It is time that Jamestown and America move forward with investing in the new energy technologies of the twenty-first century.
Coal is a destructive, polluting, inefficient source of energy through its entire use cycle. There is no such thing as clean coal - period. Humankind cannot afford the carbon dioxide impacts, ocean acidification and climate change impacts associated with adding additional coal plants anywhere.
Nuclear energy is a risky toxic technology whose radioactive material storage and permanent containment problems have never been solved. As an energy source, communities can generate seven times the energy savings by installing present day technologies compared to the same cost per unit of energy generated by constructing and operating a nuclear power plant. Not withstanding the lack of disposal options, the high capital costs of nuclear facilities continue to make nuclear economically infeasible.
The only way nuclear plants are feasible is because politicians force the public to invest huge amounts of tax dollars to subsidize such plants and swallow the unacceptably high stakes risk of disaster.
A decade ago Jamestown invested millions to construct cleaner natural gas burners to generate electricity. They sit idle while the BPU stays wedded to less efficient and dirty coal. Corn-generated ethanol is a fraudulent "renewable" energy. We get ripped off at the pump for gasoline forcibly diluted with lower energy per unit of volume ethanol to line the pockets of big corporate agribusiness, while food grains prices are driven up causing hardships upon the poor worldwide because one quarter of American grain is diverted for ethanol production.
Even worse, after fuel, fertilizer, and fermentation energy inputs are figure in, corn-derived ethanol does not produce any net gain in energy production.
We need a new sustainable energy paradigm in this country and worldwide to keep the Earth hospitable to seven billion people. We must target massive cuts in energy use through applying old and new energy technologies, and phase out the use of coal, oil and nuclear toxic energy technologies as soon as possible - our children and grandchildren's survival is dependent upon it!
Look closely at the radical Republican initiatives in Congress, they are designed to bolster the industries that poison our atmosphere and waters, with no regard for human impacts, at a critical time when clean, when ambitious conservation programs must be quickly implemented and truly renewable energy sources brought to the mainstream to avert global climate change disasters.
John Jablonski III lives in Lakewood.