Sunday morning news digest: local produce crate label edition

We're touched to be included in a batch of local blog crate labels dreamed up by the marvelous Tild. It's hard to say which is our favorite, though it's safe to say we'll take hedge apples over horse apples any day.

From Market Watch, news of the Elm Creek Wind Power Project, a second wind farm being created near Trimont. At its expected completion near the end of the year, the project will provide enough electricity to power 29,000 homes. The power will be sold to Great River Energy, an electrical co-operative.

The company press release cites Congressman Walz:

"In Southern Minnesota, we are showing the rest of the nation what is possible in renewable energy development," said Congressman Tim Walz. "With skyrocketing energy prices, it is imperative that we work together to ensure that our growing wind industry remains strong. In Congress, I have been a strong advocate of legislation that promotes wind development and research into other forms of renewable energy."

On the other end of the district, the Fillmore County Journal reports that another Company takes community based approach to developing wind energy. National Wind LLC is teaming up with Root River Energy to:

. . .partner with Root River Energy LLC to develop 250 megawatts of energy over the next five years, enough electricity to power nearly 75,000 homes. It will require capitalization estimated at $500 million.

"Root River Energy is one of the few utility-scale community wind projects in Minnesota that gives landowners the opportunity to participate on many levels," says Patrick Pelstring, Co-Chair of National Wind.

Speaking by phone, Pelstring said the structure of the relationship between National Wind and Root River Energy will be similar to how many ethanol plants are structured in Minnesota. National Wind will be the project manager, while Root River Energy will be made up of shareholders, similar to a utility coop. Pelstring said that the majority of stock would be owned by local people.

Both types of projects can find a place in Southern Minnesota's wind industry.

Melvin Strand, a letter writer chastises the Owatonna People's Press in Campaign shows Walz to be effective, observes:

“Tim Walz, Brian Davis neck-and-neck in fundraising battle” is a misleading headline evidently designed to justify Mr. Davis’ poor showing up-to-this time in the Congressional campaign.

Since all three Republicans who have been in the race lent their campaigns personal money, the conclusion should be that they are not doing as well as Congressman Walz.

Instead of emphasizing the hard facts of comparing the fundraising by three now campaigning, the reporter chose to quote Davis’ campaign manager about plans for the future. A real comparison, as indicated in the headline, would have dealt with the fact that Congressman Walz is a successful fundraiser representing the people who believe he is an effective Congressman and is not a rich man attempting to buy his way into office.

Strand has a point.  Indeed, the headline in the Rochester Post-Bulletin read Davis loans campaign $100,000.  The peripatetic Rev. Ibisch, Houston County Republican party officer and scold, also ignores the candidate's loans in a letter that's making the rounds (fortunately, Ibisch's home address has apparently been stabilized).

Ibisch observes that "Brian Davis is raising funds the old fashioned way: one convinced voter at a time."  One can hardly disagree with the good reverend. Davis's loans clearly demonstrate that he has convinced himself that he's the best man for the job; his list of out-of -district Minnesota Republican fat cat contributors shows a groundswell of support from metro-area conservatives as well.

One can't fault those who support the Republican Babel for want of trying. In the Worthington Globe, for instance, a letter writer  in To drill or not to drill? repeated another mindless talking point about drilling in ANWR: that the area to be drilled is only 2,000 acres.

So what's the catch? Like much of the malarky the "drill here, drill now" folks recite, there's a big catch.  First, it's not a single 2000 acre tract in ANWR; second, the finished (and scattered) wells will have to be connected via roads and pipelines.  So while the pro-drill crowd uses the analogy of a postage stamp or football fields, let's get real.  The National Resources Defense Council noted in 2005 that the oil  in ANWR:

is not concentrated in one large reservoir within a 2,000-acre area but is spread across its 1.5-million-acre coastal plain in more than 30 small deposits, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.¹ To produce oil from this vast area, supporting infrastructure would have to stretch across the coastal plain. Networks of pipelines and roads obviously would fragment wildlife habitat.

We don't always agree with the NRDC, but this scenario checks out. Thus, it's no surprise that the Coalition for a Fact-Free Southern Minnesota is mouthing these GOP pieties (the 2000-acre spin is drawn from a speech Bush made in March, 2005). We'll no doubt hear them repeat Congresswoman Bachmann's later Stepford Representative inanity about how Democrats now want to open public lands for drilling.  That's rather bass-ackwards: Congressman Walz has been talking about using the 68 million acres already open for drilling--including the National Petroleum Reserve--for weeks.

Unlike Bachmann, Senator Day, or Brian Davis, Walz has always stressed that comprehensive energy policy must seek long-term, rational solutions, including conservation measures such as fuel-efficiency and investment in renewable energy research.

This is the approach urged by an editorial in today's Winona Daily News, One step forward, too many steps back.  The lead:

As the price of a gallon of fuel rises, the public opinion for petroleum drilling seems to be plummeting. Most Republican groups are urging residents to seize upon this shift and write the friendly folks in Washington, D.C., to tell them to fire up the drills.

Before we get too excited about sucking more black gold out of the ground, don’t expect a few barrels of sweet crude from Alaska to bring much relief at the pump. The net effect that would have is less than a buck*, most agree. Less than the price of what fuel was a year ago.

So in that spirit, we’ve prepared our own message to our congressional delegation, and it’s so simple even they can understand.

Don’t.

Just don’t do it.

Read the whole thing: as is often the case with the best WDN editorials, this one's smoking hot. The conclusion brings home its case:

It seems like there’s an easy way to solve the energy crisis and a hard way. The easy way is making the investments and living with the temporarily high price of energy. The hard way is continuing to watch the cycles of energy boom and bust, which leave most of us feeling powerless and pessimistic.

These changes aren’t even all bad. They make us consider our relationship to the earth, how much we consume and what we can do to become better stewards of this world while we’re here. That’s not a concept that’s abstract for many of us who live in a place known for exceptional natural beauty.

And that’s also why it shouldn’t be hard for residents around these parts to tell congressional leaders not to drill. After all, we understand the priceless value of nature — we can experience it anytime we hike the bluffs or get on the Mississippi. We’d fight like hell to save this place, even if it was revealed that there was Middle East worth of oil under it. So, too, should we be able to understand that no wilderness is worth the risk of destroying for a fleeting bit of energy security.

Update: Local blogger Charlie Quimby (who should be getting his own peach of a blog crate label soon) addresses the issue of drilling in ANWR's coastal plain in Oil Shale and ANWR: Stretching the Truth. He sums up the "postage stamp" argument with a vivid analogy  to should make many rural people smile:

If your butt takes a load of birdshot, do you add up the surface area of the pellets or measure the area of the wound?

Ouch! Friends who have suffered that experience focused on the latter. [end update]

*A lot less than a buck, actually, with the little relief coming--if at all--years from now.