It seems politicians of every stripe have a new buzzword to abuse. Preface any project or technology with the word "renewable," and it is almost guaranteed to generate automatic public support and popularity -- even though it is invariably linked to some handout for big corporate interests. Coincidence? I think not. It reflects the covert stranglehold that corporate interests have gained over our political process. Powerful lobby groups representing private interest sectors are the primary beneficiaries of such policy, rather than the public interest.

How renewable is bioethanol from corn going to be when our aquifers are exhausted, not just from growing corn where it should not be grown, but from distilling the ethanol to obtain a fraction of the energy expended in its production? How renewable is our farmland going to be when thousands of acres of prairie are fragmented by access roads, power lines and turbine foundations? How renewable is our precious rural ecology going to be when soil profiles are disrupted, native plant ecosystems damaged, and wildlife driven off by the noise and intrusion of monstrous wind turbines?

Corporate lip service to environmental responsibility is, by and large, superficial and increasingly used in a gratuitous manner to distract from a singular underlying corporate purpose -- profit generation. Phony solutions like wind power and bioethanol are not just a waste of taxpayer resources, they lull the public into a false sense of security that their elected representatives are actually doing something about the environment when they are really making things worse. These are very shortsighted distractions that detract from investment in real long-term solutions -- solutions that will not necessarily benefit corporations seeking to preserve current profitability.

Why does investment in long-term solutions get such short shrift when it comes to public investment and political will? Because politicians need to point to accomplishments that made a difference within their term of office in order to get re-elected, they are easily seduced into promoting technologies that benefit existing corporate interests even though they destroy the environment in the name of saving it. It is much easier to manipulate public perceptions with 10-second sound bites that include the words "renewable energy" than it is to push public investment toward conservation measures or investment in truly sustainable energy alternatives that have time horizons of 10 to 15 years or more. Enron was quick to recognize this opportunity, and it should not go unnoticed that they were the corporation to jump-start the great American wind energy fraud.

Although Republicans have been adept at convincing their followers to expect less, rather than more, from government in terms of regulating corporate greed, Democrats risk making matters worse with their seemingly blind, unconditional promotion of all things renewable if they remain willfully oblivious to the obvious environmental impacts. Even self-proclaimed tree-huggers in the Sierra Club and Greenpeace have been duped into supporting the logging of thousands of trees on America's most pristine ridgelines to make space for a few wind turbines. They have been suckered by the corporate greenwash and have lost all credibility as environmentalists in the community of real ecologists of which I am a part. It remains to be seen who will now come forward to save rural America, pull the sheepskin off these corporate wolves flogging renewable frauds, and slay their political "shepherds."

J.P. Michaud

1189 180th Ave.