June 2010: Clean Energy Future

I can’t bear to read the news or watch the footage on TV. The BP oil "leak" in the Gulf of Mexico is the worst single environmental disaster in our nation's history, and the world deserves answers as to how Congress will prevent this from taking place again. As I envision the precious Louisiana coastline under assault, with brown pelicans and other species coated with oil, I also wonder what assurances we have that this kind of thing will never, ever happen right here in the Great Lakes. 

Part of the solution to the current crisis at the federal level has been in the works for months: Senate passage of comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation. While this won’t solve all the threats of oil pollution --- and it won't take care of our country's overall addiction to oil --- it will put us on the track toward clean, renewable energy.

Conservation and environmental organizations in Michigan --- 1,200 miles away from the Gulf --- have not been taking this situation lightly. We have been working hard to educate citizens throughout the state and put increased pressure on our two pivotal U.S. senators to do the right thing: Be real leaders in creating a plan that reduces our dependence on fossil fuels, puts us on the path a clean energy future, and creates real jobs for our talent manufacturing base here in Michigan.

There also is increased citizen interest in ensuring that our current state law banning directional drilling under the Great Lakes becomes part of the Michigan Constitution so that no random acts of legislative decision-making in the future can open our waters to a potential BP-esque disaster. (They raided the segregated fund that was set aside to deal with leaking underground toxic storage tanks; what prevents them from reversing our current drilling law? Not much.)

I was part of a lively discussion this morning with Mike Garfield, Director of the Ecology Center, on state and federal energy policy. We talked with David Fair, morning host at 89.1 FM. 

(You can listen to the interview AT THIS LINK)

Topics included the Gulf disaster and the implications for Michigan, the 2008 election mantra of "drill baby drill" and former DEQ Director Russ Harding's recent push for Great Lakes drilling.

Will such efforts prevail to overturn existing Michigan law preventing directional drilling in our precious lakes? On the flip side, is there enough public interest and potential public pressure to compel our Canadian neighbors to reverse their current large scale course of directional drilling in Lake Ontario? What are the potential impacts from increased drilling for natural gas in Michigan?

There's much to consider at a time when the general public is completely fed up with politics as usual in America. The front page of the Detroit Free Press on Wednesday had a headline that read, "Voters Fed up with Partisanship." With only 10-30% of voters participating in our primary elections, the extreme on both the left and the right end up determining who will go on to the general election. Our nation ends up with candidates on the extreme fringes, unwilling to come to the middle where most of America actually is and where real compromise can truly be made.

With so many fundamental and critical decisions on the table here in Michigan and nationally --- ones that pertain to our addiction to oil and how we truly move toward a clean energy future --- can we really afford to keep squandering away our democracy?

--- Posted by Lisa Wozniak. 

--- Photo Credit: Clairity via Flickr.