Too Arrogant to Sacrifice

There was a really great op-ed published in various outlets the other day penned by Missouri Farm Bureau President Blake Hurst.  The Farm Bureau (and Hurst) object to the Grain Belt Express Clean Line, which is proposed to cross the state and affect over 500 Missouri landowners.  Hurst had this to say about Clean Line's proposal to use eminent domain to acquire land:

Backers of the project are frustrated with landowners for their reluctance to host the transmission line. Climate Change!  Renewable Energy! How can landowners be so stubborn as to hold up what is so clearly progress? Landowners along the planned route are being drafted into the war on Climate Change without their consent. If the fight against climate change can only be won if Missouri is crossed by this unsightly collection of wires and poles, then the costs should be more widely borne. The company can negotiate those easements with willing sellers along the route, and they can pass the increased costs along to millions of electricity users in the eastern United States, instead of imposing all of the costs of saving the planet on 500 small landowners in Missouri.

 What's climate change worth to the folks along the urbanized coasts who are the proposed beneficiaries of the condemnation of land in the Midwest to transmit "cleaner" energy for their use?  Obviously not much, if Clean Line needs to use eminent domain to acquire property cheaply in order to make its project profitable.  City dwellers want "cleaner" energy, but they don't want to pay a penny more for it.  It's high time for these folks to either fend for themselves in their own communities, or open their wallets.

Why should 500 Missouri landowners make a sacrifice to pump "clean" energy to cities, so that they may waste as much as they want, without any climate change guilt?

Waste?  Of course.  If climate change is such an all-fired emergency that Missouri must make the ultimate sacrifice to stop it, why are cities allowed to accelerate climate change by lighting up their buildings and landmarks at night to create a pretty skyline?  If climate change requires sacrifice, how about the cities go dark from sunset to sunrise?  Los Angeles recently did.  But it was only for one hour.  And it only darkened a few of their landmarks and buildings.  Go ahead, watch the video in this news story, because it really showcases how clueless and arrogant city folks are about wasting energy.

Perhaps if more cities turned their wasteful "landmarks" off at night, rural landowners wouldn't have to make any sacrifice for new transmission lines.  (Don't worry, power generator-types clutching your chest right about now, it will never happen, these folks are much too selfish to do anything so drastic.)  But yet these folks think they "need" to keep their cities lit up all night.  And they "need" to do it with "clean" electricity.  And therefore Missouri landowners "need" to allow the hulking infrastructure required to get it there to clutter up their personal landscapes and interfere with the way they make their living.  The arrogance is stunning.

And speaking of stunning arrogance, how about that Democratic party platform?  I rarely get political here, but someone pointed me to a portion of the platform making the media rounds here in West Virginia that really frosted my cupcake:

The fight against climate change must not leave any community out or behind -- including the coal communities who kept America's lights on for generations.  Democrats will fight to make sure these workers and their families get the benefits they have earned and respect they deserve, and we will make new investments in energy-producing communities to help create jobs and build a brighter and more resilient economic future.  We will also oppose threats to the public health of these communities from harmful and dangerous extraction practices, like mountaintop removal mining operations.

Yup, we're very, very, sorry, Appalachia, that we rode you like a rented mule for the past 100 years to power our cities, but now we're going to come in and improve your communities for you!  We're going to "respect" those who sacrifice to produce the energy our cities use by creating more sacrifice in another geographic region in order to produce new "clean and green" wind powered electricity and ship it in for us to waste!

And no community will be left behind in the fight for climate change!!!  Except those 500 landowners in Missouri.  Who will miss them?

Hypocrites.