If some engineer came up with an energy source that was practically free and that had no impact on the environment whatsoever, and could be immediately implemented in places like Africa, the leftists would work eleventy billion hours overtime to figure out how to demonize it world wide, make no mistake an energy source like that would be fought against harder than any single invention in world history.
You have it right. It is clear that anyone who wants to reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere (Not proven IMO to be a net contributor to any environmental disaster) should prefer natural gas to coal and nuclear to natural gas. Nuclear should be developed to be cost competitive, as a capitalist I agree with this — and so natural gas may have a nitch to fill until the nuclear plant designers can finish their ultimate solution.
The use of low cost electricity will result in more electric vehicles and water (from desalination) and could result in greater density of green plants on the planet. All a net improvement for the environmental movement, but:
The environmental movement is not concerned about the environment and they haven’t been for years. They are concerned about power and thus are linked at the hip to the democratic party.
So it is very true that an improvement in energy in terms of clean energy or low cost energy would be fought because these are the necessary tools for growth. And the environment movement is against all forms of growth except that kind of growth that benefits the democratic party (such as illegal immigration).