Letter to the editor: Climate savvy

4 mins read

Though a few business leaders, government officials, and scientists in Maine had the opportunity to hear from the climate scientists who have spent decades monitoring Hydro-Québec facilities most of Maine was denied that opportunity. I say denied because these meetings were organized by the few Mainers who were interested in studying the topic. Our journalists could have attended those meetings or arranged interviews but they largely chose not to.

Today I find myself, an earth scientist from Maine, asking why our institutions appear to have chosen not to provide voters with all the information that was available to them so that their decision would be a fully informed one. I wonder if this was a conscious decision made by those who favor development in Maine to the partnership that was proposed. All involved are from allied nations who’ve worked with us at least since World War II to ensure energy resources flow uninhibited throughout the western world so there was no good reason for this.

As an earth scientist I learned a long time ago that our energy options must be carefully compared before decisions are made going forward to ensure we’re meeting our climate goals. We do not do that when we blindly focus on the direct impact one project will have absent any study of the alternative we choose by virtue of its rejection. The time for wishful thinking passed us by some time ago, and yet we’re encouraged to hold out for a more perfect solution?

Here’s the comparison. Natural gas and oil have a greenhouse impact at least 10 times greater than hydroelectricity and, according to the World Health Organization, the respiratory illnesses and other diseases caused by the particulate pollution they generate kill millions each year. Solar power has a greenhouse impact about three times greater than hydroelectricity that is attributed to the regular replacement of solar cells that is required and to the environmental impact arrays have. Battery banks, should they be added to these solar arrays to ensure they can store and distribute power as it’s needed, increase their environment impact further. And now we’re learning that wind turbine blades aren’t even being recycled.

These are complicated matters. We just rejected a hydroelectric project partly because it wasn’t going to provide as much savings as we’d have liked, then a spike in petroleum prices caused our electricity prices to increase. That’s the kind of market instability we meant to avoid with this project and it’s one we’ve been repeatedly told will continue to be felt with petroleum products being used faster than they can be produced. This is Peak Oil. (You should all be familiar with this because Thomas Eastler, the previous head of Geology at UMF and defense expert with the National Threat Assessment Center, spent the last decade of his life working to ensure we were ready to meet the challenges it would present.)

No one is going to make sure you have all the facts you need to make an informed decision on these matters. We are too competitive a society for that to be expected now. But, we can put pressure on those who can provide the information we need. We can criticize them, call them out when they fail to inform us. Maybe then we’ll pressure them to do better the next time.

Jamie Beaulieu
Farmington

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