turbines and coal mines. And also a state where red and blue America seem to be increasingly at odds. One of Amanda’s most jarring points is that the gap between Democrats and Republicans on the subject of climate change has more than doubled in the past 15 years. Skepticism has grown.