In his pitch to be the 2016 nominee for president, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, said climate change is bunk and any efforts to develop renewable energy are a waste of money.
Had he been in Kansas last weekend he could have barely stood up, the winds were so strong. And the moment the sun broke out Tuesday afternoon, we shed our sweaters.
To think we should not try to harness the energy that greets us day in and day out seems such a missed opportunity.
But there are those who say as a country we should continue to bank on our finite sources — oil, natural gas and coal — as the energy of the future.
Such anti-green groupthink is a focus of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council that has almost 50 Kansas legislators among its ranks.
ALEC works to create model legislation that states can use as templates. This last legislative session ALEC was behind House Bill 2458, which sought to end “net metering.” This is a system that allows home owners and businesses that generate their own energy through sun and wind to transfer any surplus power onto a public utility’s power grid. As of yet, such self-producers are not charged a maintenance fee to load their extra energy onto a utility’s power grid.
Most regard this as a win/win arrangement. It not only encourages the production of renewable energy but also adds to the overall generating capabilities of a utility.
The net metering bill never made it to the full House for consideration, which doesn’t mean it won’t come back in some form or fashion next year.
ALEC also provided the basis for Senate Bill 82, the “Electricity Freedom Act,” which proposed to delay the state’s mandate that by 2020 state utilities be able to draw 20 percent of their power from renewable resources.
To the House’s credit, the measure failed.
The anti-green movement, however, is gaining steam, evidenced by a new organization loosely called the Kansas Senior Consumer Alliance formed by Iola’s Virginia Crossland-Macha, as reported last week by The Associated Press.
The group has recently sent out mailings aimed to scare senior citizens into thinking they are being taken advantage of by environmentalists. The flyer depicts those who place solar panels on rooftops or windmills in their back yards as moochers on public utilities. And it’s senior citizens who are having to pay, the warning goes.
SENIORS, of course, should be outraged and insulted that they can be taken as dupes.
Of anyone, they know the importance of being good stewards of this precious Earth, and, perhaps more importantly, of facing facts.
Those whose industries rely on burning fossil fuels want us to believe they do so with no consequence to the environment. The recent report compiled by 240 scientists, business people and other experts from across the world says unless we change this dependence, the effects of global warming will worsen.
Good leadership makes for a better future. Sen. Rubio and those who deny climate change are not thinking beyond the next kickback or election.
— Susan Lynn
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