What Will You Give?

Joe Kalin in News-Press Now

Will you remember him when you turn on the "clean" electricity the media tells me you're "demanding?"

Read Joe Kalin's story in the St. Joseph, Missouri, News Press.

Joe Kalin has fond memories of growing up in the Buchanan County countryside.
His father came from Switzerland and turned 87 acres near Faucett, Missouri, into a successful dairy farm, where Kalin lived and worked with four brothers and a sister. Before passing it to the next generation, Kalin’s father instilled a deep appreciation for the land and its productive capacity.
“My parents both come from the old country,” said Kalin, now 84. “My father, he loved to farm. It was given to us boys as an inheritance. We were always told to take care of it, that it would care of us.”

Mr. Kalin is being threatened with eminent domain so that a merchant transmission company can build an overhead electric transmission line across his family farm. 

It’s a 780-mile, high-voltage transmission line that threatens to cut through the land that brought John Kalin to America in the 1920s. The project, known as the Grain Belt Express, seeks to transfer wind power from western Kansas to population centers east of the Mississippi River.

Perhaps for you, dear reader.  Are you a person east of the Mississippi who has been demanding "clean energy?"  Do you know and appreciate what it's going to take to fulfill your "demands?"  There are millions of Joe Kalins between your house and that fictional "Saudi Arabia of Wind" located vaguely somewhere in the Midwest.  It's time to get acquainted.  Remember his face!  And think about what he's being asked to sacrifice so that you can assuage your climate guilt by pretending the electricity you freely use is "clean." 

For his part, Kalin said he isn’t against green energy but opposes being forced to pay the price while others reap the benefits. He doesn’t want to look out the window and see 150-foot power poles where his father once saw a landscape reminiscent of an alpine meadow.
“I don’t like the government telling people what they can do and can’t do with their land,” he said.

Mr. Kalin isn't going to use any of the electricity that's proposed to cross his farm.  He gets no benefit.  Just sacrifice.  If he has to sacrifice in the name of "clean energy," what sacrifice are you making?

No, I'm serious.  I want to know what you're sacrificing for the sake of the climate.  I mean personally, not some generalized feel good buzzwords.  Go ahead, post a comment.  I want to hear from you.

Are you donating a portion of your private property for the use of a profit-generating corporation?  Mr. Kalin is being told he must allow an easement across his own property so a corporation can make money.

Are  you donating a portion of your 401(K) to some climate change reversing business?  How much?  A farmer's retirement is his land.  When his land is appropriated for someone else's use, it reduces the productivity and future uses for his farmland.  It reduces the value of his retirement nest egg.

I have yet to hear from one person demanding clean energy, just one for goodness sake, who can say their sacrifice in the name of "climate change" is as significant as Joe Kalin's.

Don't turn a blind eye to the reality of "clean energy."  And don't give me a list of "whataboutisms".  They don't impress me.  Everything you do affects someone else.  When are you going to be responsible for your own needs?  Or are you just that type of person who gladly walks over others to benefit yourself?