Last century, $3 billion in environmental groups opposed 19th century technology - oil. To win their war on extinction they promoted an unscientific concept that caught on with journalists and allied academics - "fossil fuels" - and insisted alternatives were better. Alternatives like hydroelectric and geothermal and natural gas.(1)
Today, they oppose all of those. They want to tear down all of the dams they told government to build, they claim natural gas will cause earthquakes, and that geothermal will cause earth to deflate.
Yet geothermal may be the best of them all. It has a tiny environmental footprint, unlike solar and wind, and no emissions, just like nuclear. The benefit over populist hot takes such as solar, wind, and electric cars is that it doesn't create onerous environmental damage the way mining for those materials do. Geothermal can use equipment long amortized environmentally.
Yet activists hate it, for the same reason they hated vaccines until Republicans agreed with them in 2021, and hate farming now; they don't understand science and therefore don't trust it. It's only 0.4% of American energy so it hasn't been a fundraising target, yet new techniques show it could be viable. Anti-science activists are already calling it fracking - what they pivoted to from wholesome "natural gas" positioning when they used that to oppose oil - the same way they call any engineered food a GMO now; unless it is mutagenesis or some other genetic engineering technique their committee says is "organic." They have enormous lobbying and legal power and are prepared to use it to stop anything that won't set them on the path for future lawsuits.
Like solar and wind, once the environmental costs get more attention. They like it because they know they can turn on it.
It is not about the environment for environmentalists, and never has been.
NOTE:
(1) Later replaced with silly notions like ethanol and then solar and wind - because fundraising goals are like soap opera plots; you have to turn on the things you once endorsed to keep the audience interested.
