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U.S. needs energy standards
Gary Hirshberg, CEO of Stonyfield Farm
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Kai Ryssdal: Just 'cause the super committee doesn't have enough things to worry about, energy policy is apparently also now in play. There's a bipartisan request that's been made to the Gang of 12 to not cut funding for renewable energy.
Commentator Gary Hirshberg says the bigger question isn't about what to cut or not, it's about what energy standards we want.
Gary Hirshberg: There's an argument in the U.S. Congress that says America doesn't need to update its energy efficiency rules and standards. That gets my inner businessman boiling because my company is a living, breathing example of what America's economy has to gain from greater efficiency.
I run America's biggest organic yogurt company, Stonyfield Farm. And I can testify that energy efficiency isn't just about the environment -- it's about American competitiveness.
Stonyfield's been working for decades to cut costs and emissions in energy, transportation, and waste. And today efficiency has saved us more than $18 million since 2006.
How have we used those savings? To create or preserve jobs -- 84 of them, or more than 15 percent of our New Hampshire workforce. America needs new energy efficiency rules -- everything from appliance standards to building retrofit incentives to rules that reward utilities for selling less power.
But we also need new rules to cure a huge market failure: Right now, markets don't include the price of pollution and other costs of inefficient and dirty energy. So naturally most business people can't move to efficiency or cleaner energy and give their competitors a cost advantage.
Some in Congress are fighting efficiency as an issue of "choice." Americans should have the choice to buy inefficient incandescent light bulbs -- a technology that dates back nearly to the Civil War. They say that's what freedom is. Meanwhile, we're sitting on new bulbs that use one-fifth the energy of ancient incandescents. Does Congress really want obsolete technology to trump U.S. competitiveness and our environment?
That's why so many big businesses -- like Nike, Starbucks, eBay, Target and Stonyfield -- are promoting a level playing field of new national energy efficiency policies. Some politicians are listening. There's a bipartisan bill in the Senate that would greatly strengthen America's energy efficiency incentives and rules. Other countries are already seizing this competitive advantage, America needs jobs -- so what are we waiting for?
Ryssdal: Gary Hirshberg is the CEO of Stonyfield Farm. What are you waiting for? Write to us.
Well ... yes, we should allow people the choice to be inefficient. It is not anyone’s business to protect stupid people from themselves. And they may have very good reasons for needing that inefficient item. But we should charge them a premium for making inefficient choices (and perhaps give them a hard time about resisting change, because that often what it comes down to). But if you want an antique bulb, fine, you should be able to buy one ... at antique prices. I still buy vacuum tubes for my old radio ... they cost a lot ... but I don’t mind paying because I have my reasons for wanting them.
With respect, Mr. Hirshberg's message is about as controversial as saying "air is usually lighter than water." He is, of course, right, and right-minded. The meta-comment here is, why does this still need to be said ? (I don't deny that it does). Listening, it felt as if I were back in the first grade - why do USians never get past this grade? If we are right to think people still need to hear this, why do our media not address why we are so elementary? What is happening in our public discourse to create such dissonance, such ignorance, as to not grasp that sensible energy values can be consonant with profitable business practices?
Not to put too fine a point on it, our media are a political theater in which plenty of actors - mostly Reps, but also some cowardly Dems - have managed to render the waters so filthy that we can't tell our right hands from our left. There will always be servants of those who care nothing for the commonweal in government. But that mainstream media have given those servants sufficient space and time to defile all clarity is a sign that the media are as corrupt as those they "cover."
