State Senator Glenn Grothman, always entertaining, proposes an amendment to the Clean Energy Jobs Act cutting the required percentage of renewable energy use in Wisconsin by 2015, from 10% to 8%. Grothman claims, “the state currently has far more energy supply than energy demand” and the mandate for renewable energy will result in the unnecessary construction of renewable energy generation sources, driving up the cost of power for consumers.
Ignoring the need to end our dependence on foreign and environmentally harmful sources of energy, Grothman uses the recent “Climatgate” scandal to question the need for alternative energy at all;
“The idea of global warming has so thoroughly been questioned a lot of people feel it was a total waste to have the Clean Energy Committee to meet at all.”
“You have scientists who were found to have been manipulating worldwide temperature data to advance the global warming agenda.”
Unfortunately for Glenn an investigation has cleared the scientists of wrongdoing, and climate change is still a threat.
As a state and as a nation we need alternative sources of energy. I share Grothman’s concern that they be economically feasible sources but infrastructure investments of this scale often require government assistance to get off the ground. Setting the renewable energy bar lower is a step in the wrong direction for Wisconsin.
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Jim Arndt also blogs at Pretty Important
Given the deaths of the two dozen-plus coal miners in West Virginia, it’s almost (almost) surprising to read this.