>From a purely pro-environment long-term standpoint, renewable sources (e.g. solar- and wind-powered generators and geothermal energy) clearly rank superior to all others. What seems to deter people from adopting the technology associated with renewables is high up-front cost coupled with a perceived delay in realizing profits/benefits from renewables.
Fossil fuels and nuclear energy, on the other hand, have a different cost-benefit relationship: Energy from these sources appear cheap and profit-driven people know how lucrative the market is for cheap and readily available energy. What's often not factored into this relationship are the costs associated with processing waste material generated from these more traditional energy sources. I don't know off-hand whether people have done a side-by-side comparison of renewables versus traditional energy sources in term of their respective "true" costs, including cost of disposing/processing/storing waste matter. But you might find something on the EPA's website (www.epa.gov).
