In one e-mail message, a senior lawyer in the agency's New York office said he thought "we should get out of the business of burning resources to chase Ponzi schemes".
New York's proposed natural gas development regulations for the Marcellus Shale — potentially the world's second largest natural gas field — are forward-leaning and aim to ensure that these abundant, clean-burning resources are safely developed, proving, as President Obama has said, "that we don't have to choose between our environment and our economy".
Even if technology means that, as is claimed for the Kingsnorth power station, it can be cleaner and more efficient than ever before, it is still going to be burning a limited resource, contributing to global warming and above all belching pollution into the Kentish skies.
But one thing that concerns me is the idea that you are burning a valuable resource to create this fiduciary fiat currency.
Even just to say to yourself, "Oh, I'll get to that love and pain stuff later, maybe in my 30s" is to consign yourself to 10 years of merely taking up space on the planet and burning up its resources.
Apart from burning classical fossil resources or generating nuclear power, alternatives have been developed, like the classical ways to capture energy from wind, water and sun, or the innovative solar chimney concept.
The interest in natural gas as an alternative feedstock for ethylene production stems mainly from its clean burning qualities, its domestic resource base, and its commercial availability.
If we're going to stop burning through our scarce resources at a suicidal pace, we need less obsolescence, not more.
As mobility is a major pillar of World's economic system and burning fuels from fossil resources leads to a dramatic increase in greenhouse gas emissions, the production and use of appropriate biofuels offer at least a partial solution to this problem.
Even in remote areas, some resource managers believe burning good wood represents a waste.
