20.06.2013
Share: mp3 | Embed video
Introduction: 

With oil prices rising, „unconventional“ oil and gas resources become attractive for investors: tar sands, shale oil and shale gas, which is extracted by a controversial technology called „fracking“. The exploitation of these sources is an „immense historical error“, Bardi says. Fracking might be even more climate-damaging than coal, as it releases Methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Additonally, groundwater resources in vast areas have already been polluted by fracking, as in the US. Renewable energies are able to deliver much cheaper and cleaner energy – if environmental costs are taken into account. However, the system is not conceived to make such decisions, as it focusses only on short term, immediate profits. „Half the earth will be destroyed like that.“

Guests: 

Ugo Bardi, professor for physical chemistry at the University of Florence, author of the Report to the Club of Rome "Plundering the Planet"