Dear Mayberry: You Aren't "Really Living"

Rural America has had enough urban arrogance.  But that doesn't stop these small-world buffoons from pontificating arrogant theories that disparage rural America.  Perhaps we need to start arranging some rural summer camp experiences for urban energy planners with really crazy ideas about what happens beyond the city limits?  Get out there, urban dwellers, get out to the countryside, and find out how Mayberry lives!

In a recent article in The Atlantic about building a "nationwide" electric grid to be used as a quasi-storage device for renewable energy, David Byrne, manager of integrated planning for Tallahassee, Florida's, city electric system opined that Mayberry isn't "really living."

“The energy resources that we would like to have seem to be located in places where people really don’t live,” Byrne pointed out.

Well, isn't that parochial, David?  What makes you think that your little workaday city world epitomizes "living," and that Mayberry's daily struggle to eke out a living from the land they husband (for your ultimate benefit, I might add)  isn't "really living."  I think if you expanded your horizons a bit, you'd find that Mayberrians are the ones who are really "living," as nature intended.

Why not explore and develop "energy resources that you would like to have" in your own urban neighborhoods or region?  Is that because you're just a NIMBY at heart?  You want all the benefits of "energy resources," without any of the sacrifice that come along with them.  You want someone else to sacrifice their lifestyle to provide for your own?  Keep searching for that "miracle."  It's as close as your own backyard, Tallahassee!