For better or worse the visual perceptions of energy production drive much of its policy debates. It was as much the ugly sight of fuming coal stacks and the soot on buildings as environmental or health concerns that led to their regulation. Unfortunately, the understandable human impulse to be surrounded by beauty or to avoid ugliness is turning NIMBYs, (not in my backyard-ers) and misguided environmental activists into strange bedfellows, inadvertently acting in concert to hurt the environment and impede America’s energy transformation.
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