The landmark bill on energy and the environment carefully worked out by the legislature and the Governor and signed by Patrick into law yesterday makes some important leaps forward to reversing our state’s contribution to global climate change and reducing our energy use.
The bill, which includes some controversial provisions for gasified coal and biofuels with which I disagree, does take some very new and significant steps: energy efficiency and conservation is addressed in a big way, as are incentives (indeed, requirements) for our utilities to get some of their energy - 25% by 2030 - from renewable sources. This paves the way for Massachusetts to perhaps be the first state in the nation to reduce their CO2 emissions to below 1990 levels, something Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Ian Bowles said we could see in the next five years.
So with the goal of reducing our emissions to those levels, and even further, why are we entertaining the notion of putting up large, inefficient peak power plants run off of fossil fuels like the plant being proposed in Billerica? The more of these plants we allow to be built while enacting the provisions of this new law, the harder it will be to reach the goal of CO2 reduction. It’s like taking your treadmill and deliberately placing it on an uphill and expecting that you can do the same amount of work to exercise.
The cost of natural gas to heat our homes has almost doubled since December (I noticed it on my bill, did you?). Part of the reason for the cost is that over the last couple of decades, the cheap availability of natural gas, which enticed many homeowners to convert from oil or electric heat to natural gas, also attracted big corporate energy companies like the one building the Billerica plant or hoping to expand the Lowell L’Energia plant. They are the long-term cause of higher prices, as they made the commodity more scarce and precious. (We residential customers pay the price of course, twice - once at our own gas valve for heating our homes, and the second with higher electricity prices as the cost of generating power with natural gas goes up.) The shorter term cost hikes are more about the volatility of the oil markets and other commodity prices, but suffice it to say that not only are we, as consumers, shooting ourselves in the foot for every natural gas plant built anywhere, but we are also contributing to more global warming and pollution for our local residents.
This is why allowing the Billerica power plant, or allowing L’Energia to go online at all (or expand, though the developer swears he’s not planning to, there appears to be confusion on that) undermines the good work of this landmark legislation.
So to Governor Patrick, Sal DiMasi, and Terese Murray, I congratulate you on your courage, vision and intelligence in passing this bill, but don’t let the Big Energy fool you - they will undermine that goal if it means they can make money. If we stop allowing fossil fuel peak power plants to be built, then we’re that much closer to the goal line. Let’s not build any more of these outdated power plants, and certainly not in dense residential (and disadvantaged) neighborhoods, any longer.
One of the best reasons to be excited about moving my business downtown is the prospect of being a short walking distance from the Lowell Farmers’ Market at JFK Plaza near City Hall. Every year, I say to myself, I’d like to make a habit of buying local, fresh produce from the market, and every year, I seem to forget or can’t find the time. Now, I have no excuse!
The Market opens on July 11th and is every Friday until sometime in October. Though I’m growing some of my own veggies, my pepper plants got eaten by some rascal varmint and might not survive. (Oh, if only the Lowes were built, I might have had time to go buy some fencing!) So though I will be awash in tomatoes, I look forward to filling in some of my veggie and fruit deficiencies at the Market. Yum!
Friday on Thinking Out Loud, I’m back from my hiatus to interview Lunenburg School Committeeperson Jen Benson, who is running for 37th Middlesex State Rep (the district encompasses parts of Acton and Lancaster and all of Boxborough, Harvard, Lunenburg, and Shirley) . She is the sole Democrat running for the seat. Her Republican opponent is none other than Kurt Hayes, the “independent” who ran for our US House Seat. I guess he found the Republican in him after all. Jen is a progressive and practical voice who has for the last six years has helped Lunenberg schools thrive despite tightening resources from the state and rising costs.
If you’ll be off doing your family holiday activities and can’t listen to the show, I’ll also post the audio here on LiL as well next week. The show starts at 10am on WUML 91.5FM, and you should be able to stream it live as well.
I know it was official a long time ago, and I’m saying nothing new here, but the media just…sucks. They don’t know their you-know-what from their elbow. In fact, I bet they try to poop with their elbows all the time. There’s no other explanation for their atrocious behavior.
Case in point, this Wesley Clark statement where he questions whether or not McCain’s military service actually qualifies him more than Obama to be CiC. The media has completely, I mean really totally, ignored all context in chasing down Clark in a McCain-butt-kissing witch hunt. When the context was actually a couple of sentences said right before the sound bited clip, and in the question asked by the interviewer, you know the McCain-Brownosing Media have just lost it. It’s not like it wasn’t so plain to anyone who actually saw the entire (and not just the one-sentence) clip. You can’t even claim “laziness” with the context on this one being so easy to understand and to find.
From Media Matters, who says it best (bold mine):
Many in the media have cropped Clark’s June 29 Face the Nation interview to the short soundbite: “I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.” Those cropping the interview make two serious errors. First, they ignore that Clark was repeating Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer’s words in response to Schieffer’s statement that, unlike McCain, Obama has not “ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down.” Second, they ignore that shortly before that part of Clark’s exchange with Schieffer, Clark praised McCain’s service: “I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands of millions of others in the Armed Forces as a prisoner of war. He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and he has traveled all over the world.” Clark continued: “But he hasn’t held executive responsibility. That large squadron in Air — in the Navy that he commanded, it wasn’t a wartime squadron. He hasn’t been there and ordered the bombs to fall. He hasn’t seen what it’s like when diplomats come in and say, ‘I don’t know whether we’re going to be able to get this point through or not. Do you want to take the risk? What about your reputation? How do we handle it publicly?’ He hasn’t made those calls, Bob.”
Honestly, if the MBM (McCain-Brownosing Media) get any stupider, I’m going to start chewing off my own arm in disgust. And I agree with David, and Kos, Obama shouldn’t have denounced it. Obama made the same mistake - taking a one-sentence statement that was part of a lot more context - and threw his supporter under the bus. Obama didn’t have to embrace Clark’s statement, he could have said “Of course we all honor McCain’s service to this country, and Clark said so” and left it at that. Obama, I know, is smarter than that, way smarter, he knew what Clark was trying to say (and did say, very eloquently) and so this had to be a political calculation. And since Obama is trying to run as a different politician who can take on the hard truths and not back down on them, I can tell you this sort of exercise isn’t helping to solidify that perception. Not with the Democratic base, nor with the swing voter. Bad move.
All for a statement that, basically, was a very legitimate question, especially in light of how often McCain drags out his personal military story as evidence that he’s the superior candidate. McCain brought it up. We’re not allowed to question it, apparently.
But Republicans can LIE when it comes to attacking our guys’ military service. Max Cleland and John Kerry come to mind. Both of whose service was attacked for being dishonorable, when it wasn’t. All Clark did was ask whether or not McCain’s service really shows executive experience, which McCain claims (vehemently) to have because of that very military experience. Clark went out of his way to honor McCain’s military service. He just thinks it doesn’t make him a better candidate for CiC, is all. And Clark did attain a rank of General. McCain never went near that equivalent for his branch.
The media happily spread the pile’o'crap that the Swiftboaters were peddling in 2004, for weeks. But Clark says something legitimately questioning, and they attack him with ferocity. Yeah, there’s no rightward media bias, all right. It’s the liberal media all the way. Give me a break.
Update: Let me just add, I don’t think there IS anyone qualified to be President. I think there are jobs that give you some experience - like Senator for understanding how government works, or Governor for having to make executive decisions, or maybe for some aspects of the job, CEO of a corporation or a famous Hollywood celebrity (for coping with the lack of privacy and media attention gracefully). However, NO ONE is totally prepared to be president. It is, by nature, an on-the-job learning experience. There is nothing in the nation like being US President. Ergo, anyone who claims to have enough experience to be president is an idiot. What qualifications we as voters have to look for in potential PoTUSes is good judgement, intelligence, and an ability to take in a lot of information and make really important and far-reaching decisions.
By the way, on those requirements for being PoTUS, McCain fails so miserably it’s laughable. He obviously doesn’t know his own you-know-what from his elbow on the economy (he admitted it himself), nor in our conflict in Iraq (the differences between Shia and Sunni, al Quada and Iran), nor does he show any real leadership in any of the areas we desperately need, giving us campaign promises that amount to less than half-measures (the environment, energy policy, protecting our Constitution).
The Sun reports that three of Lowell’s bridges are going to be worked on at the same time.
I am SO glad I moved down from that part of town several years ago. Yeesh!
The University Avenue bridge will likely have to be shut down to traffic entirely starting sometime later this summer …
Meanwhile, Woods said construction is expected to begin this fall on the state-funded, $10 million overhaul of the Hunts Falls bridge, which carries Route 38 over the Merrimack, connecting the Belvidere and Centralville sections of