April Fools’ Day is Fun, But the Climate Crisis is Serious
I’ll readily admit that my team at AllEarth Renewables and I had a lot of fun in putting together the “iNuke” product and supporting materials that prominently made their way around our great State of Vermont yesterday. (If you are among the few who missed it, check here. And while it is important that we maintain humor and perspective during these challenging times, we cannot lose sight of either the threat that climate change poses to us or the reality that renewable generation must lead us out of the mess we have created for ourselves and our children.
In an Op Ed piece a few months back, I noted the coming energy supply shortage. That shortage is moving closer by the day, exacerbated by national and international political uncertainties, Presidential hostility toward renewable energy and the ever-increasing and unprecedented warming of global temperatures. ISO-New England has not changed its assessment that we will see a doubling of electric demand within 25 years, and I frankly think that estimate is conservative. How many things do you plug in at home compared to what your parents or grandparents did? With billions of dollars expended in research, development and tooling costs, are car manufacturers going to throw out electric vehicle efforts and bring back those LeSabres and Country Squires you see in the old black and white family photos? Are AI, chip fabs and Bitcoin mining, with their huge electrical usage (whether we understand it or not), going to disappear in favor of Wheat Pennies (1909-1958) and carbon copies of credit card receipts? Not likely. Electricity is here to stay, and we have created a state and a world deeply dependent on it.
Our iNuke product is not real, and neither it nor its “nuke-lite” counterparts are available real-world solutions to our climate crisis, whatever others may profess or wish to believe (e.g. the latest VT Digger article). And with due respect to their creators, neither are renewable energy credits, economic studies, legislated goals, regulatory mandates nor the myriad other things that do not actually generate electricity. These things can of course be important components in helping get generation built, but we must essentially think of them as the adjectives in sentences in which a robust and renewable grid is the noun.
No business likes to disappoint its customers. AllEarth Renewables is no exception, and we are sorry that we will not be able to fill the iNuke orders that will no doubt be coming in over the next several days. But let’s get over our mutual disappointment and all do something in April, since it is Earth Month, after all. While there are some individual things we can and should do (walk, carpool, use transit, weatherize), we must get our act together as a State and take big picture, pragmatic steps to ensure that a clean, reliable and growing electricity supply is here (as in Vermont here) as soon as possible. Let’s join together and push our state leaders, legislators, regulatory agencies and one another toward the clear, aggressive and understandable renewable energy program we must have in a world where the climate crisis is real and iNukes are not.