Clean energy will cost us dearly

Editor:

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- What turns me off most about the clean/green movement is the closed-minded/totalitarian/socialist attitude and agenda. It shows almost a complete disregard for working people and a contempt for balance that shows an utter lack of common sense. The EPA, with its overkill tactics and regulations, is a prime example of this. Yes, change happens, but you don't need a sledgehammer to kill a fly.

So, let's talk about the "real costs" of destroying the carbon-based fuel industry in this country. If you shut down the carbon-based industries and related infrastructure that supports them, we will have tens of millions of additional people out of work. We will have the "real cost" of adults and children without health care, dysfunctional families, divorce and homelessness. How many billions will that "real cost" in social services, public assistance, welfare, family counseling, law enforcement and unemployment payouts be? What about the "real cost" to folks who lose everything trying to survive in an economy as close to a depression as we seen since the '30s? Not to mention the billions in "real costs" of clean energy as it impacts utilities, housing, food and services; the billions lost in state revenue that provide for education, teachers' salaries, pensions and health care and Medicare for the elderly?

How many decades will it take for "clean energy" to replace those businesses and jobs? The mass production of "clean/green energy" will cost trillions and consume millions of acres of land needed to house solar panels, wind farms and associated infrastructure. This will disrupt and permanently alter human, animal and insect habitat. For those driving the "clean/green" agenda to ignore these "real costs" is intellectually dishonest and unfair. It is also intellectually dishonest to use agenda-driven science instead of real fact-based science to promote it. 

Clean/green energy is rife with it's own technological hurdles, real costs and dirtiness. We need to slow down and focus on a "mature" balanced carbon/green energy policy for the country. With experienced individuals on both sides of the issue working together to arrive at a common-sense approach with solutions and goals that won't wreak havoc on an already fragile economy. We need to quit blaming each other, act like "grownups" and think.

Von Albert Ehman

Charleston

Trip to Texas great for WVU fans

Editor:

I want to take a moment to comment to the fans back home on my family's trip to Texas to watch our Mountaineers play the Texas Longhorns at their home field in Austin. Austin's Central Embassy Suites was excellent, beautiful and highly recommended, but what I really want to express is how we were accepted in this college town. You rarely see me dressed in anything except the WVU gold and blue, and I made no exception during my stay in the Lone Star State.

The Texas people in Austin welcomed us with open arms. It was as if some went out of their way to welcome us and offer any assistance possible. We drove our car with West Virginia magnets flags all over the UT campus, (which is absolutely beautiful) and we never heard one negative comment from the thousands of students or other Texas fans. In fact, we were stopped "dozens" of times so they could personally "welcome us to Texas and to University of Texas and to Austin!" We took in the scene of 6th Street (a much tamer and cleaner version of Louisiana's Bourbon Street) where we again were welcomed by store owners, employees, UT students and fans from every shop.

My daughter and her family joined us to attend the game. Seven of us in total were gold and blue head to foot. To get to the stadium we had to walk straight through the heart of UT tailgaters. There were literally "hundreds" tents, tarps, campers, buses, etc., and again, not one negative comment. We had lots of handshakes, even invitations to actually join their party, and this remained true even after the game.

What a game! More than 101,500 in record setting attendance and the Eers will always be remembered as beating Texas, on their home turf in West Virginia's first Big 12 visit to Austin! (Coach Holgorsen was right; the Big 12 is not like the Big East).

The same trend continued after the game. During our whole experience, we never experienced any bad scene, no intoxicated students or fans, no embarrassing slogans on UT shirts, no burning couches.

We left Austin and stayed with our daughter's family in Midland. On our seventh day in Texas it was still a positive attitude everywhere. (Take note Morgantown: We need to find some similar way to welcome the Big 12 fans as they visit WVU).

Mike Gandee

Scott Depot