However, what is essential is that this be part of a consistent, long-term energy policy that survives her administration. Otherwise, it may turn out to look like nothing more than a faddish waste of time.
Wind power, the experts say, does have the potential to provide an important part of the energy mix. No, it won’t fulfill all our energy needs, but it probably can eventually supply perhaps as much as a quarter of them. It is cheap and non-polluting.
Fossil fuels, such as coal, are expensive to burn, foul the air, damage the environment, and eventually will be all used up. However, we are going to have to use them in some degree for the foreseeable future - and probably nuclear power too.
What we need is a long-term, non-partisan energy policy aimed at eventually weaning ourselves off the bad stuff while staying relatively comfortable. Otherwise, it is no exaggeration to say that in the long run, we will all be doomed.
Eventually, the governor, or her successor, is going to have to issue permits for at least some new coal-fired plants, and she should do so. Otherwise, it could lead to the undoing of her own clean energy policy. We aren’t going to get to the green energy future all at once. There are two mistakes we have to avoid making.
One is the one we have been making, which is just to keep blithely burning fossil fuel and saying, “oh, well, maybe our children will come up with a way to get cheap power from the sun.”
The other mistake is the one the folks in the Green Party would have us make, which is to try and go cold turkey. Wind and solar power or nothing. Imagine trying to huddle in your bark hut, or even your split-level house in East Lansing this winter with inadequate heat. We are spoiled and we wouldn’t stand for it.
I talked to scientists when the two great nuclear disasters of our age occurred at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986. Like the rest of us, they were all over the place on what this meant, but I heard one very interesting theory.
Both times, some scientists told they thought that was exactly the right moment to begin building new nuclear power plants. Why?
They were bound to eventually be needed, and if they were built then, they reasoned, they were bound to be the safest plants ever constructed. They had a point, and if we had a way of sending the spent fuel rods to the moon, I’d be all for nuclear power.
What I do know is that we aren’t willing to freeze, and we need to avoid drowning in our own pollution. Call me an optimist, but I think if we could just move this discussion out of the realm of partisan politics, the human race might have a fighting chance.
The cheapest, fastest and cleanest option is energy efficiency....saves ratepayers money, delays the need for additional baseload power and has been ignored by state policymakers for decades until recently. Unfortunately, it gets overlooked in much of the public discourse ..... the utilites don't rush to embrace it because they don't make money from it; and maybe it's not sexy or visual enough for the media? We're talking in-state hammer-and-wrench jobs for installers, contractors, maintenance workers and manufacturers.
Posted by: Hugh McDiarmid Jr. | March 05, 2009 at 04:21 PM