Answer: Alternative fuels are safe to certain degree, if they are handled and utilized properly. But with anything, there are safety issues that need to be recognized, understood, and addressed before giving any one fuel a good safety rating.

Question: The phrase "green energy" is used by politicians, written in newspaper and magazine articles, talked about on television news broadcasts, and just about everyone else uses the phrase. But, what is green energy?

Answer: Green energy is no more than alternative energy sources that are relatively cleaner than fossil fuels, renewable, and are, in some cases, less destructive to the environment.

Question: Where does green energy come from?

Answer: Green energy is energy that is produced from many sources including solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, nuclear, and wind power. It is also made from fuel that is extracted and processed from vegetation and other organic materials.

Question: Does green energy harm the environment?

Answer: Almost anything made by humans do some degree of harm to the environment in one way or another. But what you have to look at is the amount of harm done and whether it is economically feasible to develop such energy sources.

Listed below are some ways that green energy production hurts the environment.

• Windmills kill birds and bats that fly into them.
• Hydroelectric power plants disrupt fish migration up rivers and other water channels, as well as destroying farms and forests due to the huge amounts of water that is stored behind dams.
• Bio fuels, fuels made from vegetation, may take world hunger to another level if crops are grown for fuel instead of food.
• The most dreaded and maligned source of alternate energy comes from nuclear power. The word "nuclear" brings to mind a notion of destruction that is truly unthinkable. It conjures up images of the destruction caused by the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II and the meltdown at the Chernobyl reactor in the USSR, both of which caused thousands of deaths and untold environmental damage. Yet, nuclear power provides electricity to millions of homes and businesses around the world, especially in countries like France, China, and the United States.

The question is whether the need for the energy outweighs the harm done to the environment and can the harm be eliminated, minimized, or reversed.

Finance Topic of the Month: Why Is It So Hard To Get Out Of Debt?