Natural Gas Bandwagon
There was a story in the Boston Globe about how everyone's converting to cheap natural gas, and heating oil companies are merging or going out of business. I have considered converting to natural gas, but here's my issue: the reason it's currently so cheap is fracking. Fracking is a process that may well be poisoning groundwater and destabilizing bedrock, as well as releasing god knows what into the environment. I don't know the science well enough to know what's proven, what's suspected but not yet investigated, what's disproven, and what we won't know for years. But it seems like there's enough problems there that I don't feel right spending my money on natural gas that could be from fracking. Not that oil's exactly fabulous either, but solar isn't feasable with our roof alignment, and electric seems suboptimal. Perhaps I should investigate the effectiveness and cost of electric heat, though. That way the energy comes from an (ideally) efficient central plant, or even better, solar or wind. Hm.