Boilermakers from Local 13, Local 28 and Local 154 joined Saturday Night Live With Philly Labor to talk about the environment, jobs and the importance of Carbon Capture.

Fossil resources remain essential to human existence

CLIMATE ADVOCATES WHO agitate for a future without fossil resources fail to appreciate — or choose to ignore — the essential, life-sustaining and life-enhancing value of the fossil-based natural resources humanity has relied upon for well over a century.

There’s an old saw in the trash business that says, “everybody wants their trash picked up but nobody wants it put down.”

That’s not a perfect analogy for what’s happening with renewable-energy projects in New York and New England but the sentiment behind it is familiar.

Someday, U.S. electrical power generation may come from 100% renewable energy consisting almost entirely of wind and solar. But predictions of that happening within 10 or 20 years are unrealistic. There are simply too many obstacles standing in the way, among them: the massive investment of capital that would be required, the disruption of entire industries, technical challenges, and considerable societal and environmental impacts.

In the wake of several major climate reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. Government, climate change has taken center stage in American political discourse, encapsulated by — but in no way limited to — the Green New Deal. Many of the proposed plans for confronting the climate crisis stress the imperative of decreasing emissions by transitioning to 100% "clean" or "renewable" sources of energy.