Traditional environmentalists often give the impression that if it isn’t renewable, it’s no good. This simply is not true. It is important to look at the complete picture when assessing the various solutions to the climate change problem. All technologies have their drawbacks, it is just a question of whether we are able to mitigate these to a satisfactory level, or live with them on the assumption that the reduction in CO2 emissions outweighs the negative.
Wind power for example, cannot directly replace conventional power stations in the short term, as it would leave us without a source of baseload power generation. Certain countries are even starting to reach their saturation point with wind turbines, both from a network stability point of view and in terms of public acceptance. In the UK it is now almost impossible to obtain planning permission for an onshore wind farm due to the public inquiries that are raised.

We cannot adopt the position of many environmental groups of being anti-nuclear and anti-carbon capture and storage. The truth is that these are the only options we have to produce clean, reliable and affordable large-scale baseload power generation at the current time. If action is required immediately, then we must deploy the best technologies we have available now, and not continue pining for the panacea that is a hydrogen economy and nuclear fusion. Perhaps these will one day become prevalent in our society, but we do not have time to wait.