Vox clamantis in deserto
Global warming and too many people
Pope Francis was right to denounce mankind's destruction of the environment through fossil-fuel burning, etc But he didn't mention a gigantic factor in all this -- that the earth has too damn many people. A change in the church's birth-control policy would help reduce global warming. -- Robert Whitcomb
Paintings as a 'meeting ground'
"Green Connection, by JULIE JENSEN, in her show "Scenes Remembered at West Branch Gallery, in Stowe, Vt., through Aug. 11.
The gallery says that Ms. Jensen's landscape paintings are the things of memory: the way we recall a summer trip, a particular car ride, a fantastical moment. For Jensen, "paintings exist at the meeting ground between the external world and one's internal, emotional, and spiritual responses to it."
Use everything, continued
"Earth Flower" (duck feathers), by NANCY WINSHIP MILLIKEN, in the show "Pioneer Women,'' at Eastworks' MAP Gallery, in Easthampton, Mass., through June 28.
Charles Chieppo: Providence stadium bogus 'economic development'
BOSTON
As long as governments are made up of human beings, we can't expect them to be perfect. But they should learn from their mistakes, such as the whopper that Rhode Island state officials made in 2010 when they plowed $75 million into 38 Studios, a now-defunct video-game company started by former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling.
Fast-forward five years, and another proposal that combines baseball, business and politics is on the table in Rhode Island. The owners of the Pawtucket Red Sox, Boston's top farm team, are asking for millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies as part of a plan to build a downtown ballpark in neighboring Providence.
Under the proposal, the owners would spend $85 million to build the stadium and a parking garage. The state would take out a 30-year lease on the stadium land, for which taxpayers would pay $5 million annually in rent. The team would lease the stadium back from the state for $1 million per year, leaving state taxpayers on the hook for $4 million a year, or $120 million over the 30-year lease term.
The team is also asking city taxpayers for help. They want Providence to sign an agreement that would exempt the land from property taxes for 30 years.
The owners are following what has become a well-worn script for teams looking for stadium subsidies, warning that they will likely leave Rhode Island if the deal isn't approved. They've also commissioned the requisite economic-impact study, which estimates that the stadium would generate $12.3 million a year in direct spending for the local economy and about $2 million annually in state tax revenue. As usual with such studies, the owners call the projections "conservative."
Perhaps Holy Cross College economist Victor Matheson said it best when he told The Atlantic that, when it comes to these impact studies, "take whatever number the sports promoter says, take it and move the decimal one place to the left. Divide it by ten, and that's a pretty good estimate of the actual economic impact."
Building a minor-league baseball stadium in Providence would add little net new money to the local economy. The majority of fans would come from close by, meaning that they would likely spend their entertainment dollars at an area movie theater or restaurant if they weren't going to a game
As for benefits to businesses around the stadium, they tend to be limited to just a few blocks. And with 72 home games, what happens during the other 80 percent of the year?
The last time that Rhode Island leaders dabbled at the intersection of baseball, business and politics, it cost their constituents $90 million (the $75 million in principle invested in 38 Studios plus $15 million in interest). Some may conclude that such non-economic benefits as local pride or entertainment value would make a Providence stadium worth the investment, but they should know better than to view the proposal as genuine economic development.
Charles Chieppo (Charlie_Chieppo@hks.harvard.edu) is a research fellow of the Ash Center at Harvard's Kennedy School. This piece originated at governing.com.
Eurozone better without Greece
Greece is in many ways a corrupt Middle Eastern country (but I repeat myself) that should never have been admitted to the Eurozone. It would be better for the Eurozone if Greece left. And thank God that the European Union has not admitted Turkey. -- Robert Whitcomb
Jill Richardson: Despite the PR, still bad food at McDonald's
McDonald’s is floundering. There’s no other way to say it. The global fast- food chain has had declining U.S. sales for well over a year now. But why? I’d love to gloat that Americans have finally caught on that the Golden Arches peddles terrible food, but that might not be the case. Theories for the slump abound. Some believe that the menu is too confusing, slowing down service. Others say that consumers are drifting toward fast-casual chains like Chipotle and Panera, even if their food costs more. And Consumer Reports notes that McDonald’s has the worst-tasting burger compared to 20 competitors.
Even McDonald’s itself doesn’t seem to be sure. The company has introduced a Create Your Taste option, allowing consumers to customize their burgers. It promised to stop serving chicken raised with some antibiotics. In Southern California, the chain even tried serving kale. McKale?
No, just no. Fortune magazine concluded that “A growing segment of restaurant goers are choosing ‘fresh and healthy’ over ‘fast and convenient,’ and McDonald’s is having trouble convincing consumers that it’s both. Or even can be both.”
Which brings me to the chain’s latest move: hiring former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs as its head of communications. The talking point du jour is that McDonald’s wants to build a “modern, progressive burger company.” What does that even mean? You’ve got to give it to them, though — it at least sounds better than “Please forget about that Supersize Me movie.”
McDonald’s didn’t stop with hiring Gibbs, however. The Golden Arches brought on board another corporate superstar, Silvia Lagnado, as its head of marketing. Lagnado has previously worked for Dove, Unilever and Bacardi. Clearly, McDonald’s thinks it’s grappling with a marketing problem.
This points to a tactic that I learned back in business school: When consumers don’t like your products, you can either make your products better…or simply make your customers think they’re better. With this move, McDonald’s seems to be taking the latter route.
Articles analyzing the company’s poor sales underscore some reasons why consumers have turned their back on the chain. Instead of adding a few leaves of kale here and there, why not remove the anti-foaming agent in the French fries? In other words, instead of putting lipstick on a factory-farmed pig, why not switch to serving more ethical foods?
I have no love for the chain, but I hope that McDonald’s new marketing gurus guide them toward real change, and not just a new advertising campaign. Just because billboards and jingles repeatedly tell us we’re “lovin’ it,” that doesn’t make it true.
If McDonald’s opts for new slogans instead of making substantial changes, send them a message by buying better food somewhere else.
Jill Richardson is the author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It. This first ran at otherwords.org
Fuzzy memories of religiosity
"Sandwich Meeting House'' (charcoal), by Philip Brown Parsons (1896-1977), at the Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery, Center Sandwich, N.H.
Llewellyn King: The case for American knighthoods
I may have a faded English accent, but I am a true blue American, and I have been for five decades. I do not think that everything that comes across the Atlantic from Britain ought to be adopted here.
I do not believe that there is any virtue in driving on the other side of the road. And I do not believe that every British television program is unassailably wonderful.
While I think that the House of Commons is a fabulous entertainment, but it is not necessarily the best way to govern the United Kingdom, particularly in this time of nationalist stress. I have lived in London, but I do not yearn to take up residence there again.
However, there is one feature of British life that I think would benefit the United States substantially: the introduction of an honors system to reward exemplary people in our society.
What titles we have in the United States are clung to. Former senators still call themselves senator; governors, governor; and ambassadors, ambassador. A few Ph.D.s persist in calling themselves Dr., and most people would like to have a title other than Mr., or Ms. in front of their name. Even firmly republican countries in Europe, like France and Italy, have clung to their aristocratic titles.
Well, we do not want an aristocracy here, but it would be grand if we could single out contributions to our well-being with a nifty title. Various eminent Americans have been awarded honorary titles, but they can not use them. What is the point of a title, if you can not call a restaurant and say, “Sir John Doe, here. I would like a table by the window.”
Here are some exceptional people who I would make honorary knights or dames:
Arise, Sir Brian Lamb, creator of C-SPAN and a massive contributor to television and the understanding of American politics.
Arise, Sir David Bell, a dedicated general practitioner, who treats victims of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, in the northwest corner of New York state. Bell has tended indigent patients since the disease broke out in the village of Lyndonville, N.Y., in 1985.
Arise, Sir Joe Madison (The Black Eagle), activist and broadcaster, who has championed the cause of justice for African-Americans and has fought modern slavery in Africa.
Arise, Dame Marin Alsop, music director of the Baltimore Symphony, who is a visionary conductor and a great contributor to the public good through her promotion of American music and classical music, her mentorship to young musicians, and her founding of OrchKids, a music education program for inner city Baltimore children.
Much of the British system of honorary titles should be left in Britain. Twice every year, on the Queen’s Birthday and at New Year, a list of new honorees is published, and long-serving but unrecognized civil servants and military personnel hope to be on the list. The types of honors include: Knights and Dames, The Order of the Bath, Order of St. Michel and St. George, Order of the Companions Honor, and Orders of the British Empire.
Just in case you are getting confused, these honors do not include the ancient titles of duke, marquess, earl or lord. But the monarch does mint a title now an again, like Her Highness Duchess of Cambridge, conferred on Prince William’s wife, Kate.
No, you have to keep the honorary title simple: knight or dame, awarded for exemplary achievement or service. On my honors list I would include distinguished people in the arts and sciences, educators, entrepreneurs and inventors, humanitarians, retired politicians (provided that they promise not to run for office again). I think we should have Sir Bob Dole, Lady Olympia Snowe, and, if she were alive today, Lady Barbara Jordan.
On my watch list for recognition are Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Wynton Marsalis and Dean Kamen. If you would want to recognize someone in journalism, Sir Llewellyn King has a nice ring.
Llewellyn King (lking@kingpublishing.com) is a long-time editor, writer, publisher and international business consult. He is also exeeutive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS.
Two fine new books
Two fine recently published books: One is Jean Lesieur's Le Bal des chacals (The Ball of Jackels), published by Editions du Toucan, an exciting novel of intrigue about marriage, history, politics and media in France and America. It has not been translated into English yet but I'm pretty sure it will be. (I read French.)
Mr. Lesieur is a celebrated journalistic writer and editor, a novelist and a co-founder of the "French CNN'' -- France24. Few can write about contemporary France and America with such depth of knowledge about the configurations of power and with such a sense of place, including about New England.
xxx
Then there's Target Tokyo (Norton), by James M. Scott, an exciting account of the April 18, 1942 U.S. air raid on Tokyo led by Lt. Col. James Doolittle. Coming so soon after Pearl Harbor, it shocked the Japanese into both the Battle of Midway, which they lost, and led them commit vast atrocities in occupied China, where most of the American airmen landed after the raid.
Mr. Scott looks at what led to the raid and its short- and long-term ramifications, good and bad. It is engrossing history, written with great narrative drive and impeccably sourced. It includes much information not previously known to the history-reading public.
-- Robert Whitcomb
'Authentic sentiment of hope'
"Three Large Flowers'' (oil on paper), by MARCUS REICHERT, in his show "Marcus Reichert & Les Fleurs'' at the Adelson Galleries, Boston, June 19-Aug. 2.
Adam Adelson, director of the Adelson Galleries, writes: "The series bears a certain timelessness that takes me back to the South of France....{E}ach painting carries an authentic sentiment of hope with a balance of color and configuration that words cannot describe.''
Crunchy horror
"Carrots'' (archival digital print), by VANESSA THOMPSON, in her show "Vanessa Thompson: Eat Your Vegetables,'' at Galatea Fine Art, Boston, July 1-30.
She says: "Sounds created by something even as virtuous as a carrot will cause us to cringe if cracked just right. Inspired by the aesthetics and sounds of 1970's Giallo films, the images in this series invoke that disquietude.''
Sounds as if she's trying to do for vegetables what Hitchcock did for birds.
Chris Powell: Hartford protesters just irritated the public
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Yes, as the protesters chanted and their signs read in downtown Hartford last Monday, "Black lives matter." But the protesters were in the wrong place.
For of course all lives matter, and the protesters were blocking afternoon rush-hour traffic as if no one else mattered.
The protest was nothing like the brave civil-rights protests of old, the lunch-counter sit-ins, where the targets were perpetrators of injustice. No, on Monday everyone passing through downtown Hartford was punished.
Further, despite its many faults, state government lately has been sensitive to the concerns of the protesters, quite without any prodding from them, as those concerns are widely shared among state residents of all races and echoed by newspapers.
With support from legislators of all races, Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy has been advocating his "Second Chance Society" legislation to eliminate felony charges for simple drug possession, charges that disproportionately snag city residents, who are disproportionately from minority groups and live disproportionately in the silly "drug-free zones" around schools. Also a major issue in the General Assembly's recent session was legislation to equip police officers with body cameras.
Both bills might have passed if the legislature had been well-organized and will be considered again soon in a special section.
The legislature's recent session did pass a bill to restore the accessibility of police arrest records and to require disclosure of police body and dashboard camera video of arrests. Meanwhile, police departments throughout the state are generally recognizing the public's right to observe and record police work.
Last Monday's protesters would have helped their cause by showing up at the state Capitol a few weeks ago to speak at hearings and approach legislators for earnest discussion. Their blocking rush-hour traffic didn't call attention to any particular culprit and didn't win sympathy. To the contrary, it merely alienated and was just an exercise in self-righteousness.
If this exercise is repeated in Hartford or anywhere else, the police should not indulge it as long as they did last Monday before arresting the 17 protesters who refused to get out of the street. No one has the right to shut society down.
* * *
Serving a population that is largely impoverished and drawn from ethnic minorities, Hartford's police department long has worked not to seem to be an occupying army. This hasn't been easy, especially lately amid an increase in deadly violence in the city as the warm weather has brought fatherless and predatory young men outside to go after each other with guns.
Maybe because they live among so many predators, most Hartford residents seem to appreciate their police. But an incident of police misconduct in April, recently reported by The Hartford Courant, has left a serious question.
A pedestrian using a cellphone to take video of a trap that police had set up to catch drivers using cellphones was rushed by a police officer who yelled, "Turn the phone off before I smash it." Fortunately the officer's threatening and illegal behavior was captured by the pedestrian's cellphone and shown to the newspaper and then to police administrators.
In no way had the pedestrian interfered with the police, and the police department quickly repudiated the officer's misconduct, summoning him for "retraining" and affirming that police must accept being recorded.
But that wasn't enough.
For any police officer who would lunge at and threaten an unoffending observer that way is not just oblivious to what is going on in police work around the country. He is also psychologically unfit to be a police officer and should be fired -- and would be fired if government in Connecticut weren’t controlled by the government- employee unions.
Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
Paul Steven Stone: Oh captain, my captain
He never aspired to greatness when it came to navigating bodies of water. Salt-laden or spring fed, large or small, Atlantic Ocean or Plymouth pond, it didn’t matter. He knew his place in the world, and it was not in a vessel afloat on water wearing the captain’s mantle. His destiny was that of a passenger or crew member. His comfort lay in never making decisions that affected the well being of a boat or the safety of its passengers.
And now, at the tender age of 69, he suffered a temporary loss of self-awareness that saw him purchase an inflatable boat so small as to be unfit for carrying more than three slim and motionless passengers at the same time. Though if they weren’t so difficult to bring on board, he would have preferred his passengers to be comatose, which guaranteed their weight would never shift. But then again, he correctly figured, the inflatable dinghy had little room to cater to the needs of supine or prostrate passengers.
And so, on a recent morning, he boarded his craft and set out by himself to voyage on a nearby pond where the craft was moored.
How easy to blithely declare “he boarded his craft and set out by himself to voyage on a nearby pond.” Much easier, it turns out, than it actually was to board his craft or voyage on the pond. For one thing (and remember we are speaking about a 69-year-old sailor) our brave adventurer had considerable difficulty jumping into the boat at the depth it was moored.
Clearly, to those with eyes to see, casual boating was not for the faint of heart or those fully ripened in their years.Before he could board his craft, after numerous attempts, he needed to guide it into shallower depths where he could essentially step into the boat one foot at a time. Fortunately, the electric motor allowed for such shallow depths, its shaft and propeller easily pivoting out of the water. Once, of course, he finally remembered to release the catch. This the same valiant motor, which had lately survived an ignominious submersion when the inflatable boat had flipped upside down in unusually blustery, if not hostile, winds.
And did I mention the wind?
Yes, there was a wind blowing this fateful morning. A strong wind that created a current he could see rippling across the surface of the pond. A wind so strong, he quickly surmised, that his modest motor could not easily steer the flat-bottomed, lightweight boat in any direction that resisted the wind’s steady resolve. And so after a brief excursion to the center of the pond our venerable skipper decided to cut his voyage short.
As if to prove the danger inherent on the water, and the wisdom in his decision to cut and run, our captain entangled the motor’s propeller in an errant coil of rope—“IT’S NOT ROPE, IT’S CALLED LINE,” his wife, who grew up on boats, repeatedly told him—and found himself magnetically drawn to the three hazards that surrounded his cottage’s shoreline.
First, he ran over a giant branch whose spindly grasping limbs reached out from the water like witches’ fingers issuing a stern warning. A warning he was unfortunately unable to heed, much as he and his fouled, struggling motor would try.
Next, after safely untangling the propeller and feeling newly invigorated, he and his boat were inexorably drawn into the rough facing of the only rock that stands above the surface in the entire expanse of the pond’s 62 acres.
Lastly, as if to end his voyage on a note of poetic irony, he was swept into, and half across, the buoy whose mooring line he was desperately reaching for.
The day before he had taken his five-year old granddaughter for a boat ride without noticeable wind or incident except, as he explained to her mother, “I have trouble parking,” which he proceeded to prove at journey’s end by ingloriously falling out of the boat. This day was no different as he attempted to dismount the boat and ultimately found himself falling head-first into the shallow depths and struggling once again to regain his footing. Almost immediately, as he surfaced, he realized the boat’s electric motor was still engaged, or had re-engaged by accident, and quickly and energetically—for a man his age—chased the boat down and turned off the motor.
No applause, please!
And so we leave our stalwart senior once again on land and once again shivering in his wetness in the wind. Nothing seriously hurt except perhaps his vanity. In the last few weeks he has spent more time in these pond waters than he had the six previous summers. First there was the mooring that had to be set up; the knots that had to be tied and re-tied. Then the rains came, sending him out twice in two days. First to rescue the battery that was dangerously close to having its plastic case breached by the accumulating rain water, second to bail out the rain water. Next, he had to go in to rescue his overturned boat and motor. Then lastly, once again into the water to restore the boat to its mooring.
Now, it bobs gently on the water, pretending to be easily boarded and safely steered wherever whim or whimsy might take it. And maybe someday he’ll believe that’s true.
But for now, it seems truer that—to quote the poet—“Home is the sailor, home from the sea.” To which I would only add…
“And the clumsy captain free from his pond.”
Paul Steven Stone is a Cambridge-based writer. This piece originated on his Web site, paulstonesthrow.com.
On the beach
From MARC HARROLD'S series of New England beach photos, at Lanoue Gallery, Boston, through July 11.
Butterfly basics
"Butterflies,'' by CHARLES ARNOLDI, in the "Color: Untitled'' show at Heather Gaudio Fine Art, New Canaan, Conn., through Aug. 1
Putting abstractions on paper
She says:
"Starting with hand-painted paper I cut out shapes, leaving them whole or retaining a simple boundary, before assembling them into painting-like compositions, the end result being highly colorful and vibrant abstractions.''
"How I find my shapes and where they come from is not arbitrary. However, the shapes are simply organic figures reminiscent of circles or flower petals or the shape of a face. They are significant to me in that after several years of painting abstractly I began to notice a pattern of shapes that I liked to make or that pleased me. ''
"I started extracting or isolating these from those layers of abstraction. These shapes are present in my paintings and now in the works made from paper – they are just being used differently. In a way they emerged from chaos and became organized and now they have been abstracted again through process.''
On Newbury show today
New England Diary overseer Robert Whitcomb chatted with Bruee Newbury on the latter's "Talk of the Town'' show on WADK-A.M. (1540) this morning.
On the show, which you can hear on wadk.com, they talked about the Providence International Arts Festival; the tendency of rich people to give money to already rich institutions such as Harvard so they can wrap themselves in institutional prestige; the gas tax and repairing the roads and bridges with truck toll money, and Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo and Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker lunching today at Angelo's Restaurant on Providence's Federal Hill.
John O. Harney: Powering a slow recovery
The economic recovery from the Great Recession is not jobless as economists once warned, but it is slow and uneven. Every month, the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution reports on the number of jobs the U.S. economy will have to create to return employment levels to where they were when the Great Recession began in December 2007, while absorbing people who enter the potential labor force. At the end of May, this jobs gap was 3.6 million. If the economy adds about 191,000 jobs a month—the average monthly growth rates since the jobs recovery began in March 2010 — the gap will not close until August 2017.
Meanwhile, in a recent study by the Federal Reserve, nearly half of Americans say they either could not cover an emergency expense costing $400, or would cover it by selling something or borrowing money.
The jobs recovery has been one of the measures that has preoccupied the New England Economic Partnership (NEEP) in recent years.
NEEP is a member-supported nonprofit that provides economic analyses and forecasts. Historically, NEEP published macroeconomic forecasts of the New England region and its six individual states and held semi-annual “Outlook” meetings packed with colorful content about the economy in our backyard: which industries and occupations are expanding, which are shrinking and so forth.
The meetings used to begin with a national context set by big economists such as Moody’s. This was typically followed by state-specific forecasts from New England academic and corporate economists who volunteer to offer a report focused on each state’s economy, but tied to the particular conference theme: in the case of spring 2015, energy. The forecasts always rated a short report in the big daily New England newspapers and AM radio news—mainstays of taking the region’s economic pulse.
But these are somewhat leaner times for the economists' organization that always was a bit unsung. Last year, NEEP decided to do only one forecast per year, though forecast managers offered to do their own updates for this special conference focused on "Building the Backbone of Energy Efficiency" and held in June at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. The spring 2015 conference was co-sponsored by the Massachusetts Business Roundtable and Brandeis International Business School, the latter of which has become something like NEEP’s guardian since the New England Council (NEC) ended a short-lived sponsorship in 2013, and Brandeis Prof. John Ballantine became NEEP president. (The NEC, meanwhile, in partnership with Deloitte Consulting LLP, published a study on the promise of New England’s advanced manufacturing sector to provide jobs to middle-class workers.)
This year, NEEP broke with tradition, skipping the usual national forecast and going straight to the energy theme and the always-informative state forecasts—but this time without one of the six states: Rhode Island.
The energy discussion featured talk of a perceived abundance of oil and gas, much of it drawn from shale, as well as ambivalence about fracking, interest but underachievement on renewable resources and dreams of more pipelines.
New England’s energy prices have long been among the highest in the U.S. All six states rank in the top 10 nationally in terms of highest electric rates. Kevin Lindemer, managing director of IHS Global Insight/Cambridge Energy Research Associates, pointed out that despite so much talk about wind and solar, the region is reliant on gas, which we don’t have enough of, and nuclear, which we have a love-hate relationship with. Indeed, Maine and Vermont each closed nuclear power plants in recent years.
The spring 2015 state gigs were done by: Fairfield University Prof.-Emeritus Edward Deak (Connecticut); Ryan Wallace of the University of Southern Maine (Maine) in place of his colleague Charlie Colgan (the canny Maine economist whose department's dismissal from the struggling university a year ago was an ominous sign of New England economic uncertainty); Northeastern University Prof. Alan Clayton-Matthews (Massachusetts); New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies economist Dennis Delay; and Vermont economist Jeff Carr.
Deak noted that Connecticut has 1.1 percent of the U.S. population, but contributes lower proportions of greenhouse gases. Spurred by fears of climate change, the Connecticut legislature has mandated that 27 percent of the state’s energy be supplied by renewable sources (including solar, wind, hydro, fuel cells and biomass) by 2020. Right now, the renewables portion is less than 5 percent, Deak said.
Deak added that Connecticut’s housing market is still suffering from the distresses of the Great Recession. (Nationally, the Labor Department reported that builders broke ground on new homes in April at a faster rate than at any time since November 2007.)
Wallace reminded the audience that Maine is the nation's oldest state in terms of residents' age and observed that the state is energy-intensive because of its traditional industries of paper (which is in free-fall) and shipbuilding. Fully half of Maine’s electricity comes from renewable sources—hydro, biofuels and wind. The big issue in Maine, Wallace said, is transmission: pipelines and high-voltage power lines to carry energy to and from Maine.
Clayton-Matthews said that while the Massachusetts economy has been outperforming the U.S., youth unemployment is disturbing—nearly 12 percent for people under age 25. And the number of people who want full-time work but have only part-time is more than twice what it was in 2007. Also labor force growth will decline to almost zero by 2018.
Delay reported that the Granite State added jobs, but the problem is job quality: two of three added jobs pay below state average wage. Moreover, Delay pointed out, the Market Basket worker protests of 2014 hit New Hampshire especially hard.
Energy prices in New Hampshire are very volatile, Delay said, noting that what used to be Public Service of New Hampshire is now Eversource. And in an effort to contain energy costs, proposals have surfaced that would pull New Hampshire from the nine-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative designed to reduce carbon emissions.
Carr said that Vermont has very energy-intensive industries form computer chips to famous food businesses including cheese, ice cream, craft beer and coffee. Vermont’s Comprehensive Energy Plan would have 90 percent of the state’s energy use coming from renewables by 2050.
TDI New England wants to build a 1,000-megawatt transmission line to carry electricity generated by Hydro Quebec in Canada to markets in southern New England. The so-called “New England Clean Power Link” would pass under nearly 100 miles of Lake Champlain, and the developer promises to include phosphorus cleanup, habitat restoration and recreational improvements.
“To be competitive in the future, New England must find ways to invest in a flexible grid and a mix of less expensive energy sources—gas, hydro, wind,” said Ballantine. “This requires a coordinated energy policy across the six New England states and investment of billions of dollars to modernize our infrastructure."
Lindemer observed that 60 percent of oil goes into transportation worldwide. Despite all those gas guzzlers you see out there, Lindemar claimed oil and gas are not “exhaustible” like fish and trees, especially with the cost of fracking going down as people learn how to improve the environmentally controversial practice—even pursuing so-called superfracking to crack more and deeper fissures in the earth to release more oil and gas. Talk about cracked.
John O. Harney is executive editor of The New England Journal of Higher Education (nebhe.org), on whose Web site this piece originated.