Skip to main content

Environmental Activism or Just a Job?

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a native Alaskan and member of the Senate Subcommittee on Energy, writes in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner about her encounter with a U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) representative who was going door to door, urging opposition to the Energy Policy Act.
I began to engage the young man on the merits of the president's and Congress's energy plans beyond oil production, like conservation, renewables and efficiency standards. He rejected nuclear power as too dangerous, assuring me wind power was the way to go, regardless of the amount of land needed to generate enough power, the number of birds that would be killed or the viewshed issues. I brought up ocean energy, but he was concerned about its impact on fish. He conceded the merits of natural gas but insisted it should come from foreign sources--never mind that most nations' environmental standards are nowhere near America's.

We had been discussing energy issues almost 20 minutes with me challenging him point for point when he broke down. "Ma'am," he said, "this is just a job." He continued, "I don't really believe that we shouldn't drill in the Arctic. I've never been to Alaska. If we drill for oil anywhere, we ought to drill up there--that state is huge. I agree about wind and nuclear energy. It bugs me what they [PIRG] tell us to say." He confessed he wasn't interested in energy issues but was using talking points for his summer job.

... He explained he was doing this for leadership skills as he was a team leader for four others canvassing the neighborhood that night. I informed him what he was doing wasn't leadership--leadership is about advocating for issues he truly cared about, regardless of financial reward. While I was certainly concerned about his actions, Alaskans should be even more concerned about the motivation of opponents to opening ANWR and their willingness to mislead and deceive the public in the process.

Rather than focus on the distortions and fundraising tactics of U.S. PIRG, Alaskans should recognize how committed the forces that want to stop us from responsible energy development truly are. Alaskans must become equally passionate about increased energy production in this country and why the perfect site is a tiny portion of the Arctic coastal plain.

This young man was just a disingenuous salesperson. Americans, however, need to become ardent hawkers of a sound energy policy that combines renewable energy, conservation and new technology with a balanced willingness to produce more energy domestically. Congress took giant steps forward with the newly signed energy bill, and we will go even further when we take up ANWR again this fall.

Alaskans need to team the passion of our opponents with a love for the truth. That is how we will emerge victorious in our battle to open ANWR to responsible oil development.
And the same goes for nuclear energy. As we've seen before, U.S. PIRG isn't all its cracked up to be.

Technorati tags:

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Why Ex-Im Bank Board Nominations Will Turn the Page on a Dysfunctional Chapter in Washington

In our present era of political discord, could Washington agree to support an agency that creates thousands of American jobs by enabling U.S. companies of all sizes to compete in foreign markets? What if that agency generated nearly billions of dollars more in revenue than the cost of its operations and returned that money – $7 billion over the past two decades – to U.S. taxpayers? In fact, that agency, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), was reauthorized by a large majority of Congress in 2015. To be sure, the matter was not without controversy. A bipartisan House coalition resorted to a rarely-used parliamentary maneuver in order to force a vote. But when Congress voted, Ex-Im Bank won a supermajority in the House and a large majority in the Senate. For almost two years, however, Ex-Im Bank has been unable to function fully because a single Senate committee chairman prevented the confirmation of nominees to its Board of Directors. Without a quorum

NEI Praises Connecticut Action in Support of Nuclear Energy

Earlier this week, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed SB-1501 into law, legislation that puts nuclear energy on an equal footing with other non-emitting sources of energy in the state’s electricity marketplace. “Gov. Malloy and the state legislature deserve praise for their decision to support Dominion’s Millstone Power Station and the 1,500 Connecticut residents who work there," said NEI President and CEO Maria Korsnick. "By opening the door to Millstone having equal access to auctions open to other non-emitting sources of electricity, the state will help preserve $1.5 billion in economic activity, grid resiliency and reliability, and clean air that all residents of the state can enjoy," Korsnick said. Millstone Power Station Korsnick continued, "Connecticut is the third state to re-balance its electricity marketplace, joining New York and Illinois, which took their own legislative paths to preserving nuclear power plants in 2016. Now attention should