An Apology, Sort Of (The Hypocrisy of Our Energy Policy)

by Jeff Danziger

(This letter from syndicated cartoonist Jeff Danziger was published in the Barre-Montplier Times Argus on February 5, 2006, in reply to Gov. James Douglas' response to an editorial cartoon. The letter is reprinted with the permission of The Times Argus.)

Gov. James Douglas has contacted me through intermediaries to voice his concern that a recent cartoon was unfair and unfactual. I can't respond graphically without compounding the problem and leading to further hurt feelings, so I will revert to the written word.

The cartoon showed the governor aghast at the idea of wind power turbines, while the coffins of dead coal miners were behind him. Some apparently assumed that I was attributing to him a callous feeling toward the miners. This was not what I intended in my representation, since I don't think that at all.

But my point is this: If you fly over the states of West Virginia, Kentucky, and portions of western Pennsylvania, you can see from as high as 25,000 feet the ravages of the coal mining industry – mountains destroyed, mammoth linear piles of mining slag, diverted rivers, and dead ponds filled with yellow mine effluent. This tragedy goes on for miles, in fact hundreds of miles. It is as ugly a thing as the human race has ever done to the planet, and most of the coal extracted at this cost has gone into the production of electricity.

No Vermonter would stand for this degree of destruction, nor anything close to it. The fact is that using electricity from these coal-rich states is a species of hypocrisy. When you turn on the power in our clean green little environmentally protected paradise, it comes at the cost of wreckage to the environment someplace else.

Naturally we prefer not to think of it. We persuade ourselves that we are stewards of the beauty and grandeur of the Green Mountains, Lake Champlain, our rivers and streams. And so we are. But someone else is paying.

Remember that this hasn't always been so. Early Vermonters denuded the forests of the state to graze sheep and burned the trees to make potash to clean wool. This was done for money.
Quarrying for granite and marble removed the tops of mountains and piled slag in heaps that are still visible. More recently the income from skiing has altered the horizon in a way that is utterly unnatural. All economic actions are compromises.

Gov. Douglas' inexplicable objections to large-scale wind power development remain a great mystery. But when the cost of electricity includes the lost lives of miners in some other state, it's not just about the aesthetic value of an uninterrupted ridgeline. It's about the value of human life. Families without fathers, sons, even daughters.

I've been down in a coal mine, and I am thankful I don't have to earn my living there. Not too many Middlebury graduates down there as I recall. It's dark, dangerous work interrupted by falling rock and methane explosions.

It's a hell of a way to die. That men must do this so we can have reliable electricity is a trade-off that should be lessened whenever possible, and wind power holds out that possibility. European countries, Great Britain, the Japanese, and to a phenomenal degree, the Chinese, are putting up turbines everywhere.

So Douglas should not draw the conclusion he was responsible for the recent deaths in West Virginia. But he sets policy in this state, and he should realize the cost of these policies and explain himself. Wind power won't alter our reliance on coal and nuclear electric generation, but it is cleaner and safer and, once the capital costs are recovered, damn near free. To stand in the way of such development is perverse, and to pretend that we bear no responsibility for mining accidents is air-headed.

The policy, Gov. Douglas, needs rethinking, and soon (even President Bush says so). Thus, ill-advised commentary, like the cartoon you object to and I apologize for, can be avoided.