by D. BRIAN BURGHART
B R I A N B @ N E W S R E V I E W. C O M
THREESimple
QUESTIONS ER, CORN E H T ND AROU Y A D D OW N T E A RT H A H S T I W ERS S TA F F R & . N I V I ST S PLE R T U C O A C A TA L NMEN O R I V N T WO E WITH
Murphy’s Law is almost
standard operating procedure in the world of journalism. Stories are more journeys than maps, and our original plan was to have a roundtable discussion with activists who represented a lot of different facets of the environmental movement. But, when you get right down to it, the biggest issue facing the planet today is global warming, and its symptoms and cures both have their foundation in the same question: What kind of energy are we using? When Sage Leehey and I sat down with Bob Tregilus and David Gibson, we had a notion of a wider range of ideas to discuss, but if human beings could solve this one issue of our addiction to fossil fuels,all of the other weighty topics of “environmentalism” become a lot easier to fix. Locals are probably familiar with Tregilus. He first hit the public eye in 2000 as the chairman of the Washoe County Libertarian Party. He says he’s recovering from economic libertarianism, but he’s still a civil libertarian. Around 2005, he got interested in electric-drive transportation, starting the Electric Auto Association of Northern Nevada, and trying to promote good policies in the Legislature. He went from there to an interest in alternative methods of putting energy on the grid, moving from centralized utility-provided power to a decentralized, small source (like cars, small arrays and homes) renewable energy grid, more in line with Germany’s feed-in tariff. He’s cohost of a radio show, This Week in Energy, at www.thisweekinenergy.tv. David Gibson is originally from Maine. He studied civil and environmental engineering, beginning his career in large-scale construction, before moving to the nonprofit sector. He moved here in August 2009, and he now works for Envirolution, a nonprofit that focuses on
illustrations by Hayley DosHay
OPINION
sustainability and energy-efficiency education. “We primarily work at the middle school and high school level, but we’re developing elementary school curriculum right now. We have a summer program we’re starting to recruit for right now, called Three Spheres Leadership Academy.” For more information, check out envirolution.org. We only meant to ask three questions, but—as might be expected from two such impassioned individuals—we had a 20-minute conversation before we got down to brass tacks. These first two paragraphs were outside the three-question interview, but are illustrative. All responses are abridged for space.
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NEWS
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GREEN
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FEATURE STORY
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ARTS&CULTURE
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ART OF THE STATE
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FOODFINDS
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FILM
Gibson: The only reason natural gas is cheap right now is because hydraulic fracturing is exempt from the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Clean Drinking Water Act. They’re polluting our groundwater big time, and they’re causing cancer and all this stuff in remote areas in like 20 different states. They’re causing all kinds of horrible impacts, but they’re exempt from the laws, and they can’t be regulated by the EPA. But if there is either a climate change legislation or if they remove the rider that passed under Dick Cheney, the price of natural gas is going to skyrocket. Tregilus: A lot of it came from an [Securities and Exchange Commission] ruling that they made back in 2009 which allowed them, because of the way they report this to their shareholders, to essentially create this huge investment bubble so they could develop the fracking technology. It’s like $3 a therm at the wellhead right now for traditional methods of collecting natural gas, but actually the cost at the fracking wells is more like $8. At some point, that’s going to collapse. |
MUSICBEAT
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NIGHTCLUBS/CASINOS
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THIS WEEK
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MISCELLANY
“THREE Simple QUESTIONS” continued on page
14
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APRIL 18, 2013
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RN&R
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