Alexander misses the mark on safe and clean energy

Alexander misses the mark on safe and clean energy

By STEPHEN A. SMITH

Sen. Lamar Alexander hosted an important meeting Oct. 18 to discuss the impacts of high natural gas price on Tennessee's economy. On the same day, The Tennessean published his views on the subject. Unfortunately, Sen. Alexander missed an opportunity to promote a balanced, informed and forward-looking strategy on energy policy that would add Tennessee jobs and protect our health and natural environment.

Our organization, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, has supported and continues to support Alexander's leadership position on clean air. We share his concern for protecting the health of our children and citizens from the dangers of air pollution.

Together we have worked for years to protect natural treasures such as the Great Smoky Mountains National Park from the damaging impacts of harmful emissions. We also support exploring new, advanced ways to use coal, such as gasification, which increase efficiency and decrease pollution.

Unfortunately, Alexander has increasingly started to parrot the narrow interests of a few well-positioned energy lobbyists who benefit from promoting failed technologies that continue to block our path to sustainable, independent energy practices. First, Alexander supported an energy bill that was originally hatched in secret meetings held by Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force. Republican Sen. John McCain described the failed bill as one that would "leave no lobbyist behind." Attempting to pass laws like this does little to promote a balanced energy policy, and it only creates distrust.

Alexander also has been seduced by the siren song of the nuclear power lobby promising "clean energy" while ignoring serious concerns about nuclear proliferation, a dismal economic track record and serious scientific problems with long-term nuclear waste disposal. Alexander held a sham Senate hearing last spring in which he heard only from representatives and lobbyists advocating strongly for expansion of nuclear power.

The senator only gave lip service to how TVA followed the nuclear industry's allure in the past that left them and is saddled with a crushing debt that prevents TVA from providing the very innovation this country needs to develop alternative energy approaches.

Now, in one of his most outrageous and uninformed statements to date, Alexander criticized clean, renewable energy development in our state. "They suggest instead massive windmills, as tall as football fields are long and as noisy as freight trains, which to my way of thinking scar the landscape in the name of saving it," he wrote on this page.

This suggests to us that the senator is spending too much time in his office listening to lobbyists and not enough time on the ground where energy is being produced. We are willing to wager a bottle of Tennessee's finest whiskey that a blindfolded person could easily tell the difference between today's modern quiet wind turbines and a noisy freight train loaded with dirty coal.

In truth, as far as scarring our landscape, a few hundred or even thousands of graceful wind turbines would not even come close to the permanent scars inflicted upon our regional mountain and ridge tops by the devastating practice of mountain top removal coal mining. When the senator wrote about what he called clean energy, he never mentioned the fast growing renewable energy market.

With proper incentives, Tennessee farmers could become big financial winners in the development of renewable bio-energy and receive money for carbon sequestration in soils and forests. When will our senator hold a hearing on how Tennessee could benefit from a forward-thinking energy policy?

Our nation's energy policy is at an important crossroads — aging power plants, stretched electrical grids, dependence on foreign oil, much of it from a deadly and unstable part of the world. At the same time, we have real environmental challenges including air pollution, protecting disappearing wild places and serious impact on the climate from global warming pollution.

Sen. Alexander, Tennessee and our nation needs you to guide us through this crossroads with an open and balanced mind. Show us with actions, not just words, your commitment to explore and understand all the options necessary move down the road to clean and affordable energy. ■

Stephen A. Smith is executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. E-mail: www.cleanenergy.org