      I’ve done the math. Even in these lean times I’ve taken the time from trying to put food on the table to try and understand why Mr. Wall does not do the obvious and put the unemployed energy grunts back to work by embracing clean renewable energy with equal enthusiasm as what he worships: old, dirty, extractive energy production.
           The amount of money media has reported spent on clean coal technology alone is enough to outfit two thirds of the houses in Regina with solar panels capable of satisfying those houses’ needs. Building, installing and maintaining that many solar arrays is job rich instead of job poor with clean coal.
           Solar is not the only source of renewable energy. There are tremendous advances worldwide in clean energy production that hugely reduces green house gas (GHG) emissions.
      There are incineration devices that reduce GHGs by 95 per cent in everything from human and animal wastes to wood, flax straw, and most of the contents of landfills (to name a few sources of feed stalks). We can turn those GHGs into energy and heat and that’s without even mentioning wind or moving water. Yet Wall seems stuck in a prehistoric mindset that concludes only the dirty, extractive big industry can and will supply our energy and those are the only sources of energy that are going to be funded by the taxpayers even with those industries historically having horrible, uncaring environmental reputations.
           I may have certain Neanderthal characteristics in technology. I am 65 and can have difficulty manipulating a TV remote but the real knuckle draggers are those global warming deniers who are so invested in the old dirty system that they are afraid to endure any transition by embracing renewable resources. To them I say reinvest.
           The big difference between non-renewable and renewable energy resources is that non-renewable resources can be and are owned and diabolically controlled by and for the benefit of a few well-placed individuals who squeeze the stupid public for huge profits. To own the non-renewables allows for corporate rule over the entire world. It’s not about economy or jobs and definitely not about the environmental sustainability. It’s about concentrating wealth and power.
           Renewable resources, on the other hand, put ownership, control and consumption in the hands of individuals and local communities. With personal, local supervision, efficiency and supply would increase; energy cost would reduce giving individuals huge opportunities to be creative in economic pursuits, job creation and environmental stewardship. There would be an increasingly reduced necessity for huge expensive, aging, centralized production and transmission facilities, pipelines, extraction processes and all the associated pollutions.
           Logically without politicians being in the pockets of these huge industries we could have a better, healthier, richer and more responsive democracy.
           Greg Chatterson
           Fort San
