Time to get real about energy

In an article entitled "Buy a Hybrid, and Save a Guzzler" (New York Times, Feb. 8, 2006, by David Leonhardt), he points out that choosing between a Prius and, say, a Toyota Corolla, can save you 250 gallons of gasoline a year. The Prius boasts 55 miles per gallon (in reality 44 miles per gallon, according to Consumer Reports) as compared with the Corolla (29 miles per gallon). Not only does the hybrid car owner feel good about doing something for the environment, but he also gets a $3,000 rebate. Nice incentive but does this really help the environment?

In 1978, Congress enacted CAFE standards (corporate average fuel economy) for all car-makers. The average minimum allowed now is 27.5 miles per gallon for cars and 21.6 for light trucks and SUVs. And American manufacturers are right near the limit. That means that the person buying, say, the Cadillac SRX SUV, which consumes 16 miles per gallon, or a Lincoln Navigator, which consumes 12 miles per gallon, gets to drive these guzzlers because someone else bought a hybrid car, which keeps the corporate average miles per gallon down. This is our national energy policy? Leonhard states that the well-meaning hybrid car owners are driving "an expensive symbol that they are worried about our planet, rather than a true solution."

The same can be said for industrial wind on Vermont ridgelines. It would be a very expensive symbol, while allowing polluters to continue to pollute elsewhere, slowing the growth in the average air pollution, but not reducing it significantly. If we are serious about global warming, we need to stop pretending that Band-Aids are going to solve the problem and go to the source of the pollution. We can do this by making our state and national representatives accountable. We've got to tell them we need a real energy policy, not one that rewards a few at the expense of many (such as the "royalty free" oil and natural gas that oil companies are extracting from federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico which will cost the U.S. taxpayer $7 billion by 2011 in lost royalty payments, and enriching the oil companies by $50.4 billion during the same period.). We need to use already-developed technology to clean up coal. (Burning coal in Ohio causes the acid rain in Vermont). We need to improve mileage standards on all new cars and trucks ASAP while using disincentives to discourage guzzlers.

The transportation sector (cars, trucks, airplanes, etc.) is the single biggest source of carbon dioxide and dependence on foreign oil in this country, not electric generation. Vermont has one of the very lowest pollution emissions records in the country. Let's not put expensive symbols on our ridgelines whose impacts will be felt for generations.

Let's not enrich the developers at our children's expense. Just because it's profitable for developers to industrialize our ridgelines doesn't mean it's in Vermont's best interest to do so. Just because the wind industry lobby says it's a great idea doesn't mean it's right for Vermont. Big corporate interests have a lot of money riding on wind, but there are a lot of other energy choices, including conservation and efficiency, that are not getting heard in this industrial wind storm. The feeling that one must "do something" should not substitute for a well thought out energy policy that takes into account the real costs and impacts of industrializing our, until now, important protected natural assets.