Michigan Green Energy Proposal Under Attack

By James Donahue

In Michigan, a green energy proposal known as Proposition 3 is going before voters in November. Passage will force the electric companies, oil companies and other carbon based fuel providers to start replacing the carbon fuels with solar, wind and other green energy sources. It is a small but extremely necessary start if we expect to stop the threat of climate change that has been slamming us over the past year.

We suspect similar issues may be going before voters in other states this year. More than 30 states have already adopted similar measures. States are taking the initiative because our legislators in Washington have been literally ignoring it. The money from coal and oil lobbyists have successfully shut their minds to what may be the most important issue facing the nation and the world.

It should not be a surprise that Michigan’s Proposition 3 has fallen under a heavy attack by a barrage of television ads packed with lies and distortions. Hardly an hour passes that this ad does not appear. It warns people that the proposition will become locked into the state’s constitution, it will be a costly multi-billion dollar “experiment” in a state where there is not enough natural wind and solar power to meet the required energy demands and consequently “the energy mandate will affect your own family’s utility bills and taxes for years to come.”

The Sierra Club is fighting back, but obviously lacks the kind of money the big coal and oil companies are obviously dumping into this malicious advertising campaign. On its website Mark Fisk, spokesman for Michigan Energy Michigan Jobs, the coalition leading the Proposal 3 campaign, said the opponents are “distorting the facts about renewable energy to scare voters away from a proposal that will create 94,000 jobs and reduce energy costs.”

Fisk went on: “The fact is that renewable energy is reining in high energy costs in other states, and the same is true for Michigan. DTE Energy raised rates on residential customers 13.5 percent last year – the status quo clearly isn’t working.”

Allowing the carbon fuel giants to have their way on the campaign for green alternative energy is not an option for any of us. An alarming report by the National Snow and Ice Data Center suggests that the arctic ice cap is melting now so fast that it may be completely gone within the next four years. Even the scientific community can only guess at just how catastrophic this will be for the planet and every living thing on it.

James Hansen, a NASA scientist, said “there’s a huge gap between what is understood by the scientific community and what is known by the public.” The lack of adequate media attention, the failure on the part of our elected leaders to take action, and the constant bombardment of misleading advertising by the carbon fuel companies has helped keep alive the impression that all is well . . . no cause for alarm. And this is not true.

According to a statement by the NSID panel, humans are “really running out of time” to do something to prevent carbon dioxide concentrations from levels that would bring on runaway climate change. And this, Hansen said, “guarantees disaster.”

While he isn’t going so far as to say it, Hansen’s reference to “disaster” means a general heating of the planet that cannot be stopped.