Our most recent bill from Central Maine Power included an insert titled, “Real Mainers use air conditioning.” I was flabbergasted and outraged.

While it is true there are some people in Maine and other places where air conditioning may be considered a necessity, the suggestion that all of us need it and that we are not “real Mainers” if we do not have it is ludicrous and insulting. It contradicts the generally conservative fiscal nature of Maine people as well as our ability to use good sense.

We do not all need air conditioning. There are alternatives such as high-efficiency, quiet fans that draw very little power. Using natural air currents and opening certain windows at certain times of the day are things many Maine people still know how to do.

People who take the time to think about promotions of this kind find them disturbing. It represents a kind of corporate brainwashing that intends to use our sense of who and what we are to get us to buy air conditioners (and lots of other things, too). It also exemplifies the profound disregard that power companies have for our natural world.

Of course, if air quality continues to get worse, then we will all have to have air conditioning and live indoors with our air conditioners on so as not to breathe the air polluted by the many power plants trying to produce the electricity for our air conditioners. Will we fall for yet another corporate scheme designed to increase profits for them at the expense of our long-term health?

Not coincidentally, this plan plays right into the hands of Dick Cheney and George Bush. These men claim energy needs will increase so much in the future that we will need to build hundreds of new power plants. These plants will use fossil fuels taken from places on this continent that are so extraordinarily beautiful that words and even pictures cannot adequately describe them.

Not only is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge threatened but so are places closer to home like the Appalachians to the south where coal companies have taken to removing whole mountaintops in their quest for the cheapest way to mine coal. Who are we helping by increasing energy needs?

When a friend called the power company to try to understand why they were doing this promotion in spite of the need for conservation, a representative said, “Oh, we’ll have plenty of power here in Maine.” Clearly, conservation is not part of the picture. When I called this same company, I never did get through to a live person but through a sequence of taped messages, I was put on hold.

Soon, a nice male voice, again taped, began speaking to me about how I could use my electric water heater as much as I wanted because “prices are down” and that I could “even bathe the family dog in hot water.” Next he suggested that I would feel more secure if, when I came home at night, the driveway was lined with lights and there was a porch light on.

Do they take us for such dupes, or are they so totally disconnected from the natural world that they have lost all reason? I don’t know what a real Mainer is, but I like to think it is someone who has a sense of responsibility and who cares about his or her health, and the health and well-being of those who follow us. It is a person with integrity and the power to think independently. It is someone who will provide leadership by example for his or her family and community by knowing when enough is enough.

On the other hand, if you don’t care, you have fallen for the sales pitch and already installed your new air conditioner so you could be one of two people to win a “free” electric grill. What was it that P.T. Barnum said?

John Pincince lives in Lincolnville.