Re: Why is it...., Part 2

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

What makes all of this so interesting is that it brings back my own enviro "leadership" days.  Here is a story from those days (not real long, and you can delete if you are not interested):


We had a little group called Colorado Citizens for Clean Air and I was the Chairman.  We were instrumental in writing the Colorado Clean Air Act of 1970.  We (we is actually me) introduced our ideas in a joint session of the Colorado Legislature on a day when the Denver smog was so bad you could barely see your hand in front of your face.


So there I was, in my mid-thirties, Assistant Professor at Colorado Women's College, addressing a joint session of the State Legislature.  Heady stuff? You bet.  Colo. Public Service, our utility (four coal-burning power plants along the South Platte through Denver) claimed they couldn't control their sulfur dioxide EMISSIONS to better than 750 ppm.  So I thought "They're lying, and they are lying by some integral factor, maybe 5?"  So there in front of all those legislators I said the emission standard for SO2 should be 150 ppm.  And you know what?  That got into the Colorado regs.  Just like that.  No one was more amazed than I that I wasn't challenged, not even by Public Service, not even privately afterwards.


It wasn't a bad guess on my part, actually.     And I had correctly guessed that the 750 ppm wasn't nearly as good as the company could do.  But someone should have challenged me and asked where I got the number from.  Moral: let's not be scared of the popularity of the anti-nukes with the press.  Let's just keep at it.  Let's not worry about how we come across.  Do we sound arrogant? elitist? nerdy? over their heads? So what?


Ruth


Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.

ruthweiner@aol.com