A Green Deal

I like to think I'm a conservationist. We recycle and go weeks before we have to put our trash can at the curb. Our 1930s-era house is well insulated; the gas company tells us that we are doing 20% better than comparable energy-efficient houses in our area.

But given a chance to visit our grandsons, we jump in the car and drive 2½ hours to see them, and then drive back, twice a month or so. At 25 mpg, that's about 12 gallons of fossil fuel per trip. So it can feel hypocritical if I get on some bandwagon about green energy.

Most of us compromise our ideals. But I don't think that means we shouldn't have any. And it doesn't mean we shouldn't think about them. At the very least, let's take climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe's advice and talk about climate change.

I support green energy. I believe the climate scientists when they say we are facing problems that we ought to do something about. Solar and wind energy keep getting better and cheaper and we ought to be investing in them. I think coal should be relegated to nostalgic fireplaces and a few other specialized uses.

I also think the proper distance between my home and a nuclear power plant is 93 million miles. But nuclear power is carbon-free, so I might agree to a reactor closer to home than the sun. Sometimes we compromise when we opt for the lesser of two evils.

George "Eeyore" Will opposed electric cars in part because "electric vehicles will be powered mostly by fossil-fuel-generated electricity." Now he apparently opposes efforts to power them in other ways. If you start by saying a thing can't be done, you won't try. Eeyore advises us not to try.

Why not try? The Green New Deal is ambitious and probably somewhat less than realistic. But I love the enthusiasm behind it for addressing a serious challenge. I love that it takes a serious problem seriously. I love the optimism for fixing the problem.

My car is 20 years old, so it will probably be replaced in 10 years, and I may get an electric car. But if it were only 5 years old, I would be looking at hanging on to it for another 10 to 15 years. Plus, I like road trips, and an electric car is not (yet) ideal for long drives on blue highways. Will my ideals trump my personal preferences? Hard to say.

It's also hard to say how global warming will affect us. The seas will rise slowly, so if we spend a lot of money we may be able to build dikes around our low areas. Maybe the refugees from lands lost to the sea will go to some country that will welcome them, unlike ours. Maybe not as many species will go extinct as expected. Maybe we'll come up with a technological cure. Maybe it's too late, and the best we can hope for is palliative care.

One thing I am certain of is that we could do better. We could do better at taking climate change seriously. And we could do better at reducing our carbon output. But it's difficult when the administration ridicules and the utilities obstruct.

Utilities do talk about green energy, but most want to control it rather than support it. They ask us to pay a premium for green energy, but if my church wants to put up solar panels on its well-placed south-facing roof we must limit the array to no more than would be needed to power the church building. Why? Because the utilities lobbied for a law that allows them to make this restriction. I do wish Consumer's Energy and DTE Energy would take lessons for Green Mountain Energy on how to encourage rather than discourage solar investment and how to leverage the grid to their—and our—advantage. We need, and need to encourage, solar farms and other large-scale solar power plants, but we also need a million home-owners willing to invest their own money in a solar rooftop.

In Michigan, the naysayers say there are too many clouds for solar energy. I say solar panels won't work if they are covered with a wet blanket. Germany, farther north and with a climate as cloudy as Michigan's, gets significantly more power from the sun than we do in the US. When is the heaviest load for the electric utilities? In the summer on hot days, mid-afternoon, when all the air conditioners are going. So put solar panels on west-facing roofs and have the power when you need it.

Some may find solar panels too boring (they just sit there) and wind energy too breezy. They prefer a grand scheme for global rescue of carbon sequestering. While I support research into this (potentially partial) solution, I don't have a lot of hope for it. The idea works something like this:

1. Use energy and water to extract carbon in stable liquid form from the ground.
2. Use energy to refine it.
3. Burn it to create energy, releasing carbon into the atmosphere.
4. Expend more energy capturing carbon from the air.
5. Use even more energy to convert it into a stable form so it doesn't escape back into the atmosphere.
6. Bury the carbon.
7. Hope it stays put.

Not to get overly practical here, but why not just leave the raw carbon in the ground in the first place? If you have that option. (We do.)

But green technology requires rare earth metals, right? Wind generators need magnets, and these typically require neodymium, which is called a rare earth metal but is no more rare than copper or nickel. Most of this now comes from China, but the US also has sizable reserves. Would we need to increase mining? Probably. Drat, another compromise.

So who loses if we buy insurance, however inadequate at this point, by doing as much as possible to reduce carbon output? Jobs in oil, gas, and coal would be, are already being, offset by green energy. There are already more solar than coal-mining jobs in the US.

There will be a few losers. These are the owners of companies that invest millions of dollars to influence our politicians and convince you and me that solar and wind are for wusses.

Those losing out have had it pretty good for a pretty long while. They have gotten government subsidies, they have tapped our public lands, they have made billions, and they haven't had to pay for the damage done to our atmosphere. We didn't know about that damage, but now we do. And I can't say I'd feel too bad if they didn't get to lead the energy parade in the next go-round.