Jean Harrington, Hopewell Borough
I have been thinking of an energy resource that’s going to waste, the Earth. Down about 4 feet, it’s a constant 54 degrees. In some places, it’s even warmer, such as the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, where it is 57 degrees, because it’s over water.
I read, at the same time, that one-third of United States work force is out of work. Perhaps, you don’t know anyone who’s lost a job, but I do and it’s awful. They aren’t counted in the labor statistics because they gave up long ago.
What if government, banks, corporations ran sort of a WPA-like program, producing geothermal heating and cooling? I have given up any hopes of turning the government around so it’s people-centered, instead of relying on profit. Smaller outfits, like local oil and gas suppliers, could be involved in retrofitting buildings with new equipment and there would always be need to bring it up to room temperature. It would employ surveyors, engineering, IT, all the way to ditch-diggers. Geothermal works, but is much too expensive for homeowners.
I don’t want to see anyone lose his/her job — coal miners, especially. Most of our power in the northeast is supplied by coal. Coal miners die, sometimes by methane, sometimes by collapse. But, most of people dying of coal, die slow deaths, far away. There are millions of people dying because of coal, right now, today.
Did you know that no one has died in this country, due to nuclear power plants? Sixty years ago, there was talk of nuclear fusion energy, but no one listened. Fusion research fell by wayside. We must build nuclear power plants because no one listened to scientists. Someday, we will have fusion, but not for a long time and not if corporations don’t support it.
There is a county in Pennsylvania where fracking takes place. The county’s name is Carbon, believe it or not. My position is I will not negotiate with carbon.
