It’s been discouraging to see the Boston Globe’s editorial page ape the Wall Street Journal’s in environmental ignorance, derp, and plain old name-calling. In fact, the WSJ just published the same talking points the Globe has been using, to wit: Enviros are actually causing damage by opposing pipelines because of the supposed necessitating of environment-damaging LNG shipments, oil-burning peaking power plants, etc.
As we’ve said, it’s a bizarre, literally Orwellian doublethink argument: They’re asking you to believe that building more fossil infrastructure is actually better for the environment. If that sounds — to put it generously — counter-intuitive, Slate-pitchy, contrarian, and indeed far-fetched … well, you’re not the only one. In any event, bold claims require bold evidence: Shouldn’t the Globe have done the math on GHG emissions based on a few different scenarios? Break out some charts and data?
Speaking in his own capacity, Boston’s Energy Efficiency and Distributed Resources Finance Manager Joe LaRusso counts as a very informed observer. His tweet-thread started here – do read the whole thing:
1/ Once again the @BostonGlobe has oversimplified the debate of building pipelines to bring #natgas into NE, and it has resorted to ad hominem attacks on opponents: their politics are “faddish,” their motive a doctrinaire sense of “moral purity.” https://t.co/wq8qxUcLaH#mapoli
— Joe LaRusso (@jglarusso) March 9, 2018
I want to summarize the evidence and arguments made by LaRusso:
- The pipeline will cost between $3.2B (per the utilities) and $6.6B (per Synapse energy consultants). We would pay for that one way or another. They’re not building it for free.
- While LNG has been delivered into Boston for 47 years, *two* shipments have been Russian. Those are the baby-seal-killing shipments the Globe warned about in lachrymose fashion. (Where are they getting this stuff?)
- Something called the Jones Act prohibits us from getting domestic gas via ship. And changing that would be cheaper than, say, $3-6B.
- As far as the rest of the energy mix is concerned, we don’t use much coal or oil, at all. The oil peaker plants operate at a max of 720 hours per year (see page 6.)
- We’re not fully using the pipeline capacity we have — whether or not the reason is anti-competitive.
- While grid reliability is a concern going forward, there are many ways to skin that cat that don’t involve expensive building of new fossil fuel infrastructure.
In other words, the justifications are pretty flimsy for building more gas pipelines — at great expense: up-front; to the climate and air quality; in the opportunity cost of crowding out renewables — which means jobs in Massachusetts.
The chirpy, personal tone adopted by the news professionals at the Globe was shockingly sub-standard; and it’s also a tell that their arguments are substantively weak.
SomervilleTom says
The Boston Globe is tabloid rubbish that is little more than a mouthpiece for whatever the owner of the Red Sox thinks might help his professional sports interests on any given day.
It has approximately as much relationship to the Boston paper of record that it used to be as today’s Washington Star-News has to the late Evening Star (which was once the paper of record for Washington DC).
I can only hope that influence of today’s Boston Globe shrinks in approximate proportion to its appallingly collapsing journalistic standards.
jconway says
There is still great journalism being done by the Globe. They have an excellent education reporter who has done some in depth pieces on charter executive compensation relative to teacher compensation as well as lingering racial disparities in education outcomes. Also the piece on race in Boston was exactly the kind of hard hitting story that people needed to see. Adrian Walker, Derrick Jackson, Yvonne Abraham, Joan Venocchio and Kevin Cullen usually produce good work.
It is Lehigh, McGory, Kean, and Shirley Leung who continue with the sycophantic coverage of Baker and DeLeo and have generally adopted a “what’s good for Boston business is good for Boston” narrative to their reporting which is opinion writing masquerading as objectivity. This editorial is a great example of this where the piece is almost indistinguishable from industry propaganda or the stuff coming from the Baker administration.
They still have some awesome shoe leather reporters and writers, they just need to elevate that coverage and stop it with the neoliberal dogma masking as objectivity charade they keep pulling on their readers.
SomervilleTom says
No doubt there are still great journalists working at the paper. There were great journalists at the Manchester Union Leader and even at Lowell Sun during the darkest (or brightest, depending on your political leanings) days. The fact that Jack Kerouac and Paul Sullivan worked at the Lowell Sun did not make the latter a great or even average newspaper.
Nevertheless, any newspaper is defined by its editing (and editor). The journalistic freedom — or lack thereof — of a paper’s editor is largely up to the owner (see William Loeb III or the Costello family).
Today’s Boston Globe is an embarrassment to anyone who remembers the original. Perhaps that will someday change, but it is what it is today.
gmoke says
https://www.clf.org/blog/study-proves-clean-energy-can-power-new-englands-future/
Trickle up says
Count me not surprised.
The Globe has always done this. When it comes to energy, they are a bunch of crackpots.
Heck, they still think nuclear power is a good deal.
jconway says
I think a valid argument could have been made for LNG as a bridge fuel two or three decades ago. Similarly, nuclear energy would be a valid option for an “all of the above” approach to carbon free energy if it were not so bloody expensive or dangerous. With the price of renewables falling exponentially with the rise of strong Chinese production capabilities, it makes little to no sense to bet the farm and endanger homeowners on a more expensive and less innovative choice.
Choosing to import a more expensive source rather than build our own export market in renewables is another short sighted economic decision made by the Baker administration and enabled by the Globe.
Trickle up says
Natural gas was touted as a bridge fuel. By Barry Commoner, In the 70s. The fuel it was to bridge to was hydrogen.
Any energy source is a terrific option except for all the reasons why it isn’t. Nukes were never a good idea, and to me “all of the above energy” is code for “let the big dogs (coal, oil, gas, nuclear) rule the markets; let the subsidies roll.”
pogo says
Good government types are always demanding more transparency in who is influencing our law makers. Given the role the media has in our political system (enshrined and protected in our Constitution), is is not farfetched to feel the Boston owes it to both their readers and the body politic in general, to report what PR / Lobbyists they meet with to influence their editorials. (Yes it happens all the time). A transparent democracy demands this kind of accountability so readers can better understand what goes on behind the curtain.