MICHAEL BRUNE
Energy conservation requires chnge and sacrifice in the short term while fracking has few short term difficulties and requires the vast majority of American to do nothing. The extent of medium and long term damages that fracking will cause is yet unknown and is made even more difficult to know by the practice of the oil drilling companies of keeping the chemicals, amounts, and procedures the use for fracking secret.
His assertion that wind energy is less expensive than the fossil fuel alternative is not accurate if one accounts for the costs on the basis of conventional accounting methods. It was at that time more expensive which is why it’s use was limited. However, the existing methods of accounting did not charge the fossil fuels for the environmental degregation that they cause and the cost to society to overcome these or live with them. More important there is no charge to the cost of fossil fuels for the deleterious health effects that their extraction and use cause. Global warming / climate change is not considered at all in the economic analysis.
Michael Brune became the youngest executive director of the Sierra Club at 38 years of age, an American environmental organization founded by preservationist John Muir, UC professor of botany Willis Linn Jepson, and attorney Warren Olney in 1892. Brune was hired by the 15 member board of directors to his position as executive director in January 2010, after Carl Pope was fired.
