Gov. Patrick gave the commencement address at UMass Amherst last week, and it was a great one. He’s turning his eye to big issues now — things with effects beyond the borders of our state.
“We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality,” Dr. King used to say, “tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” So many of you are already living and acting in that spirit, making the kinds of choices good citizens make. And it makes this faculty, your families and this Governor very proud.
It seems to me that that same spirit has to infuse more of our public policy.
Surely no policy choice before this community, this Commonwealth and this Nation is more emblematic than climate change. For we cannot continue to consume so much of the world’s energy and take so little responsibility for the impact of that consumption on the lives of others, and the life of the planet itself.
via Governor Patrick Delivers UMass Amherst Commencement. [my emphasis]
How wonderful that he put the climate issue front and center in defining the civic mission.
And yet later he speaks of moving to “cleaner natural gas”. In fact, the new Salem gas plant (taking the place of the old coal plant) is due to start running in June 2016. But the problem with natural gas is less with its combustion — which still creates CO2, though much less than coal — but in its extraction and transport. It leaks. And methane is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. At 5% leakage — an estimate considered conservative — natural gas possesses no greenhouse net benefit over coal. It is not better; it is not cleaner.
We need to envision a post-carbon economy — and plan for its swift adaptation. Germany has shown that its possible: It reached a peak of 74% of energy being produced by renewables on Sunday. (27% was the 2014 first quarter average.) That should be us.
Governor Patrick has shown fine leadership on renewables, and his heart is in the right place. But I think we should shed the illusion that natural gas is “better” than coal; the evidence says otherwise. In creating energy infrastructure that will be with us for decades, we have to push on straight to “best”: renewables, intense conservation; demand response, etc.
And who of the Gov candidates is the strongest to continue and improve upon this legacy?
davemb says
1) He did a better job of addressing the graduates as adults than any of the 20 or so other UMass commencement speakers I’ve heard.
2) This was not the speech of someone planning on a quiet retirement on leaving office. Can anyone think of anything other than Vice President that he would be running for?
stomv says
Cabinet position, or any other federal level high level government position…
joeltpatterson says
The Boston Globe reported in 2011 about the many leaks in Massachusetts’ pipelines.
stomv says
It’s not the number of leaks that matters. We know how much gas the utility loses to leaks — because we know how much they buy, and we know how much they sell. The rest is leaks, and from a climate perspective it doesn’t matter if that quantity of gas comes out of 21 leaks or 21,000.
Yes, the state legislature should require the utilities to fix leaks at a faster rate than they do now, passing that cost on to ratepayers. Doing so would reduce the fugitive methane emissions — reducing the damage to street trees and other urban foliage and the impact on climate change, as well as help to delay any expenditures in the expansion of natural gas pipeline capacity.
The lege should also require that the gas companies fairly compensate the cities and towns when they cut into pavement — right now, my understanding is that NGrid (et al) pay the municipality $50 for cutting into the road and patching it. Even after the fill-in, there’s far more than $50 worth of damage, and cities and towns eat that cost through property taxes. Ratepayers should be paying it. But I digress.