|
|
|
The Fight Against Hot Air
|
Business New Haven
6/9/2003
By: BNH
|
With the filing of a lawsuit against the federal government to classify carbon dioxide as a "pollutant," Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has apparently joined the religious fundamentalist wing of the environmental movement.
Blumenthal and his counterparts in Massachusetts and Maine have sued the feds to have carbon dioxide placed in the same category as lead, mercury, ozone, carbon monoxide and particulate pollution.
Blumenthal: "We see the [effects] on our shoreline, in our climate, in the epidemic of tick and insect-borne diseases. There really is no justification for failing to regard carbon dioxide as a pollutant."
An activist government is necessary - as is a vigilant public and an enlightened corporate community - to remove toxic elements from our environment. Like most right-minded folks, we support the sacrifices needed to rid our environment of clearly harmful substances.
However, the scientific evidence that links pollutants such as lead and mercury to adverse health effects is indisputable. And while many believe that the burning of fossil fuels causes global warming, the evidence in no way can be declared nearly as direct.
And what about the remedies? While the evidence on the causes of global warming is inconclusive, there is little consensus regarding remedies that would be in any way acceptable politically.
We trust Blumenthal would not like the U.S. to build hundreds of nuclear plants or flood millions of acres of land to reduce emissions.
Those are the energy strategies of choice for many of the signers of the Kyoto Accord, the international proposal to limit C02 production. Brazil and China are flooding millions of acres to meet their power needs. France is a major generator of power from nuclear power plants. Russia is busy building nuclear plants in the Third World. (How earth-friendly is a Russian nuclear power plant built on the cheap? Just ask the former citizens of Chernobyl.)
We would welcome the debate the attorney general's lawsuit will engender if it weren't such a dangerous distraction to real and present environmental and energy problems in Connecticut today.
For example, just to the north of Connecticut, the city of Springfield, Mass. has an obsolete sewer and drain system. With every significant storm, millions of gallons of run-off and sewerage are washed into the Connecticut River. The EPA has agreed to a 30 year clean-up.
Right here in Connecticut a solution to carbon-dioxide generation is being avoided by Connecticut's power elites, including Blumenthal.
Fairfield County is facing a shortage of electricity. To address that problem the utility industry wants to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to import electricity from plants outside of Fairfield County.
Under federal law, electricity consumers throughout New England, would be taxed to pay these costs. In the absence of these subsidies Connecticut would be forced to examine its laws that discourage co-generation and distributed power.
The new transmission costs were increased dramatically after Blumenthal and others fought to bury new transmission lines underground, adding millions of dollars in costs and potentially shifting significant costs to Connecticut ratepayers solely.
In truth, a potential win-win-win for energy consumers, the economy and the environment is right here in Connecticut that Blumenthal and others might see if they weren't looking at the Earth from Mars.
Connecticut companies are in the forefront of large-scale energy generation from fuel cells. At least two state companies actively build these plants. One, United Technologies, has more than 250 such plants around the world - including in Connecticut.
These facilities can't yet generate energy at rates as low as fossil fuel, but they can compete with the combined costs of that energy and the transmission lines proposed to carry power into Fairfield County.
These plants could be constructed as needed, with the taxes to pay for them spread over a greater length of time. Best of all, the plants produce no pollution whatsoever. Not even carbon dioxide.
|
Go FirstGo PreviousGo
NextGo LastGo
to Index
|
|
