Can America truly go green? Gulf Coast Bank & Trust president Guy Williams believes the answer is yes, but that the nation’s plan to go about it is actually hindering the transition.
Williams told Newell Normand on WWL Radio that stopping climate change is not something America can do alone, and that looking at it as an American problem is in fact making things worse.
“The #1 leading indicator of a country caring about the environment is whether they’re doing well financially,” Williams said. “It makes sense. If you’re desperately poor and you’re struggling to feed the people, you could care less to the Antarctic and the polar bears. Man, we’ve got to put food on the table, and if it means burning coal, we’re going to burn coal all day long.”
Williams said that by cutting back on energy production in the oil and gas industry, the U.S. drove other nations to turn back to burning coal for fuel, which he says is a much worse option for the environment.
He outlined what he believes is a workable step-by-step plan for America to become a greener nation.
“The first step would be let’s replace coal with natural gas,” Williams said. “Let’s add nuclear, particularly the compact nuclear plants, and then over time, go to solar, wind, geothermal wave energy… the problem is we have an aspiration: We don’t want anymore oil and gas. But that aspiration led us to some bad short-term decisions that are actually making the environment worse.
“What can we do to make the world more productive?” Williams continued. “What can we do to encourage the big countries like Indonesia and India to make this green transition? And until we do that, what we do in the U.S. is not going to change the climate issue. It’s a global issue, and we need to attack it globally. But destroying American energy and increasing use of coal overseas is not a productive way to go about it.”
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