First, let me differ in defining environmentalists from greeners in my book. Environmentalists are the people for a cleaner earth and have my thanks and respect.
http://ransrants.blogspot.com/2010/04/convenient-truth.html
Greeners are the scammers that are riding that movement for their own ends and enrichment. Greeners sue any and every energy project to prevent, delay or make it more expensive. Recently they have sued California trying to prevent a solar generator in the Mojave Desert, not to mention a power line to San Diego to carry power.
I also do not lump coal, oil, and nuclear together. Oil power plants are almost gone; 95% of them have been converted to natural gas for economic reasons. Coal vs. nuclear I have covered in a blog:
http://ransrants.blogspot.com/2010/04/unconsidered-consequences.html
The latest generation of nuclear reactors are even safer but not considered by many including the US.
http://ransrants.blogspot.com/2011/01/thorium-reactors-and-sputternik-moments.html
Wind power is a scam. Spain went for it big and a Spanish economist pointed out it cost 2.2 jobs for every green job created, and the green jobs were government subsidized so are going away as Spain downsizes their budget.
The Danes went big for wind power and now have the highest-cost power in Europe. The secret though is that when becalmed, there is an undersea cable bringing Norse hydroelectric power.
The UK has built an extensive net of wind machines originally thought to produce and average of 27% of their max capacity. Experience has been much less than this figure, with an average of 9 months out of 26 being less than 10%.
A study projected the wind machines to replace the 2400 MW nuclear generator outside of Dallas-Fort Worth would cover 20% of Texas and still would have left them shivering or sweltering the dark when Texas is becalmed in mid-Summer or Winter.
In other words, not only is wind expensive, it must be duplicated in capacity by some other reliable source, thus making it even more and absurdly expensive. The reason most want to build wind machines is the $23 per kilowatt US government subsidy (plus often additional from the state). There is no government subsidy for maintaining and operating them, so many machines become abandoned after breaking. California and Hawaii have this problem.
T Boone Pickens wanting to build a few billion dollars of these machines adds new meaning to "Boonedoggle" (sic).
The future holds promise for alternative power should thin-film solar become cheap enough to go on peoples' roof. It's not there yet. I read an article yesterday that would bring it down to 15-cents per KWh, but coal now comes in at 8-cents per KWh. The real idea behind Cap-and-Trade was to raise the price of coal to make solar competitive, not to mention allowing someone to enhance revenues equal to everyone's current power bill.
Other alternatives exist, but I doubt one is moving civilization backwards. Power is civilization. I am not opposed to alternative power; I am opposed to shivering and sweltering in the dark
