Editor:

This is in reference to last week’s guest commentary in The Colorado Statesman by Advancing Colorado’s executive director, Jonathan Lockwood, about Attorney General Cynthia Coffman’s lawsuit against the EPA over the Clean Power Plan. Lockwood certainly excoriated the EPA, the Clean Power Plan and Gov. John Hickenlooper in defending the attorney general’s suit. The irrelevant reference to EPA’s accident at the Gold King mine, during investigation of a century-old problem it inherited, set the tone.EPA’s approach to reducing carbon emissions from coal-fired plants is consistent with the Clean Air Act and the U.S. Constitution. At U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson’s recent hearing in Wisconsin, my coal-dependent state, even the representative of our attorney general (who has joined the suit against the EPA) admitted that states have many choices for compliance that span a wide range of costs. I believe the grim predictions of opponents and the probably rosy predictions of proponents are neither objective nor trustworthy. At Wisconsin’s hearing, a long-time Department of Natural Resources employee testified that, in his experience, the actual cost of complying with a regulation averaged only 10-20 percent of the estimated cost.

Utilities everywhere are having difficulty accommodating increasing amounts of renewable energy because their 20th century business models are predicated on a constant supply of artificially cheap fossil fuel. Intermittent and unreliable supplies of renewable energy are incompatible with this, and fossil-fueled based plants are exorbitantly expensive to maintain when they are subject to frequent or prolonged down-time. But innovations in electrical grid technology are enabling states like Nevada to make significant progress in this area. Colorado’s own Aspen is one of three American cities that now use entirely sustainably generated electricity.

Of course Coloradans oppose the CPP when told it won’t work and will raise their utility bills! If “Colorado has already implemented legislation that would kill ‘dirty energy’ sources and replace them with ‘clean energy’ sources,” what does it have to worry about? Perhaps that the next crackdown will be on its environment- and climate-destroying petroleum industry?

I believe we need federal action on climate change and the EPA rule is a start. However, the market-based carbon fee-and-dividend advocated by Citizens’ Climate Lobby is a better strategy. It returns all revenue in equal dividends to everyone with a tax ID. Truly independent analysis by Regional Economic Models Inc. indicates this would create jobs and boost the economy nationwide while hastening the transition to sustainable energy. In any case, I’d like to ask the same question of Coloradans and Wisconsinites: would you really sacrifice the future to avoid possibly higher utility bills now?

Carol SteinhartMadison, Wisconsin