Reducing Maine’s carbon footprint

Hearings before the Land Use Regulation Commission on two proposed wind power projects for western Maine concluded recently. Combined, these two projects would be capable of providing enough energy to power almost 70,000 Maine homes with none of the global warming emissions that are shortening our winters, lengthening our periods of drought and changing our forest landscape. But approval of the projects is far from certain. The reason for that uncertainty boils down to whether we are willing to alter the profiles of our western mountains in order to harness their wind resources, which are the best in New England.

One project, downsized from an earlier version, would place its turbines on the Black Nubble Mountain range, with its closest turbine 3 miles from the Appalachian Trail. The other project would place its turbines along the Kibby Mountain range, in the heart of the Boundary Mountains.

In all of the hearings before LURC, there was passionate and eloquent testimony provided on the beauty of Maine’s western mountains and people’s love of their wild and remote places. Beauty, however, is in the eye of the beholder and while some may decry the presence of wind turbines atop our mountains, others see them as symbols of hope and elegant in their own right. And one could argue that a landscape that continues to be commercially harvested and ringed by roads, ski resorts, a Navy training area and other signs of “civilization” is neither remote nor wild.

That discussion, however, misses the broader point – climate change is the environmental crisis of our generation. Unless we take action to reduce our emissions of global warming causing pollutants, the Maine that our children and grandchildren will know in 50 or 75 years will be radically different from the one we know today.

As the Conservation Law Foundation testified before LURC in the recent wind power hearings, if we don’t take action beginning today to reduce our carbon footprint, our spruce and fir forests – the heart of our natural resource economy – will be all but gone, our winter recreation season will be reduced in length more than 50 percent and our climate will be more like that of present day Washington, D.C. Rising sea levels and water temperatures will threaten both our island and coastal communities and the natural resources that those communities rely on. These and other results of climate change will have significant impacts on Maine’s ecology and economy, not to mention the quality of place that we all treasure.

This parade of horrible possibilities can be numbing, leading to either denial or paralysis in the face of the enormity of the threat. In that sense, the adage to think globally and act locally is particularly apt in our response to climate change and specifically to the consideration of these wind power projects. Obviously, these projects will not solve all the ills of climate change and they will have a visual impact on an undeniably beautiful part of our state. But these projects, while relatively small in relation to the problem of global warming as a whole, are a critical part of the solution.

And quite frankly, tapping into renewable energy sources is, relatively speaking, the easy part. More important, but far harder, is the need to reduce our demand of energy in the first place, the most effective way to address climate change. To do that requires changes to our approach to every day life, from using public transportation or carpooling instead of driving alone to using energy efficient appliances to building energy efficient homes and offices. We have become a nation unaccustomed to making personal sacrifices but coming to grips with the threat of climate change will require that we do just that.

As Mainers we face a choice – we can take immediate action today in an effort to stabilize and then reverse climate change or we can continue on our current carbon consumptive path and adapt to the inevitable changes. Maine can choose to support and approve projects such as the Black Nubble and Kibby wind power projects as part of the solution or it can choose to adapt to the swelter of a Washington, D.C. summer while enjoying what’s left of the views.

Sean Mahoney is vice president and director of the Maine Advocacy Center for the Conservation Law Foundation.