There was a certain irony in reading Paula Sutton’s letter to the editor decrying the proposed solar development in Warren beginning as she did with a bucolic ride on her four-wheeler to the gravel pit to watch the ants. 

Ms. Sutton offers not a single fact or figure to support her claims of the “green lie”  of solar energy. She frets about tax dollars spent and the children of China sickened mining “rare earth metals to power the ugly solar panels”.

Fact: According to Forbes magazine (not exactly a liberal operation) USD $5.2 trillion was spent globally on fossil fuel subsidies in 2017, the equivalent of over 6.5% of global GDP of that year.

It’s not unusual for the feds to support new industries but the fossil fuel industry has been receiving subsidies for a hundred years!  Why is that?

Fact: During the pandemic ExxonMobil’s net profits more than doubled from a year prior to $5.5 billion. Chevron reported its highest quarterly profit in a decade. Shell posted its highest earnings ever. Yet we are all paying more at the gas pumps than ever. Does that count as a subsidy too?

As for the children of China, have you heard of Cancer Alley in Lousiana, Ms Sutton? 

Fact: Cancer Alley is the regional nickname given to an 85-mile stretch of land along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans which contains over 150petrochemical plants and refineries. This area accounts for 25% of the petrochemical production in theUnited States The region is considered asacrifice zone In Cancer Alley, forty-six individuals per one million are at risk of developing cancer, compared with the national average of roughly thirty individuals per one million.

But to Ms Sutton it’s just the price you pay. “Humans leave a footprint on this earth,” she lectures.

 “ We must make the most informed, unemotional, fact-based decision possible.” 

Then, unemotionally, let’s note that global warming is real, climate change is real, and we are running out of time to make a course correction. 

According to a recent report by Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, human induced habitat destruction, poor farming practices, pollution, and climate change have altered ecosystems significantly, driving many species past the point of recovery. In Great Britain alone, 1,188 species are threatened with extinction. 

Fact: Billions of people rely on wild species for food, clean water, energy, income, and wellbeing. Ask a Connecticut lobsterman how his business is these days. If you can find one. Because since 1999, 99 percent of the lobstermen in the once lobster-abundant waters of the western Long Island Sound have gone out of business. What caused this? Scientists have spent the years since then gathering data with the help of lobster trappers and coming up with an answer. Evidence points strongly to one factor in particular: It’s temperature. The Sound today is too warm too often for for lobsters to survive. 

Are Maine lobstermen next?

So, I say yes to solar and wind. Reduce our carbon emissions in any way we can. Save biodiversity, save the planet, save our way of life for our kids and grand kids. I hope the people of Warren embrace a new solar development because they understand that it’s high time we started to curb our fossil fuel addiction.

Maybe the next time Ms Sutton goes to the gravel pit instead of watching ants she might be more comfortable sticking her head in the sand, ostrich-like, and pretending we don’t have a climate change problem.

Lynn Hower Allen lives in Rockland