Green lobby pushes renewable energy

BANGKOK, Thailand – There’s no shortage of ideas for high-tech measures to combat global warming: develop clean biofuels made of corn or palm oil, build more nuclear power stations or bury harmful carbon emissions in underground vaults.

But those are the last solutions many environmentalists want to hear about.


For the green lobby pushing this week for forceful action at a U.N. conference on limiting the rise in global temperatures, such answers either cost too much, delay an inevitable weaning from fossil fuels or get in the way of the real solutions, such as renewable energy and greater efficiency.

“There are a lot of technologies that are mentioned … that are not exactly the most sustainable options,” said Catherine Pearse, international climate campaigner for the Friends of the Earth environmentalist group. “We may be replacing one existing problem with new ones.”

AP