Despite a growing body of evidence to the contrary, including a 2007 United Nations report, former Republican state Sen. William Schroeder Jr. contends global temperatures are actually dropping.
Schroeder, who served at the state capitol from 1986 to 1998 and is now the public affairs manager for the Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA), said thousands of scientists now agree with IREA’s position that global warming is “junk science.”
That justifies the co-op’s spending $100,000 in 2006 to support the research of Patrick J. Michaels, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia who is an outspoken global-warming debunker.
IREA spent $366 million on the new Comanche 3 coal-fired power plant near Pueblo, and Schroeder is unfazed by the possibility of a federal carbon tax and how that might impact the co-op’s investment.
“The real kicker is, should carbon be a concern?” Schroeder said. “You and I every time we breath out we expel carbon dioxide, so is this going to get to a point where we’re going to start dealing with growth? Are we going to start worrying about the population? Are we going to start doing in the United States what China’s doing about controlling family growth? Where are these things really going?”
For now, “these things” are headed to a vote of the nearly 138,000 members of the state’s largest rural electric co-op, where three challengers touting renewable energy are taking on three longtime incumbents. Election results will be tallied at IREA’s annual board meeting in Woodland Park on Saturday.
Comments are closed.