Editorial #2- A Natural Choice

This editorial is about the idea that natural gas may be effective in reducing carbon emissions. Burning natural gas produces half the emissions as does burning coal, which means using natural gas as a source of energy instead of coal could put a large dent in America's carbon footprint. The author of this editorial states that there were rumors of President Obama supporting legislation that would discourage the use of coal and encourage the use of natural gas in his speech to the Business Roundtable on Wednesday. The author also said however that these rumors seemed to have been false, which is unfortunate, because nudging natural gas forward is something that the government can do quickly and relatively cheaply, to meet its medium-term emissions goals. This editorial also shared the importance of making sure America doesn't rely too much on one commodity for their energy. A drastic increase in the amount of natural gas burned would require infrastructure investments in certain regions as well as retrofits of certain plants, or the construction of completely new ones.

I agree with this editorial in the sense that if the burning of natural gas n order to generate energy can in fact reduce America's carbon footprint drastically, it is something worth looking into. With that said, I think it is important that we "look into" and research the effects of using natural gas a little bit more before any major legislation is passed. In my opinion if we use to much of any source of energy there have got to be some pretty serious effects on the environment. It would be great if there was some source of energy out there that was not bad for our environment at all, but unfortunately that hasn't been found yet, and I don' think it will be discovered anytime soon. I think that what we know about natural gas being better than coal sounds good, but that a bit more research should be done on what problems the use of natural gas could produce that coal does not cause.