Editor’s note: Don Peterson is a contractor and a self-described unpaid lobbyist for the natural world. He is a longtime resident of Lowell.
“The clean energy industry is like the tech industry or the ski industry in their early days, bursting with possibility. … Fortunately, the climate deniers endless weekly tirades against accepted science are ignored by thinking Vermonters.”
— Dottie Deans, chair of the Vermont Democratic Party
[T]his declaration came from a recent commentary in VTDigger, and it insulted me greatly. Fifteen years ago I was just another Joe Sixpack, minding my own business in the “Kingdom” when the first studies came out regarding climate change and state sponsored solutions to global warming. I saw early on that Lowell was in the crosshairs — it’s windy, close to the grid, and under populated. Ideal for development, in other words. I wonder if that initial study from 1999 is still up on the Internet anywhere — it was a harbinger of things to come.
I have been radicalized by the ensuing debate. Dottie Deans’ comment that those who reject the governor’s renewable energy policies are ranting against accepted science is just the kind of parochial thinking that dooms meaningful progress in saving the planet from self-inflicted incineration.
I don’t suppose Ms. Deans has spent any more time out of doors in the last 60 years than I have, nor can I imagine that she knows more about the local climate. I’ve been rained on, snowed on, frostbitten and sunburned. No one believes more in the havoc that human-caused climate change is inflicting on our world. I doubt she loves Vermont more than I do for that matter.
So to be called a “climate denier” on a “endless weekly tirade” is rankling.
There is very little evidence that Gov. Shumlin’s take on how to address climate change is anything more than a diversion of taxpayers’ money into the pockets of developers. There is no evidence that development of the carbon sink on our mountaintops reduces carbon emissions. There is no evidence that a natural gas build-out reduces the amount of fossil fuels vaporized into the atmosphere. There is very little that addresses the real problem, just a lot of greenwashed capitalism repackaged as environmental orthodoxy.
The point of my commentary is that smug partisanship has no place in this discussion of the future of mankind. To categorize your opposition in such a simplistic way is narrow and counterproductive.
I have yet to hear of a single coal or oil-burning power plant that has been throttled back as a result of our state’s renewable energy policy. I maintain that just the opposite is happening — renewable energy credits enable coal burning elsewhere. If no carbon is sequestered by the sale, our mountains have been developed in vain. Let’s demand proof of sequestration before we release the RECs.
To point this out is to be branded a “science denier” and not a “thinking Vermonter.” While I suppose the chairman of the state Democratic Party has a responsibility to throw raw meat to the weasels, it’s a telling remark.
Just to emphasize — the human race is the problem, and we have the technology to destroy the place. There was an op-ed piece in the New York Times on Jan. 18 positing that since there are so many planets in the universe that are habitable, it might be that none of them get beyond the threshold we are standing upon, and all of them eventually founder. Link here.
But rather than paper over the problem with new development, what should we be doing?
First: Keep fossil fuels in the ground. Carbon consumption is a polluting activity with no downside for the destruction it is causing. Against that handicap, renewable energy proposals are little more than window dressing. In a market economy nothing beats digging coal out of the ground and setting it on fire. We have to stop thinking like this.
Second: There have been large vibrant cultures in world history that did not rely on fossil fuels, and we should be learning as much as we can from them.
Third: Divert resources away from whiz-bang development and into the study of sustainable practices. Waiting for another miracle like petroleum to save us from having to walk to the store is so blatantly adolescent it makes our demise a foregone conclusion. Meanwhile there’s 2 billion years’ worth of plant evolution to guide us.
The point of my commentary is that smug partisanship has no place in this discussion of the future of mankind. To categorize your opposition in such a simplistic way is narrow and counterproductive. Be magnanimous in victory, Dottie, lest it become a pyrrhic victory.
