The Midmorning Refill: Navigating a clean energy future is not without its hurdles
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If you read one thing today . . .
Nobody said that transitioning away from dirty fossil fuels to renewable energy sources was going to be easy. Except when we envisioned obstacles, we were thinking more along the lines of prying Congress from the clammy grip of the oil and coal industries. We weren’t really thinking about the problem with wind power that Tom Zeller Jr. points out in the New York Times — that giant turbines aren’t necessarily the quietest contraptions. While wind power is an essential part of our clean energy future, as Zeller points out, there’s a lot to consider when deciding where to build windmills. Zeller writes:
Like the Lindgrens, many of the people complaining the loudest are reluctant converts to the antiwind movement.
“The quality of life that we came here for was quiet,” Mrs. Lindgren said. “You don’t live in a place where you have to take an hour-and-15-minute ferry ride to live next to an industrial park. And that’s where we are right now.”
Overheard:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi talking to the Huffington Post about the GOP: “God bless them for being true to who they are,” Pelosi responded. “They just can’t resist the urge to stomp on poor people. They drove the country into a terrible ditch. The President and the Congress are trying to pull us out. The economists tell us that if we hadn’t acted the way — in the federal initiatives from the Congress and others, that we would have 8.5 million more people unemployed. That unemployment would be 14.5 percent, the deficit would be huge — even huger than it is.”