[OKC] From NYT: In Kansas, Climate Skeptics Embrace Cleaner Energy

[Miles, Karen]

In Kansas, Climate Skeptics Embrace Cleaner Energy


By LESLIE KAUFMAN
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/leslie_kau
fman/index.html?inline=nyt-per> 

SALINA, Kan. - Residents of this deeply conservative city do not put
much stock in scientific predictions of climate change
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.h
tml?inline=nyt-classifier> . 
"Don't mention global warming," warned Nancy Jackson, chairwoman of the 
Climate and Energy Project <http://www.climateandenergy.org> , a small
nonprofit group that aims to get people to rein in the fossil fuel
emissions that contribute to climate change. "And don't mention Al Gore
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/al_gore/in
dex.html?inline=nyt-per> . People out here just hate him." 
Saving energy, though, is another matter. 
Last Halloween, schoolchildren here searched for "vampire" electric
loads, or appliances that sap energy even when they seem to be off.
Energy-efficient LED lights twinkled on the town's Christmas tree. On
Valentine's Day, local restaurants left their dining room lights off and
served meals by candlelight. 
The fever for reducing dependence on fossil fuels has spread beyond this
city of red-brick Eisenhower-era buildings to other towns on the Kansas
plains. A Lutheran church in nearby Lindsborg was inspired to install 
geothermal
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/geothermal_power/inde
x.html?inline=nyt-classifier>  heating. The principal of Mount Hope's
elementary school dressed up as an energy bandit at a student assembly
on home-energy conservation. Hutchinson won a contract to become home to
a $50 million wind turbine factory
<http://www.usa.siemens.com/en/somewhere_in_america/hutchinson_ks.htm> .

Town managers attribute the new resolve mostly to a yearlong competition
sponsored by the Climate and Energy Project, which set out to extricate
energy issues from the charged arena of climate politics. 
Attempts by the Obama administration to regulate greenhouse gases are
highly unpopular here because of opposition to large-scale government
intervention. Some are skeptical that humans might fundamentally alter a
world that was created by God. 
If the heartland is to seriously reduce its dependence on coal and oil,
Ms. Jackson and others decided, the issues must be separated. So the
project ran an experiment to see if by focusing on thrift, patriotism,
spiritual conviction and economic prosperity, it could rally residents
of six Kansas towns to take meaningful steps to conserve energy and
consider renewable fuels. 
Think of it as a green variation on "What's the Matter with Kansas?"
<http://whatsthematterwithkansas.com/>  Ms. Jackson suggested, referring
to the 2004 book by Thomas Frank that contended that Republicans had
come to dominate the state's elections by exploiting social values. 
The project's strategy seems to have worked. In the course of the
program, which ended last spring, energy use in the towns declined as
much as 5 percent relative to other areas - a giant step in the world of
energy conservation, where a program that yields a 1.5 percent decline
is considered successful. 
The towns were featured as a case study <http://drivingdemand.lbl.gov>
on changing behavior by the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory. And the Climate and Energy Project just received a
grant from the Kansas Energy Office to coordinate a competition among 16
Kansas cities to cut energy use in 2011. 
The energy experiment started as a kitchen-table challenge three years
ago. 
Over dinner, Wes Jackson, the president of the Land Institute
<http://www.landinstitute.org/> , which promotes environmentally
sustainable agriculture, complained to Ms. Jackson, his daughter-in-law,
that even though many local farmers would suffer from climate change,
few believed that it was happening or were willing to take steps to
avoid it. 
Why did the conversation have to be about climate change? Ms. Jackson
countered. If the goal was to persuade people to reduce their use of
fossil fuels, why not identify issues that motivated them instead of
getting stuck on something that did not? 
Only 48 percent of people in the Midwest agree with the statement that
there is "solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been
getting warmer," a poll
<http://people-press.org/report/556/global-warming>  conducted in the
fall of 2009 by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press
showed - far fewer than in other regions of the country. 
 
Article continues at: 
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/science/earth/19fossil.html?th&emc=th
 
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