MEETING IN MINNEAPOLIS

On October 1, an important meeting took place in Minnesota, the CEO Conference on Global Warming, sponsored by Minn-kota Power Cooperative. It was important not only for the excel-lent material presented, but also for showing that not all utilities are wimps kowtowing to the Greens. Unfortunately I was not able to attend in person, but the sponsors kindly sent me some materials after the conference. All of the contributions were excel-lent, but I can give a taste of only three:

Lou Guzzo (Dixy Lee Rays biographer, and co-author of Trashing the Planet [AtE Sep 84, Oct 90]) spoke on "The media's contribution to global warming," which includes some quotes by the higher Green clergy; I will not only reprint some of them, but put them in a box:

Steward Brand in the Whole Earth Catalog "We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for social change to bomb us into the stone age, where we might live like Indians in our valley . . . guilt-free at last!"

Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich "We've already had too much economic growth in the US. Economic growth in rich countries like ours is the disease, not the cure."

Friends-of-the-Earth (FoE) Founder David Brower: "We must reclaim the roads and the plowed land, halt dam construc-tion, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers, and return to wilderness tens of millions of acres of presently settled land."

John Shuttleworth, FoE manual writer: "The only real good technology is no technology at all. Technology is taxation without representation, imposed by our elitist species (man) upon the rest of the natural world."

Stephen Schneider, Ntl. Ctr. Atmosph., Rsrch., fashionable spokesman for global warming and ozone depletion: "We need to get some broad support, . . . getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubt we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is be-tween being effective and being honest."

He also mentions Prince Philip of Britain, leader of the World Wildlife Fund: "If I were to be reincarnated, I would wish to return as a killer virus to lower human population levels," but I don't feel His Royal Twerpishness is important enough to be put in the box.

More power to him! Here is a utility executive with heart and spine instead of a wimp filled with recycled paper. It is probably not accidental that he comes from a small utility and not from So. Calif. Edison or Edison Electric, just as it is the occasional small businessman who will stand up to the tide while the big corporate wimps crawl on their bellies whimpering "I am greener than thou!"

Some big power, oil, coal and gas companies did found some-thing called the Information Council for the Environment to com-bat the global warming hoax. The Council then hired the Washington PR agency Bracy, Williams & Co., which itself hired an 800 number answering service "for more information," but all they knew there (after a day of tracking it down) was the number of the man in the PR agency, Ivan Brandon, who knew all about it. I called him several times, and was always told he would call back. He never did. I understand they placed some ads in some test market, and they will doubtlessly put out a report on glossy paper proving how very diligent they were, but it takes a small company like Minnkota and a single man to take responsibility if some real work is to be done. The big boys think they have to delegate every-thing away because they are so busy, oh so busy. . .

[More: Tapes of the 9 lectures given at the meeting are available at the bargain price of $2.50 each from Minnkota Power Coop., Box 1318, Grand Forks, ND 58206.]