The Oppenheimer Report 6/21/10

Dad at the beach house - August, 2002

I’m down in Buffalo for a few days to visit my mom, pay some bills, and take one glorious lap around Grand Island on my friend’s 27’ Magnum. I love that boat. When I opened up the Buffalo News last Friday morning, there, obscured by the bold print headlines about BP CEO Tim Hayword’s tongue lashing in Congress (talk about your political grandstanding), was an article about a proposed wind farm they’re talking about building in Western New York. The proposed farm would be situated 2 miles out into windy Lake Erie somewhere south of Buffalo near Hamburg, N.Y., and would be capable of producing enough electricity to power 130,000 homes. Sounds like a “no brainer,” right? Well here’s a new twist to the “not-in-my-backyard” argument: digging the foundations for these windmills will likely stir up the toxic waste that has for years been settling on the lake floor in the area. The proposed location is not far south of the sites of the former Bethlehem Steel plant and a few other dirty industries that used to dump their toxic waste into the pristine waters of Lake Erie. Now, residents of the waterfront properties south of Buffalo aren’t even supposed to relocate large rocks on the shoreline for fear of stirring up the dreaded waste; it could threaten the fish population. It stands to reason that pouring foundations for over one hundred and fifty giant windmills might stir some of that muck up as well. I also read that the power generated by these windmills will be three or four times as expensive as the power now generated by Niagara Mohawk. I’m not exactly sure why that is, perhaps because it costs a lot to build them. Alternative energy always seems to be ridiculously expensive; why is that? Still, you’ve got to love renewable energy. Maybe someday we’ll all have little wind generating plants of our own. Just like the Dutch.



In the meantime, until someone figures out how to make renewable energy a viable, large scale solution to our voracious electrical demand, nuclear power seems like a reasonable compromise to me. Nobody wants to see another Chernobyl disaster, but reactor technology and safety have come a long way since then, and there is no question that we need to do something satisfy our growing demand for electricity. Have you ever gone without it for a week? It’s darned inconvenient. In our apartment building we can't flush our toilets without electricity. We’ve now seen what one deep water drilling rig disaster can do to the environment, and this should be a bit of a shot in the arm to all the alternative energy advocates. The problem with the myth that electric cars will save the planet is that electricity doesn’t grow on trees. It is so often generated by burning fossil fuels and creating greenhouse gases. Yes, spent fuel rods from a nuclear power plant have a shelf life which probably exceeds the existence of mankind, and yes, radiation leaks are really dangerous. But lots of countries virtually rely on nuclear energy now, and it is generally a cleaner solution to burning fossil fuels. I think it’s worth the risk. Besides, we now have an oil slick the size of the Louisiana Purchase coming ashore on the Gulf coast, so fossil fuels aren’t exactly without environmental consequences either. Do we destroy the entire marine ecosystem of the Gulf coast (oops, too late, we already did) or do we irradiate twenty square hectares of Nebraska that nobody cares about? Decisions, decisions! As for the argument that nuclear power plants are easy targets for terrorist attacks, yes, I suppose they are. By the way, so are chemical plants, of which there are plenty in the U.S., and let’s not rule out the 40,000 or so offshore oil rigs presently in operation. Post 9-11, I’m afraid the delusion of national security has been somewhat comprimised.


In sports, Brazil is presently a front runner in the World Cup competition. Portugal is not far behind, and they just walloped N. Korea 7-0 (yippee!). Did any of you else see the questionable call that cost the U.S. a come-from-behind win against Slovenia last week? It stinks when the difference between winning and tying a match is determined by a referee who probably made a critical error in judgment. If anything, I think the American player was interfered with, not the other way around. I have two words for those refs: instant replay. There have been a lot of upsets so far; New Zealand tied former World Cup champions Italy yesterday, and that was a big upset. In golf, Northern Irishman Graeme McDowell won the U.S. Open yesterday at Pebble Beach, and I actually watched about half the round. I think I secretly took pleasure watching Tiger Woods hook a few into the rough. Karma’s a bitch. I still say watching golf is a little like watching the grass grow, but that was what Mom and the nurse were watching (for some inexplicable reason), so that‘s what we watched. A belated Happy Father’s Day to all my readers who are dads.





Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED