Maine Owl

Hot topic: States and energy independence


Governor John Baldacci (D-ME): Savvy politics, good comments

In parts not in the clips above of the session at the National Governor's Association conference in Washington D.C. this weekend, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman admits that the ratio of people who know anything about energy to those who talk about it is low, one to a million maybe. True. And Friedman has written a "green energy" tract for the Times magazine within the last year. On his hiatus from his column, I think he's working on a book on the subject? I missed the beginning of this so I did not catch the reasons the governors might have found Friedman worthy of the expert's seat.

But as "green" as Friedman positions himself, he turns out to be a "flat"-out promoter of coal and nuclear--reinforced by big-nuke-builder General Electric Corporation Chairman & CEO Jeffrey Immelt.

Friedman: (with big arm gesture and deadpan expression): Between now and when we get to that clean fuel future, ... there's only two ways to fill it in a cleaner way--that is, some kind of cleaner coal, and nuclear. At scale, I don't see any other way.

It's not that Friedman's points are all wet, it's just that the creativity of his thinking is very limited. He is clearly correct that direct-conversion solar energy does not presently supply much of the input to the world energy grids. But why is the only solution a crash course into getting new nukes up, as Immelt obviously dearly would like to see?

And what of "clean" coal? I thought our governor, John Baldacci, took the right tack.

Governor Baldacci: It's just that for the life of me, this industry, in nuclear, and in coal, and I have supported clean-coal technologies, have had opportunities to come forward with next-generation products. And sometimes it gets very frustrating because we've been left at the gate, and there's so many other opportunities. ...

But I just think there's so many opportunities, ... we've been held at the gate too long by the older technologies.

Thank you, Governor Baldacci. Now the governors need to be talking to a truly creative thinker with plenty of technical punch, Arjun Makhijani, Founder and President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Tacoma Park, Maryland. His book on a "Carbon-free, nuclear-free" roadmap is HERE. And I have a very good podcast up HERE, where Dr. Makhijani disembowels the case for nuclear power.

With creative thinkers who really know energy like Arjun Makhijani around, why should the governors bother with Friedman?