To The Editor:
I would like to echo and extend Dinsmore Fulton's points made in her letter last week (January 31, 2013). We are an energy consuming country and we are consuming more energy than ever, not less. We need to discuss rationally and honestly where we want that energy to come from.
I personally would like to see much more attention paid to reducing consumption, such as by increasing public support for public transportation, graduating the cost of commercial and residential energy usage as consumption increases and mandating greener building codes and much higher fuel efficiency for vehicles. However, I know reducing consumption alone will be insufficient since our usage continues to increase as we continually develop "smarter must have" technologies.
We need to confront this challenge by honestly discussing the pros and cons of all types of energy production and use. There are no perfectly clean and non-impactful energy options. We need to decide which ones strike the best short- and long-term balance between social, environmental and economic costs and benefits, in our community and nationally and internationally. But burying our heads in the sand or avoiding the problem with "not-in-my-backyard" answers that simply pass the buck to other communities are not appropriate responses.
Anne Bordonaro
Waitsfield
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