A guest essay by Rick Katzenberg
New England is a very typical region that is confused and ineffective in dealing with its future energy needs. Here is an important article from the Guardian on precisely that point. I have also sent it to friends at the Conservation Law Foundation who have been working very effectively to protect our environment and with whom I worked on a great many projects when I was traveling to Concord with regularity on behalf of both CLF and the Sierra Club. I no longer do that, but I greatly admire CLF’s work and was pleased to see they are mentioned in the article.
New England won’t allow the lines down from Quebec to provide hydropower. They won’t allow natural gas lines up from the Middle States to provide natural gas to our communities. They continue to run the three existing coal plants in New Hampshire, among others, because inertia is greater than momentum. The plants are there, so why not use them? Of course, there are a hundred reasons why not to use them. For example, the last I looked, New Hampshire was number two in the country in asthma per capita. Does that have meaning to our lawmakers? Not when they can deal with more important things like limiting health care to our citizens, harming and minimizing women’s rights, and making sure that guns are available in all venues. So the coal plants go on, we use oil for heating, and we are totally dependent on nuclear power for much of our electricity. Seabrook is now beyond the age of safety and it is only a question of time until we have a catastrophe. Absolutely no one is interested in changing the status quo and, as the article points out, we are screwed.
I don’t think New England is unique in this respect. The country is screwed. The world is screwed. Even Al Gore and Greta Thunberg are irrelevant, let alone mere citizens like you and me. The future for our children and grandchildren is bleak if we don’t soon elect smarter politicians!