Joel Gordes

In 1990, I was one of five legislators to introduce the first climate change legislation that became PA 90-219, An Act Considering Climate Change, the most popular bill of that session. Back then I considered climate change a national security issue… and I still do.

A recent article featured a discussion centered on how Connecticut ought to bury all of it major power lines in order to avoid future outages such as we have recently experienced.  Same old. Same old. This maintains the frail heavily centralized nature of the grid with widely spaced generators joined by long stretches of transmission wire. Just putting the lines underground is not only very costly but still maintains that frail centralized structure of a few huge generators many miles apart.

Decades ago, before the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl or Fukushima catastrophes, a major selling point for nuclear energy was proponents said it was “Too Cheap To Meter.” While relatively low priced for the power, the capital cost was high. When the cost of Millstone III got out of hand, the Connecticut legislature capped the cost after which ratepayers would not be responsible. It is also informative that the state provided tax-free bonding for $90 million for pollution control project which could be considered an early subsidy.

As important as you, the environmental community, and I feel climate change is, we all need to put up a sign in our offices which says “It’s the deficit, STUPID!”..and then connect the dots. I have requested that the environmental community look at certain connections of climate change mitigation and deficit reduction, but they are so overly focused they seem to ignore it even when it has actually worked going back to 1990.

As a user and advocate for renewable energy for more than 40 years, I have no problem with large scale wind power so long as it does not become the overarching source. The first responsibility of government is, or should be, the health, safety and security of its citizens. Unfortunately, our Department of Energy and Environmental Protection makes little to no attempt to look at energy security implications in any of its plans or assessments. DEEP appears to be under the impression that discussion of security is breach of security. Experts agree nothing could be further from the truth and if done correctly it can act as a deterrent.