AP

1. Free market forces reducing emissions
2. Saudi Arabia crashed the oil market in hopes of crushing the shale revolution, Tyler Area Energy Summit speaker explains
3. Obama’s speech reveals plans to end use of ‘dirty’ energy sources
4. World starts carbon diet to fight global warming after Paris climate change talks
5. Clean Power Plan would raise prices
6. Will climate change decide the election?
7. President Obama’s Clean Power Plan isn’t constitutional
8. They’re coming for our barbecue grills
9. Obama to order gov’t to cut its greenhouse gas emissions

Sen. Bernie Sanders doesn’t just hate coal, he also hates fracking – and nuclear power, for that matter. But if his goal truly is reducing greenhouse gas emissions, he should love fracking. The shale revolution has done more to reduce emissions than any treaty ever signed.

“The U.S. Department of Energy published data last week with some amazing revelations – so amazing that most Americans will find them hard to believe,” wrote Stephen Moore for Investors Business Daily. “As a nation, the United States reduced its carbon emissions by 2 percent from last year. Over the past 14 years, our carbon emissions are down more than 10 percent. On a per-unit-of-GDP basis, U.S. carbon emissions are down by closer to 20 percent.”

The reason is clear.

“The primary reason carbon emissions are falling is because of hydraulic fracturing – or fracking,” he wrote. “Fracking technology for shale oil and gas drilling is supposed to be evil. Some states have outlawed it. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have come out against it in recent weeks. Schoolchildren have been bombarded with green propaganda about all the catastrophic consequences of fracking.”

Fracking – and the free market – are responsible for lower emissions because they’ve made natural gas a more cost-effective source of electrical power. In the last decade, the cost of natural gas has dropped by about 75 percent.

“This free fall in prices means that America is using far more natural gas for heating and electricity and much less coal,” Moore wrote. “Here is how the International Energy Agency put it: ‘In the United States, (carbon) emissions declined by 2 percent, as a large switch from coal to natural gas use in electricity generation took place.'”

But the left hasn’t embraced fracking.

“Groups like the Sierra Club and their billionaire disciples have bet the farm on wind and solar power,” he wrote. “They’ve launched anti-fracking campaigns and ‘beyond natural gas’ advertising campaigns. But wind and solar are hopelessly uncompetitive when natural gas is so plentiful and so cheap. So are electric cars.”

Nuclear power is also in Sanders’ sights. He has called for a moratorium on new nuclear plants, and the eventual closing of all existing plants.

That’s ridiculous. Nuclear power is the green energy we already have. Even some on the left are recognizing that.

“In recent years, a small and scrappy but growing, grassroots pro-nuclear movement has emerged among progressives, scientists, conservationists, climate activists and trade unionists who see nuclear power fundamentally as a social justice issue – as the best, cleanest way to end energy poverty around the world,” wrote Leigh Phillips for New Republic. “Sanders’s waking up to the facts that have persuaded this new generation of environmentalists to embrace nuclear could help make support for the power source – and the vast energy wealth it can bring to humanity – the great left-wing cause it should be.”

Phillips shouldn’t hold his breath. Sanders is nothing if not consistent.

It’s a shame, though, because fracking and nuclear power are doing the job that Sanders wants done.