[DRAFT] Geothermal plants promise electricity

[Panmen]

NAME: Geothermal plants promise electricity

DESCRIPTION: Following recent lobbying of environmental activist groups for government support to geothermal power stations, you have gathered a group of advisors to contemplate your options.

VALIDITY: All nations

[option]"Have you seen the statistics?!?!" States @@RANDOMNAME@@, your minister of Underground Interior, while showing you a complicated graph in several different colors. "If we were to put geothermal power plants on every bit of land in @@NAME@@, we could power ourselves at the current rate of consumption for the next 3,000 years! Think of the long term savings! Sure, it will require a tax hike, and some people in the mining and non-renewable energy buisness may loose their jobs, but we have to think of the future! Of the children! We must put more funding into geothermal plants!"
[effect] earthquakes are increasingly common thanks to the erection of geothermal plants
[stats]environment budget increases, most eco-friendly government ranking increases, taxes increase

[option] "Oh wouldn't it be nice if we could build geothermal power stations whenever we felt like it," complains @@RANDOMNAME@@ from the Screw Earth Alliance. "But you have to relaise that this would kill the non-renewable energy sector! Jobs would be lost! What I suggest we do is turn to more conventional sources of energy, like coal. Coal plants have been providing many nations energy for years! We must abolish funding of geothermal plants and start ruining the enviro... err, helping the taxpayers!"
[effect] coal miners have seen an increase of jobs
[stats] environment budget decreases, largest mining sector ranking increases, most eco-friendly government ranking decreases, most beutiful environment ranking decreases.


I am willing to add another option, but how does this look? I am most concerned with the second option.

[Panageadom]

If you would like, I can do a fine toothed comb edit later, but my immediate concern is that it's clearly got an ideological weighting to it. There are good reasons for not investing in geothermal (e.g. expensive, not suited to all terrains, so high transmission costs [and risk of failure], if the market wasn't doing it anyway, it probably wasn't a good idea, damage to otherwise rare environments), but the second option seems to defend it on the basis of vested interest and destroying the environment, which are straw men arguments. This is also noticeable in the first one - the fact he's using a "complicated graph" and "statistics" (albeit with ridiculous punctuation) indicates that he has a level of intelligence that the other side doesn't, and so loads the issue.

On another note, since when did geothermal energy cause earthquakes?

[Panmen]

Hmmm I see your point. Also earthquakes have been reported after building geothermal plants. I think it was in New Zealand that one had to be shut down 6 days after finishing because earthquakes up to 3.4 had been reported (On the rictor scale)