Burnin’

There’s an interesting scene in episode seven of HBO’s John Adams, where 90 year-old Adams is shown the above painting by the artist, John Trumbull. Adams is displeased. He says the history of the American Revolution is lost. He chastises Trumbull for making a graphic fiction of the events in Philadelphia. Adams reminds him that the nation was at war, and that the signers filtered in one by one to sign the Declaration and that there was nothing tranquil about it.

It may seem a trivial point, but it’s not. As our nation teeters, faced with economic and political crises, we need to look back and learn from our own history. We need to remember and honor the sacrifices made my great Americans, and use their examples as motivation. There were scoundrels then, as there are now. Those who care about the future of our nation (and the people in it) must work to root them out and restore the ideal of public service and corporate responsibility. It’s a big task but it’s not out of reach.

I heard Bobby Kennedy Jr. speak in Savannah a year or so ago. One of the things that stuck with me from his talk is the fact that we can power the entire country with wind and solar, if we had a means of transmitting the electricity generated. In other words, we can invest deeply in wind and solar, but that’s not enough. We also need to build out the infrastructure.

Regulators in Texas are doing something about it. According to The New York Times, Texas regulators have approved a $4.93 billion wind-power transmission project.

The planned web of transmission lines will carry electricity from remote western parts of the state to major population centers like Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. The lines can handle 18,500 megawatts of power, enough for 3.7 million homes on a hot day when air-conditioners are running.

Transmission companies will pay the upfront costs of the project. They will recoup the money from power users, at a rate of about $4 a month for residential customers.

The transmission problem is so acute in Texas that turbines are sometimes shut off even when the wind is blowing.

“When the amount of generation exceeds the export capacity, you have to start turning off wind generators” to keep things in balance, said Hunter Armistead, head of the renewable energy division in North America at Babcock & Brown, a large wind developer and transmission provider.

Other states may find the Texas model difficult to emulate. The state is unique in having its own electricity grid. All other states fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, adding an extra layer of bureaucracy to any transmission proposals.

Today in Philadelphia, at the centennial meeting of the National Governor’s Association, President Clinton gave a rousing speech. He quoted liberally from an earlier speech, given 100 years ago by then President Theodore Roosevelt to the same gathering of governors.

Here’s the essence of what Roosevelt said and Clinton repeated:

Disregarding for the moment the question of moral purpose, it is safe to say that the prosperity of our people depends directly on the energy and intelligence with which our natural resources are used. It is equally clear that these resources are the final basis of national power and perpetuity. Finally, it is ominously evident that these resources are in the course of rapid exhaustion.

We have become great in a material sense because of the lavish use of our resources; and we have just reason to be proud of our growth. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils shall have been still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields, and obstructing navigation. These questions do not relate only to the next century or to the next generation. One distinguishing characteristic of really civilized men is foresight; we have to, as a nation, exercise foresight for this nation in the future; and if we do not exercise that foresight, dark will be the future!

We are coming to recognize as never before the right of the Nation to guard it’s own future in the essential matter of natural resources. In the past we have admitted the right of the individual to injure the future of the Republic for his own present profit. In fact there has been a good deal of a demand for unrestricted individualism, for the right of the individual to injure the future of all of us for his own temporary and immediate profit. The time has come for a change.

Can you imagine if this type of conservative existed today? We’d be in much better shape if such persons did exist (in either political party). Since, for the most part, they do not exist, we the people must carry the weight. We the people must refuse to allow unrestricted individualism. Regulation of industry in not bad, it’s necessary for the common good (an American ideal if there ever was one). Reagan and his ilk convinced a lot of people regulation of industry was wrong, but it’s time to move past that false ideal. Unrestricted individualism, perpetrated by a greedy man or a mob of greedy men, is in fact the ruin of this nation. Are you ready to put a stop it? I am.

“People and nations are forged in the fire of adversity.” -John Adams

We don’t subscribe to HBO. That might need to change.

This weekend we caught part two of HBO Films’ seven-part miniseries, John Adams. The work is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by David McCullough.

Chris Hicks of Deseret News calls the miniseries “an epic undertaking of the kind we see infrequently on TV these days, filled in equal part with scenes that are stirring, chilling, uplifting, gut-wrenching and enlightening, while demonstrating the great sacrifices that went into the formation of America.”

While this show is entertainment, it is also educational, particularly so in this time of little reading and weakened public schools. I’m a student of American history, and I learned something. Namely that New York abstained from the vote for independence on July 2, 1776. According to my research this morning, the New York delegation did adopt the Declaration a week later, making the vote unanimous.