Last night I attended the FERC hearing and many citizens pro and against LNG made it but FERC did not. Comments continued anyway with speakers allotted five minutes apiece. One of the pro-LNG commentators was Harry Abel who actually spoke the words ‘trickle down’ with a straight face. I kid you not, he even inferred that a ‘trickle’ from the Jordan Cove LNG terminal might increase church membership…

Really, it is a testament to marketing that people will actually vote against their own interests and believe, in the face of decades of empirical evidence to the contrary, that supporting these investor owned projects will trickle profits down to the little people. Why not let the people share in the downstream profits generated by the kilowatts produced? More importantly, why don’t people demand to participate in the revenue when tax subsidy in the form of tax credits provide the meat behind any investment in centralized power production?

Instead, we buy, hook, line and sinker, every time, the notion that backing these projects will benefit the community beyond the construction period. We might as well just stand with our tongues out waiting for the ‘trickle’ to land and hope its enough to prevent dehydration. Oh, yeah, and lets not forget to be really, really, grateful for the crumbs thrown to our little community.

Trickle down, honestly I almost threw up… the best trickle down your going to get is in the ground water!

Naturally, I spoke about decentralized energy, a tried and true concept employed widely and successfully in Europe and entirely left out of the Draft EIS report.