Trash and tides

There is something alarming about this statement:

Instead of being designated the dumping ground of North America for municipal waste, Michigan could turn that waste into energy, Granholm said. Eventually, families might be able to feed their trash into devices in their homes and out would come something useful at the other end.

The governor has been making a big push for alternative energy, and I’m glad to see it. If she leaves a legacy for rebuilding the state's economy partially on new, cleaner ways of generating energy, it'll be a legacy worth having.

I’m not so comfortable with the notion of turning landfill waste into a positive. I realize it’s a way to put a silver lining on a bad situation, but part of the problem is that people have no connection to garbage once they put it outside and it’s hauled away. They don’t have to figure out where it goes, they don’t need to see it (unless they drive past it, and can see the seagulls circling overhead) … it just kind of leaves their awareness. I’m fairly certain that this is part of the reason why Americans throw so much stuff away. What would be really useful is encouraging people to create less waste, and not look to their energy bills as an incentive to not do so.

It was a point made, oddly enough, by a local development bigwig during a press conference for a local group hoping to create a vision for the community (the group listed, among other things, antigrowth sentiment as a threat to the community’s health…). It’s the big picture people lose sight of, he said.

Meanwhile, this remark from the presidential campaign caught my eye.

We also must increase our use of solar power, wind power and hydro-power. We can reduce energy costs and reduce pollution through conservation. And if we can figure out how to change our electrical grid to a digital grid we'll be able to use our energy on a much more efficient and consistent basis.

We must do everything, is essentially to sum total of Rudy's remarks.

I don’t expect presidential candidates, especially Republicans, to be very well versed in issues like alternative energy or the environment, but I’m not sure Rudy realizes how stupid a statement this really is. Maybe he’s talking about the potential for tidal power, but the potential for traditional hydropower is about nil. Most American rivers that could be reliably dammed to generate electricity have already been so, and the Southwestern drought has reminded us that relying on rivers wasn’t a very good idea in the first place. When water tables fall, water tables fall, and there isn’t much you can do about it.

On top of that, building dams is very expensive. It’s almost as if Rudy is advocating that we return to the days of big public projects from the days of FDR, which I suspect are fightin’ words in some parts.

You can do inobtrusive hydropower, I guess, if you’re willing to invest in new technology, but Rudy also backs things like coal (clean, of course) and nuclear. So, it’s hard to imagine that he wants to turn back the clock 30 years in some cases, and look to tomorrow in others.