what's it wirth to you?

Timothy Wirth, natural-gas advocate, takes gas industry to task 3

This story was written by ProPublica’s Abrahm Lustgarten.

timothy wirthTimothy Wirth.They were tough words for the natural gas industry to hear. In a blunt speech before the Colorado Oil and Gas Association last week, Timothy Wirth, a former Colorado Democratic senator and Under Secretary of State for global affairs in the Clinton administration, warned industry leaders that they need to pay attention to the environmental and climate concerns that are shaping national policy, or risk being left behind.

Wirth took the industry to task for not engaging in the climate legislation being debated in Congress—a bill he said every other energy industry was deeply involved in—and for fighting the changes taking place in energy policy rather than participating and seeking fresh opportunities.

Wirth, who today is president of Ted Turner’s United Nations Foundation, is no enemy of the oil and gas industry. He described clean-burning natural gas as the single most important component of a new energy supply chain that can help cut greenhouse gas emissions, and he said the use of the nation’s bountiful natural gas reserves is essential to curbing climate change. But he also said the industry is preoccupied with the wrong priorities and is off message.

“The time has come for the natural gas industry to get organized, take the gloves off, and get thoroughly engaged in helping our country advance rapidly toward a low-carbon economy,” Wirth said.

In his speech he offered some advice: The industry should identify its key priorities, work to get its regulatory house in order and recognize the big picture rather than complain about details in legislation like the climate bill.

“What are the options?” he asked the industry executives in a question and answer session after his speech. “You can stay where you are today. ... Your industry is going to continue to wallow. That’s your own choice.”

Read the text of the speech [PDF], or watch it.

Reprinted courtesy of ProPublica.

 

ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories, stories with “moral force.” We do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.

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  1. Delay And Deny's avatar

    Delay And Deny Posted 10:01 pm
    18 Jul 2009

    NG has a very low energy density.However, it can make hydrogen...the only solution to pollution that makes sense. 

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  2. neosapiens Posted 4:52 pm
    20 Jul 2009

    It's much more economical and friendlier to the environment to simply burn the CH4 in the power plants we already have than to build a whole new hydrogen infrastructure and convert CH4 + O2 to CO2+ 2H2, especially if you consider that the CO2 must be stored somewhere and not just released into the atmosphere.  Besides, H2 is the smallest molecule in the universe--it's much too hard to keep it from leaking into the atmosphere where 3H2 + O3 -> 3H2O.  What might happen to the ozone layer if we built a huge hydrogen economy?   Using CH4 as a fuel is only a bridge to buy us some time to come up with better solutions, since CH4 is better than toxic mix that is coal.

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