A vigil against proposed West Roxbury pipeline

I appreciate that you acknowledge you are not an energy expert, and certainly neither am I. But I've spent the last three months (since I first heard about an M & R station across from our actively blasting quarry; I live only 2 blocks away) trying to educate myself about the issue. And what I've learned has blown open my mind to how twisted the fossil fuel companies are at perpetuating untruths that will lead us down a road to self-destruction as a planet. I may be saved now from an explosion at the quarry (which I WON'T be! unless we all fight like heck to stop the WRL right now), but we'll still face a bleak future of increasingly extreme "weather events" in the ongoing future. Like today? IDK.

You say you are no gas expert (like me), and yet you repeat as a fact that we are "dependent on natural gas" to make a deal with the devil, forced to choose between blotting the coast, or destroying the land. I do understand why you are convinced of that, because ALL the media keep repeating it over and over, quoting the "experts." But these experts are in service to a politically and economically entrenched energy industry that was handed over legislative candy and Federal guidelines and subsidies by the 2001 - 2005 national ENERGY COMMISSION (it had a different name), chaired by none other than Halliburton's first son, Vice President Dick Cheney [look up: fracking + Halliburton loophole, as just one example]. This shifted the course and direction of 20+ years of energy policy that had been working to heal the earth, upon whose healthy functioning we all truly depend! I hope Charlie Baker is as smart as he seems, and he won't be doing the same about-face from Deval Patrick's 8 years of visionary energy policy. I worry about that.

Waquiot, you dismiss hydro and wind as untenable. As many have said elsewhere, the FIRST thing we really need to do is put on a sweater and just lower the dang thermostat (this is NE and not the Caribbean, after all) because it is the lives of our great, grand children we are talking about. If you really don't believe that, by now, I'm afraid you may be in a self-protective denial. SECONDLY, all the govt subsidies for fracked gas pipeline infrastructure should go instead to helping all citizens upgrade their home heating to high-efficiency units which dramatically cut both fuel use and our bill. Check out the current promotions on masssave.org (tho, I JUST went there and it is looking WAY less professional and normal than it used to!! Why is that??? Worth a reporter looking into).

It's just another set of "experts," but I have seen the statistics and reports which show that this kind of "conserving" will actually be the "bridge" we need to get us through to the "beyond fossil fuel" era. Why are WE as citizens, instead, being asked to pay for industry's past unwise choices, just so that for 20 more years the 1% can continue to scrape out from the precious earth profits for themselves. Seriously? THIRDLY, the efficiency, reliability, cost and productivity of a diverse, decentralized, and renewable energy grid will only come about if the government and industry stop wasting time, money, and brain power to work together to make it happen now, not later.

Let's not simply accept a fossil fuel "solution" because "they" say so, especially when there are alternative calculations that show "they" are just so wrong. Especially when what "they" are offering is NOT even a solution at all, because of the real damage it causes. Instead, let's organize ourselves to get educated as a community, as Bostonians, and as U.S.Americans to demand from our politicians real, meaningful solutions. Put our tax dollars and high energy bills toward developing an infrastructure of sustainable energy sources using solar, tidal, hydro, geothermal, wind (did u see idea from MIT about wind energy from Channel 5? - http://www.wcvb.com/news/company-channeling-wind-power-with-turbines-bli...?), like humans have used for thousands of years (before killing the whales and finding petroleum). And like you say, Waquiot, make all of these, so they actually work. That's where I want my energy billls and tax dollars to go. Don't you?

I mis-read your question, so I wrote the following below. I guess I couldn't believe you were saying, "Fine let's build an unnecessary pipeline, and of course the ratepayers should pay for it because they can choose to burn wood pellets if they really wanted to." Is that really what you believe? Why shouldn't we just show that facts we could be paying for building RENEWABLE tidal, wind, geothermal, and solar infrastructures for the next century that doesn't KILL us! That's where I want my energy billls and tax dollars to go.

Any business HAS to pass on the cost of its operation to the consumers; otherwise it will go out of business! That's one way to discourage shoplitfting, by reminding the offender that they are really stealing from the rest of us who will just see any $$losses added on the price of everything else, right? It's also one of the excuses fossil fuel companies use to BLAME environmentalists for the high cost of equipment and regulations to make things less polluting. They say - "If we make these changes, it will just mean the price of electricity or heat will go so much higher for the users.
WHOM DO YOU THINK pays for the pipelines? The shareholders of the energy companies? It either gets added to our bill, or hidden as as a subsidy and then all taxpayers lose.

And it's part of the forces that are causing us to see only those opinions we already believe. In this case, however, it's the opposite, I guess! If I have to see one more ad exhorting me to !! INVEST in Lucrative and SAFE Natural Gas !! (until they see my income doesn't qualify), I think I'm gonna keel over.......