Our View - Tuesday

Democratic hocus pocus with power
Leaders exploit a broken turbine

To appear green at their convention in Denver next month, Democratic Party officials bought into a wind turbine owned by the Wray School District on the rural plains of eastern Colorado. During the convention, expect routine shots of the windmill to appear on TV, somehow referenced as a source for the convention's power. Expect magazine and newspaper stories linking the windmill to a convention that's green and clean as it gets. It will be a ruse.

Already, a strange third-party transaction involving Wray's windmill has generated positive green publicity for the party. The Rocky Mountain News reported Friday about the green convention, leading with: "Thanks to a windmill that toils day and night producing clean electricity... ."

It toils, perhaps, but the windmill generates nothing - not even enough energy to power a child's nightlight. It may or may not be working in time for the convention. Either way it will generate nothing more than an illusion for the Democrat fiesta. It will not reduce the convention's carbon footprint in the least.

"It has generated some electricity off and on, but nothing substantial to date," said Wray superintendent Ron Howard, speaking to The Gazette. "We've had computer issues, blade issues, water issues, and a converter issue. For the past month it hasn't worked at all."

A company in Holland, which bought the company that sold the windmill to the school district, plans to replace a major component soon. When it finally works, all of the electricity it generates will help power the village of Wray - not the convention. Wray City Manager Stan Holmes told The Gazette his city plans to buy 100 percent of the electricity, under an agreement with the school district. Howard anticipates annual earnings for the school of $50,000 to $100,000 a year. The school will continue buying electricity from the city, a cost that averages about $80,000 a year.

When the substantial technical kinks are ironed out, the turbine will stand as thing of beauty. It was the inspiration of vocational agriculture teacher Jay Clapper and his students five years ago. Howard, Clapper, his students, the school board, and city leaders have worked together on a plan that will harness free wind to help fund education and ease taxpayer burden. Innovative school finance doesn't get much better than this.

Besides, it will reduce by some 20 percent the amount of electricity the town of Wray buys from conventional power companies that pollute. It will be genuinely green.

But Wray's wonderful windmill has absolutely no legitimate link to the Democratic convention whatsoever. None. For the convention, Democrats will burn electricity and gas, and they'll generate trash. They'll fly to and fro on airplanes. They feel terribly guilty about all this, having made environmentalism part of the platform, so they're buying carbon offsets.

State Sen. Greg Brophy, a Republican from Wray, loves his town's broken yet promising windmill. He resents that polluting Democrats are using it in a ploy to pretend they're green. He compares carbon credits to the indulgences Christians bought in the Middle Ages to offset their sins and assuage their consciences.

Religious indulgences involved paying the leaders of various religious institutions that claimed authority or expertise in the spiritual realm. In return for payment, church officials granted absolution for sins.

Wealthy sinners could pay to avoid penances, such as community service or painstaking amends with those whom they had wronged. The money, ostensibly, went toward funding churches that made the world a place less threatened and contaminated by sin.

Carbon offsets work the same way. Some wealthy environmentalists pollute far more seriously than ordinary average folks, but they feel bad about it. Al Gore, for example, wears eco-vangelism on his sleeve and tells the little people how they should live. Yet he's among the worst environmental stewards roaming the earth. His 10,000-squarefoot, 20-room, eight-bathroom mansion consumes enough energy each year to supply 20 average American households.

On top of that, he flies around in a giant private jet and rides in gas-guzzling limousines. To assuage guilt and criticism, Gore buys carbon indulgences. Much of the money goes to Generation Investment Management, a firm we're told works to make the planet greener and cleaner.

Gore chairs the company's American branch, and owns part of it, meaning he benefits financially from his own indulgence payments. But that's another story for another day.

Like Gore, Democrats plan to pay for absolution of their environmental sins. They'll buy indulgences from a branch of the green church called NativeEnergy, a Vermont-based business that brokers carbon credits, or "offsets."

Howard said NativeEnergy paid the school district between $200,000 and $300,000 to issue "green tags," which it will use to represent the indulgence credits. How does one value supernatural green currency blessed by public school officials?

"It's strictly a matter of negotiating price," Howard said.

NativeEnergy officials asked Howard not to disclose the exact amount they paid for the green tags. And why is that? It's because NativeEnergy makes money by marking up the cost of indulgences. The seller (NativeEnergy) doesn't want the buyer (Democratic Party) to know the wholesale price. A freedom of information request will solve the mystery.

The general public is intended to know little details about these carbon credit transactions. When the story is told, it's supposed to sound something like this: Democrats arranged to power their convention with a windmill that funds rural schools on the Colorado plains.

If one carefully examines the indulgence transaction, it's clear that this does nothing to reduce the carbon footprint of the Democratic convention. With or without the purchase of indulgences, Democrats will buy conventional electricity from a conventional power company that burns coal and makes an icky mess.

With or without these indulgences, The Wray School District's turbine will churn on the Colorado plains, in a frequently foiled effort to supply power to Wray - not the Democratic convention.

The green indulgence tags change nothing. Even if the windmill works next month, it will provide no electricity to the grid and certainly none to the convention site. There's no practical nexus at all - just a third-party transaction in which Wray Public Schools received payment for wholesaling an absolution of environmental guilt and hypocrisy.

At best it's an amateur attempt at slight of hand. Worse, this dishonest appropriation of Wray's windmill highlights a genuine and disturbing belief among wealthy Democrats. It's a belief that says they can pollute - committing environmental sins - without guilt. They can sin without having to change their ways. The big private planes, the wasteful mansions and the limousines are all forgiven - without the burden of actually performing penance. So long as they pay the environmental church, that is.