EDITORIAL: Independence Means Energy Independence

by Ian Baldwin

The current challenge of the world energy picture has two faces: CO2 emissions (global warming) and Peak Oil (soaring costs). These two phenomena, above all others, will frame the debate about energy for the rest of our lives. And they exert an unyielding pressure upon us to be wonderfully creative.

In his essay “Drill and Kill” (see page 7), Gary Flomenhoft reminds us that “Energy is not a technical problem; it's a political problem.” Any discussion of energy must begin with this insight. It's not that there aren't technical challenges to be solved – in transportation, in heating/cooling systems, in power-generation, distribution and storage, and in petrochemical agriculture – but rather, do we Vermonters have the will to find new ways to meet our energy needs?

Deeper down, energy is a cultural problem, a problem whose roots are barely visible.

Within hours of the fall of the Twin Towers the U.S. Secretary of Defense appeared on national television and was asked if he had a message for the world in response to the tragedy that had befallen Americans. He replied unwaveringly that “the world” had to “understand” one thing: we Americans were not going to tolerate any compromise or threat to our “American Way of Life.”

I believe that was the most honest statement made by a government official since 9/11. How else do we understand Iraq? Or Iran?
Thirty years ago I worked for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), when it was a small organization locked in a long struggle with one of the world's biggest utilities, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E). PG&E was then a supply-side-oriented utility whose philosophy was “build ‘em.” PG&E argued before the California PSC that its demand-side growth studies showed the state needed many more huge nuclear and coal-fired power plants built within a decade. EDF used PG&E's own growth assumptions and then demonstrated that by investing in conservation, efficiency, co-generation, and some renewables, none of the proposed massive fossil-fuel plants needed to be built.

EDF won its David-vs.-Goliath battle with PG&E in the late 1970s. In the end, however, the culture won, or persisted. U.S. energy use soared in the 1980s and 1990s. The supply-side mentality reigned, and still does. The American Way of Life is strangely linked to energy profligacy.
And profligacy requires empire. When 60 percent of our primary energy source, oil, comes from the world beyond our borders, can it be otherwise?

Running an empire is first and foremost expensive (in terms of money and lives). U.S. military expenditures equal those of all other nations combined – a breathtaking fact. And as Gary Flomenhoft explains in this issue, roughly half of each American taxpayer's dollar is spent funding the operations and obligations of this vast, virtually unknowable, global American military infrastructure. Built, ostensibly, for America's “security.” America's energy security. Or, more exactly, the security of America's energy supplies, most of which lie outside its borders. This is the price of our chimerical, almost whimsical “Way of Life.”

If Vermonters wish to generate their own power, they can. They don't need to depend on the death of fellow Vermonters in Iraq and Afghanistan, of miners in West Virginia (see Jeff Danziger's letter to the editor, page 3), or on the racist destruction of Cree lands in Quebec (Hydro Quebec), or the promise of an absentee landlord's nuclear-safety guarantees for Vermont Yankee (see Ray Shadis's article, page 1). Instead we need – simply but literally – to depend on ourselves.
We can insist, for instance, that our governor and legislators support wind farms – overriding NIMBYs both in and out of state. We can create a range of truly significant tax subsidies aimed at individual businesses, farms, and homeowners to invest in co-generation, biofuels (see Netaka White, and also Anita Kelman, pages 4 and 5), solar hot water, PV, micro-wind or hydro, and insulation, and provide incentives for replacement-age purchase of energy-efficient consumer durables like refrigerators and freezers. Or we can support innovative wind projects, such as that proposed by East Haven Windfarm (see page 3).
More: at the state and local level we can go all out to create the novel financing mechanisms necessary for the towns by the Connecticut River dams to buy those power stations, rather than letting outside private investors take them out of our commons – forever (see Dave Dunn, Hervey Scudder, and Rick Foley, page 1).

Were Vermont to undertake such moves toward energy independence in response to the evolving world energy crisis, it would not be alone. As Kirkpatrick Sale reports (see page 12), whole countries are doing so right now. And in neighboring Canada, Ontario's premier has just announced a new policy permitting citizens who have formed cooperatives to install wind turbines, solar panels, biogas digesters, and small hydro projects “up to 10 MW in size” to sell their power to the grid “at a fixed price for 20 years.” Such “Community Power” will be “locally owned and developed,” and according to the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association, “Community Power has been shown to bring five times the jobs and investments to a local community than projects owned by outside companies.”

There are Vermonters now living who remember life under a radically different regime. They lived in and repaired houses their ancestors built, and heated them from their own woodlots. They lit and cleaned and cooked in their homes without electricity; grew their crops without petrochemicals; and traveled by horse-powered wagon or by train. These Vermonters are our link to a future that will once again be radically different from the past (i.e., both the past and the present, soon-to-be “past”). They show us it is possible to innovate radically, to change the practical basis of your own livelihood, and yet maintain your dignity as imperishable beings.

The example of their lives proclaims to us, their successors on the land: It can be done.

We can insist, for instance, that our governor and legislators support wind farms – overriding NIMBYs both in, but mainly out of state. We can create a range of truly significant tax subsidies aimed at individual businesses, farms, and homeowners to invest in co-generation, biofuels (see Netaka White, and also Anita Kelman, pages 5 and 9), solar hot water, PV, micro-wind or hydro, and insulation, and provide incentives for replacement-age purchase of energy-efficient consumer durables like refrigerators and freezers.