Renewable Energy & Protecting the Environment Should Not Be Partisan Politics
Originally published in The Lowell Ledger 7/7/2022
Why on Earth has protecting our environment and conserving natural resources by “going green” in any way we can is turned into a partisan, Democrat vs Republican thing? It should not be this way. Please stick with me and read this whole column before you toss the paper in the trash bin, or better yet the recycle bin. I am hoping I can challenge the thinking of both Blue and Red readers.
The Eagle is the symbol of our country – it is not a mascot for the Red or Blue team. One of the best things I have seen in my lifetime is the return of eagles, not only in Michigan, but all over the country they symbolize. When I was a kid in the early 1970s, my mom had me read Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” a book about how we were trashing our environment. At that time, DDT and other pesticides were decimating eagles and other birds of prey. Carson and others painted a bleak picture of our future if we did not begin to be proactive in caring for our environment.
The president who made that giant leap for mankind was Richard M. Nixon. President Nixon was not a tree hugging hippie nor was he even a Democrat. For whatever reason, I would like to believe it was COMMON SENSE, he signed on to the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency and things started to change when it came to what we dumped and sprayed on the ground, in the air, and in the water. Fast forward to 2022 and we get to watch Bald Eagles patrolling the Flat and Grand Rivers.
My mom was the daughter of a lady raised on a farm. My Grandma Wright had a fantastic garden on the double lot where she and Grandpa lived on Manning Street in the City of Detroit. She grew grapes, corn, beans, and other veggies and had two or three cherry trees. She “put up” all kinds of fruits and veggies in her basement. She did not waste anything and passed that along to my mother. My mom taught me to recycle anything we could before recycling was a thing. My mom used laundry soap from Amway because it was less harmful to the earth. My mom was a very, very conservative, born-again Christian Republican. For her recycling was common sense – if glass bottles, tin cans, newspaper, and cardboard could be used again and again, it made sense to do so.
My older brother and I do not agree on much of anything when it comes to politics. However, he and I both have driven fuel efficient Toyota Prius cars. In fact, he bought one when they were first introduced and probably had four or five of them over the years before he got wild last year and bought a Tesla. He was a Court Officer who put thousands of miles on his car every month and to drive one that consistently gave him 45 miles per gallon and better was just common sense. He did mostly city driving and watched his mileage like a hawk, sometimes he would average 50 or more mpg. Back when I had a full size Prius he and I would try and outdo each other when it came to mpg, and he always came out ahead.
Okay, so far we have a Republican president helping to save the environment, a very conservative Republican teaching yours truly to recycle and a Republican Court Officer who pulled better mpg from his Prius than his Democrat brother.
Are you aware that George W. Bush kicked off wind power in 1999 in Texas when he was Governor Bush? A few years later, President Bush was powering his ranch with wind and geothermal power and collecting rainwater while Al Gore was working on his book and living on a compound that used way more electricity than did Bush’s ranch. I don’t know if it is still true, but at the time Bush out-greened Gore by a big margin. GWB is considered a hero when it comes to making electricity with wind power. Go ahead, get on your search engine to double check me, I will wait right here.
And now my closing argument: Georgetown, Texas. Ever heard of it?
Well, Georgetown is a very Red city of 50,000 people or so in the middle of a mostly Red state that does a lot of oil and gasoline business. (I believe they refer to it as “awl bidness” in Texas.) I learned how Georgetown was the very first city in the entire country to get all of its power from renewable energy in a documentary I watched. They hit the 100% Green Energy goal back in 2015.
They did not jump ship and become Democrats. They were not “converted” to the Blue camp – they went all out with green, renewable energy it because it made sense.
It especially made sense to Texas Republicans since their former governor is considered by many to be a wind energy leader. Admittedly it has not been all sunshine and roses for Georgetown or the electricity grid in Texas, but the point I am making here is that the first city in the US to be totally powered by renewable energy was not some liberal Democratic stronghold like Ann Arbor, MI or Berkeley, CA – it was Georgetown, TX.
This should be a challenge for Blue and Red folks. Blue people need to figure out why a Red city did it first and Red people need to quit thinking that renewable energy is something that only tree-hugging lefties are in favor of.
My perspective on the pursuit of green, renewable energy is that it is just common sense. More importantly it makes dollars and cents. The leadership of Georgetown harnessed green energy because it served to save them money. My brother drove a Prius because he saved hundreds and thousands of dollars at the gas pump over the years. President Bush opened the door, and became a practitioner of, the harvesting of energy from wind power because of the economic savings.
MSU installed one of the largest solar panel projects in parking lots at the school. A total of 5,000 parking spots are covered. Talk about win-win. The cars are protected from rain, snow, and sun and the panels generate thousands of kilowatts of energy. Hmmm, maybe renewable energy is not blue nor red – Go Green!
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