It’s the Northeast’s last great forest — and it’s in the crosshairs of foreign energy companies that stand to make millions by cutting away a huge swath of it and irrevocably altering its character. So say critics of the Central Maine Power Corridor, a planned project that would enable the transfer of “clean” green energy from Quebec, Canada, to Massachusetts.
The tradeoff, though, is that thousands of acres of forest must be destroyed.
The handiwork of two foreign companies, Hydro-Quebec and Spanish-owned Central Maine Power (CMP), the project involves transferring “Canadian hydropower to Massachusetts, across Maine’s western and southern regions via a new high-powered electrical transmission line,” as the Press Herald’s John Balentine related it April 21.
“For four years now, since the project was proposed by Central Maine Power in 2017, the project has been bogged down in the regulatory process, thanks to repeated protests by environmentalists dead set on halting a project they say will spoil Maine’s signature remote wilderness,” Balentine informed.
“While some work has already begun on the line, environmental groups have managed to collect enough signatures to bring the project to a statewide referendum vote, which may or may not happen depending on ongoing legal challenges,” he continued. “All told, millions have been spent by both sides trying to convince Mainers of the benefits or perils of the project.”
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Balentine supports the project, and his position is well expressed by “Mainers for Clean Energy Jobs,” which calls itself an “environmental conservation organization.” As it writes at its Facebook page, trumpeting the endeavor, “Exhaustive fact-finding by impartial state and federal authorities unequivocally establishes that the Clean Energy Connect [CEC] will, each year, reduce carbon emissions by 3 million metric tons (the equivalent of 700,000 cars).”
The other side has mounted its defense, and it recently acquired an influential new ally: Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson. Quite the outdoorsman, Carlson focused on the CEC last week on his new show “Tucker Carlson Originals.” As Fox reports:
The [CEC] scheme would make the power companies millions, but according to former Maine State Senator Dr. Tom Saviello, Mainers would only get about $10 a month.
In a $20 million lobbying and ad campaign, CMP promised residents jobs and an economic boom through tax revenue. But according to Caratuk, Maine Select[man] Elizabeth Caruso, “CMP has a habitual practice of over-projecting their tax revenues. After the project is built, they present a declaration of assessment that is far below what they projected to the towns in order to get their permits.”
Carlson said that initially, most towns along the proposed corridor believed the assessments from CMP and supported the project. But now, according to Caruso, 86% of the communities have voted, and 100% of them have opposed the corridor.
Many residents along the corridor rely on snowmobiling, fishing, and tourism to make a living, and Saviello says if the corridor is built, these industries will be “devastated” .
The organization No CMP Corridor provides additional arguments for the “nay” position, writing:
- Countless jobs in the biomass industry and related forest products industries would be put in jeopardy.
- Tourism is the number one industry in Maine, and this corridor will jeopardize those jobs.
- This corridor would jeopardize Maine’s renewable energy sector, which could lose hundreds of millions of dollars over the next fifteen years as a direct result of this project.
- Maine-based renewable energy businesses provide hundreds of good jobs for Mainers, while limiting our reliance on foreign energy sources.
The organization adds:
- A 53 mile corridor the width of the New Jersey Turnpike would cut through western Maine, crossing some of the country’s last native brook trout habitat, fragile wetlands, deer yards and ruining pristine scenic views.
- Maine’s most prominent environmental groups agree that this project will cause irreparable damage to Maine’s wilderness.
- Even the Massachusetts attorney general agrees this project will not reduce carbon emissions.
- The CMP Corridor does NOT meet the definition of renewable power because it’s not new power generated.
- CMP’s Canadian partner in this project is Hydro-Quebec, whose vast system of reservoirs and dams cause the release of CO2 and methane on an ongoing basis. Yet it claims with no supporting documentation that its power is “zero emissions.” Clearly, it is not.
So what’s the truth? There’s little doubt both sides are exaggerating at least somewhat. While the corridor would cut a large swath through the North Maine Woods, most of the forest would apparently remain untouched. It’s also clear that there’s big money and business interests on both sides. Yet while it’s hard to know the truth on every detail, we should be careful, to use an ironically appropriate saying, to be sure we can “see the forest for the trees.”
“Conservation,” as safeguarding God’s creation used to be called before being rebranded “environmentalism,” at its best was about tangible results. It concerned issues such as preserving wilderness (hence the national parks) and keeping water and air clean. These are objectively positive efforts with universal appeal. We’ve done a spectacular job in this regard, too: The United States has more forested area now than a century ago, and our air and water are cleaner than in 1960.
But environmentalists long ago veered off into advancing efforts that have little if any tangible conservation-oriented effect. They claim to care about the natural world, but say nothing about the wave of illegal aliens who leave environmental degradation (e.g., garbage, waste) in their wake when sneaking across our southern border. They claim to care about the environment, but are silent on (im)migration in general, which is the only reason the U.S. population has reached 330 million — and is also the only reason it is poised to reach a half billion and beyond.
The CMP project appears a prime example of these askew priorities. The North Maine Woods and its benefits are real; the destruction of the forest would be real. Yet the alleged benefits of reducing “carbon” lie in theory, a theory with apparently no basis in fact (as to this, click here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). Why, a very interesting report published Saturday asserts that we can’t even know what the Earth’s average temperature is.
In fact and ironically, the global warming alarmists seek lower atmospheric CO2 — which, within the context of the Earth’s history, is already at low levels — which would only inhibit plant and tree growth. So one could say that the CMP project would not only destroy trees, but also that its desired effect would give us fewer trees.
The CMP plan can remind one of “Why the Greentopians Would Destroy the Earth,” to quote the title of an essay I wrote last year. It doesn’t appear to have much of an upside — except for the money it would make for foreign-owned companies. It reflects the bizarre credo, “We need to destroy the environment in order to save it.”
