POINTLESS CMP CORRIDOR REFERENDUM

“The End Is Near!” was a recurring theme in the old Mad Magazine which ceased publishing last summer after a 67-year run. As a kid I read it religiously and was surprised it stayed around that long as I hadn’t seen a copy for decades. Turning pages of each new edition in the fifties and sixties, I’d see caricature variations of a gray-bearded man in a robe carrying a sign warning of impending apocalypse. MAD satirized everything; it was totally unserious and that appealed to me.

Some of that unseriousness is still in me, especially when hearing leftist Democrats preach variations of their “The End Is Near” rhetoric. They’ve long sermonized about doom from “global warming” or “climate change” during which the polar ice caps and alpine glaciers will ostensibly melt, flood the oceans, and kill millions unless we “Repent Now!” by abandoning fossil fuels, buying carbon credits, and totally switching over to windmills and solar panels.

Used to be they included hydroelectricity in their “clean energy” pantheon, but it seems to have fallen from grace. Nearly everywhere I’m seeing “NO CMP CORRIDOR” lawn signs after a referendum campaign put the question on Maine’s November ballot. Central Maine Power has plans to construct a powerline in western Maine to carry electricity from Hydro Quebec to Massachusetts.

Twice I’ve questioned champions of this movement about their reasons for opposing the line. Their biggest arguments were that, one: it would be unsightly, and two: it would cut trees along its route from the Canadian border to southern Maine. “What’s wrong with that?” I asked. “Well, trees absorb carbon dioxide and help prevent climate change,” was their answer.

I should disclose here that I’m not a believer in human-caused climate change and have written numerous columns over the years refuting it. When discussing the corridor issue, however, I didn’t proselytize; I just tried to understand the opposition. I’ve read the literature on their web sites like: https://www.nocmpcorridor.com and others and I’m still confused. The New England region needs more electricity and no combinations of solar panels and windmills can produce enough no matter how heavily they’re subsidized.

But this column isn’t about the deficiencies of “renewable energy.” It’s about trying to make sense of leftist/environmentalist opposition to hydroelectricity from Quebec. If they’re so worried about carbon emissions and global warming, what sense does it make to oppose hydroelectricity which doesn’t emit carbon? Yes, some trees would be cut down in a corridor for a new powerline, but other green things will grow there. Look at older power line corridors all over the landscape. There’s plenty of growth under the lines and it absorbs carbon too. 

Go to nocmpcorridor.com and look at the arguments; they’re the weakest I’ve ever seen in a political campaign:

“A 53 mile corridor the width of the New Jersey Turnpike would cut through western Maine, crossing some of the country's last native brook trout habitat, fragile wetlands, deer yards and ruining pristine scenic views,” it claims. Trout streams are not endangered. Neither are deer yards, or fragile wetlands. I concede that views would be compromised, but that’s it.

“Countless jobs in the biomass industry and related forest products industries would be put in jeopardy” the site claims. Really? How?

“Tourism is the number one industry in Maine, and this corridor will jeopardize those jobs,” it says. Really? Seasonal homes need electricity. So do campgrounds, hotels, restaurants, and just about all other tourist infrastructure. How, exactly, will a power line jeopardize those jobs? I can’t imagine.

The only plausible reason leftist/environmentalist groups oppose the CMP corridor is hinted at: “This corridor would jeopardize Maine’s renewable energy sector, which could lose hundreds of millions of dollars over the next fifteen years as a direct result of this project.” I guess they’re afraid that lots of clean electricity coming down from Canada would negate any need for additional “renewable sources” and, hence, the need for further taxpayer subsidies of their cherished wind and solar projects.

Wind and solar industries can’t survive without taxpayer subsidies because they cost more than they deliver and don’t produce energy on calm, cloudy days. To this writer, it looks like the NO CMP CORRIDOR movement is mostly afraid of losing its continued access to the government teat.

The whole campaign is tailor-made for a MAD Magazine spoof. Too bad it’s not around anymore.

ADDENDUM: Maine’s CMP Corridor was proposed after the “Northern Pass” project was rejected in neighboring New Hampshire. 

Subsidizing Stupid

I don’t want to buy any windmills and I don’t want to buy any solar panels. Most especially though - I don’t want to pay for other people to buy them either. But my government is taking my money and giving it to them. I don’t like that. I don’t like it one bit. If hippie greenies are foolhardy enough to pay more for their heat and electricity because it’s “green,” they’re free to do that. It would be none of my business as long as I didn’t have to pay for their silliness.
 
I don’t want to buy an electric car either - and I don’t want to pay for other people to buy them. But again, my government is taking my money and giving it to people who manufacture those cars - and more of my money to still other people who buy them. I don’t like that. It annoys me greatly.

There are lots of reasons why windmills don’t cut it as a power source, but the biggest is this: calm days. Sometimes the wind doesn’t blow. Sometimes it doesn’t blow for several days running. Ergo, no electricity. Whatever activities require it are not possible until the wind blows again whenever that may be. Sailboats have the same trouble; that’s why they’re only used for recreation now.

Here’s why solar panels don’t cut it: the sun doesn’t shine at night and days are often cloudy. What do we do on calm, cloudy days? We have to use the good old coal, oil, or natural gas generators. We have to keep that whole infrastructure in place and maintained on calm, cloudy days. Hippie greenies haven’t solved those problems and probably never will, but that doesn’t stop them from voting for “green” politicians who siphon money from my pocket to pay for their ridiculous notions.
 
There’s yet another major problem with windmills: When the wind blows hard for a day or two, the power generated - which the electricity utility is forced by government to buy at above-market rates no less - could burn up the whole grid causing extensive, long-term blackouts! Because of this, Maine utility companies have to spend $1.4 billion to beef up transmissions lines against those windmill surges driving up their transmission rates by 19.6% as of July 1, 2012. Transmission costs are about half my total monthly electric bill here in western Maine. In spite of enormous, long-term government subsidies - money from me and you, that is - windmills remain the most expensive way to generate electricity by far, and there’s nothing on the horizon to indicate that will ever change.

I have a generator to use when the grid shuts down, but I don’t want to generate my own power because it’s cheaper and more reliable to buy it from Central Maine Power (CMP). However, even when I send checks to CMP each month, much of that money goes to greenies and their windmills. That’s because CMP is forced by government to buy excess power from their windmills whether it’s needed or not and at inflated price as well! That means self-righteous hippie greenies can buy power at market rates when the wind doesn’t blow - and sell it at above-market rates when it does. This infuriates me.

I don’t want ethanol in my gasoline either, but I cannot buy gasoline that doesn’t contain it. Hippie greenies have forced that on me too. Worse, government is making me pay for ethanol even though it costs more than gasoline - and I get less energy from it. I have to pay for its subsidies in my taxes and I have to pay for it again when I pump it into my gas tank. I know government does dumb things, but I especially hate it when it forces me to cooperate in its stupidity. We’ve known since at least 2005 that it takes at least 29% more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than you get from it when you burn it. Worse still, it damages small engines like my chainsaws, lawnmowers, four-wheelers, generators, and every other small gasoline engine most of us have. Can we please, please stop this ethanol craziness? Please?

Maine’s Governor LePage is negotiating with Quebec Hydro to buy cheaper, more reliable electricity, but his biggest opponents are the hippie greenies who want to keep their windmill gravy train rolling here. Since the November election, they’re back in control of Maine’s legislature and likely to thwart LePage’s efforts. Greenies love President Obama because he wasted somewhere between $80 billion and $90 billion of taxpayer money on “Green Energy” development, while doing his best to shut down cheaper, more reliable, more dependable sources of energy from fossil fuels.

Looks like I’ll be forced to subsidize all this greenie government foolishness for the next several years at least. Sometimes I wish I were as stupid as they are, because then it wouldn’t all piss me off so much.