Letter to
Albuquerque Tribune (February 2007)

Editor,
Albuquerque Tribune
Dear Editor,

Your front page article "Going Clean" February 12,
about imposing percentages of clean power on the
utilities should have been more informative. It said "such
quotas are meant to unleash the free market…".

The free market is about getting rid of quotas and
subsidies, not imposing them. You are confusing the
public and helping the utilities sell more electricity.
Sunlight need not be turned into electricity for us to use
it. This campaign amounts to an attack on traditional
direct uses of the sun and means ever more buildings lit
by light bulbs during the day rather than by windows,
ever more clothes dried in driers rather than on
clotheslines and more and more buildings heated and
cooled by expensive power, rather than inexpensive
passive means.  

Of course the utilities don't object to this. How can you
be surprised? Let us hope your readers catch on and
realize power grids and politicians are to serve citizens,
not the other way around.

Sincerely,
Steve Baer