Climate and energy

here’s probably not a good thing – I occasionally get parts of Wizard of Oz and Pilgrim’s Progress confused. I also get the latter occasionally confused with Bible stories. (At any rate, at least I’ve read these books, right?) And why do I mention all this?

Because. Right now, some aspects of the current energy debate in Kansas reminds me of parts of those narratives. The story I’m thinking of appears in all sorts of places, actually – like Aesop’s Fables (Country Mouse and City Mouse), the movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, etc. It’s the basic story of all of a sudden being surrounded by lots of bright shiny things, none of which you can trust, all of which want something from you in a pretty serious way, and you have to figure out how to step carefully and make it to the other side. Usually there’s a little bit of pain involved, too.

I say this because someone just forwarded me a website on Kansas energy issues that gave me exactly that feeling. I’m not able to verify who they are, exactly what they want, or who paid for it, or I would give the actual link.

It could be no big deal. But speaking as someone familiar with web design and writing web copy – that is one slick site. Very well done. Very, very well done. I highly doubt that it was cheap to put together.

And where there’s money (especially where there’s both money and brains, that’s as dangerous a combination as money and no brains) I really, really prefer there to be more transparency. I can read between the cagey, extremely well constructed lines and make some guesses, and that makes me even more wary. Reading the rhetoric of the site is much like listening to the national politicians who are vying in the presidential primaries right now – they say a lot without saying much. They claim to stand for us all, but in our experience, what does that really mean?

You can’t credibly claim to stand for certain people or ideas unless there’s full disclosure about who you are. We need to know where you come from and what grounds you, what motivates you. Really. Who’s paying your bills? It’s probably not appropriate to channel Toby Keith right now, but, who’s your daddy?

Before we get involved with these larger forces, we should know these things. Ideally. However, it doesn’t always work like that. Humans do like the bright and shiny, and sometimes they go hurtling down dangerous paths to get them. That’s how we ended up with the fables and the stories, the parables and the allegories. The sheer scale of special interest energy money operating in Kansas right now is just crazy. I bet we end up with a few stories of our own.

What’s that country western song… “You’ve got to stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything”? (CowboyLyrics.com) Maybe we need another song, one that points out it goes the other way, too. Know what someone stands for, before you fall in with them. And if you don’t know for sure, step carefully.

Hold on, Country Mouse! Hang tight.

— Maril Hazlett

Want to know more about climate and energy issues in the Midwest? Check out www.climateandenergy.org.