Part 10. Climate and Energy Series Jamie:

With violence continually sweeping public places in the U.S. because it is easy for anyone to buy combat-grade weapons, with Donald Trump at the top of the Republican list of candidates for president and Hillary Clinton leading the Democrats, and with gory internet executions, bombs on planes and pre-war tension between Turkey and Russia – a Middle East that is beginning to resemble Spain during their Civil War (which proved to be a proxy for World War II), I think there are more important things to focus on at the moment than climate change and the environment.

Environmental damage is crucial to the world, but it is an ongoing process and there will be no world unless solutions to increased violence at home and abroad are tackled with common sense solutions and total focus by all governments. President Obama's concentration on the environment while people are dying violently in many parts of the world due to Islamic radicalism, and mass murder in the U.S. carried out by people with military grade automatic weapons (ordinary "citizens" – how do they get hold of AR-15's? Go to Cabelas.com and find out where easily convertible "single shot" rifles are being sold) is substituting a longer-term issue for a crucial short-term major issue.

Please don't make the same mistake. The environment is important, but if there is no world there is no need for global environmental concerns.

Note: My intention has been to intersperse this series with other topics. The posts continue to elicit interesting – and I think important – responses, including this one.

Correction. From Joshua Goldstein: FYI there was an editing error in our Op Ed – solar is 1% of total while wind is 4% more.  The conclusion is the same.  A solar or wind installation that's used to replace a closing nuclear plant does nothing to replace fossil fuel.