Many questions about the energy of today and tomorrow

When Three Mile Island nuclear generating station failed and Chernobyl in the Ukraine failed, North America balked at that technology for generating electricity. European countries and developing countries continued to embrace that method of generating electricity.
Even the damming of rivers for hydro electricity, flooding lands, causing silt build up, and preventing the movement of fish has environmentalists crying foul. Should we stop generating hyrdo electricity?
When environmentalists complained about the poor air quality generated by coal fired thermal electrical generating plants, Ontario and other privately held electrical utilities chose to close those plants and switched to natural gas.
Today, North America is awash in newly discovered pockets of natural gas that are being discovered in parts of North America. The pockets are being accessed by deeper drill and hydro fracturing shale to release the natural gas.
The new gas that is making its way into the mainstream of Canada and the United States has helped reduced heating costs of home owners, and made the creating of natural gas cogeneration of electricity again profitable.
Nuclear power generation is again looking as the clean fuel of the future, one that every provincial government is giving great thought to.
In northern Ontario, we are priding ourselves on using our forests and woodlands to create fuel for biomass electrical power generation. The plant at Fort Frances has enabled Abitibi Bowater to reduce its costs of manufacturing and made the mill more profitable.
The whole world continues to watch the outcome of the failed oil well in the Caribbean off the Louisiana coast. No one anticipated the blowout, nor the failure of all the safety controls in the system when the oilrig caught fire and ended up sinking. Drilling for oil under the ocean has been ongoing for decades and only on one other occasion has a valve failed.
Yet we now know that as we drill deeper looking for oil and gas, and technologies are being developed to extract those commodities there are more risks to man and the environment.
Yet risk managers will tell everyone, that regardless of how safely something is created or built or used there will always be some level of risk and even if it is one chance in a billion, there will be a failure. What level of risk can the world tolerate? If we had asked the average North American if there was any danger in ocean drilling for oil only three months ago the answer would have been no.
Tens of thousands of oil wells in the oceans of the world are producing oil for home heating, for planes to fly, trains to run, trucks to roll and cars to move about the world. A suitable reliable replacement for the combustion engine has yet to appear.
A moratorium has been placed on underwater oil drilling in the United States and calls are out for the Canadian government to place its own moratorium on new offshore drilling. People now look at the tar sands as being less evil than ocean drilling although 18 months ago, the environmentalists were suggesting that the tar sands in Alberta be phased out.
What are our comfort levels for the environment? In summer are we ready to turn off our air conditioners, walk or bike to stores and services to reduce the energy that we use.
What will our children’s children say of us who demanded more and more energy from more and more locations on the planet? What will clean safe energy look like in half a century?
–Jim Cumming