We live and work in a world driven by a fossil fueled economy. Our cars and other dominant forms of transportation run primarily on gasoline derived from oil. We heat and cool our homes and work places from electric utilities heavily dependent on natural gas, coal and oil. Many air pollution issues such as climate change, acid rain, and smog are directly related to our energy choices.
With respect to the environment, fossil fuel production creates a host of negative externalities. For example, fossil fuel energy production is the primary contributor of the greenhouse gasses (GHG) associated with climate change. All of the costs of the potential problems associated with climate change, loss of coastal land, dramatic weather changes causing floods or drought etc. are not costs that are or will be borne by the energy producers. They will be borne by those directly affected in the U.S. and around the world. One need go no further than the Adirondacks of New York to discover that the costs of the cleanup from acid rain and the losses from fish kills and dead rivers and lakes are costs related to the coal burning power plants in the Mid-west.
Health issues also add uncalculated costs to fossil fuel energy production. During the past decade thousands of research projects documenting the ill effects produced by the fossil fuel energy production process have been published. For example, the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) recently released a report called Danger in the Air stating that "Every year, some 64,000 people may die prematurely from cardiopulmonary causes linked to particulate air pollution".