Nowhere in his article do we see “global warming” or “climate change.” While he focuses on “foreign energy,” he refuses to state the obvious, that we are depleting all the fossil fuels that brought us the Industrial Revolution, and that the Persian Gulf countries loom so large because they have so much of what is available. Mr. Framme does not cite a single particular as he speaks generally of “consequences on our environment.”

We could visit the Virginia counties that border Kentucky to see how “the region can continue to produce.” The easy coal is gone, the region is Virginia’s poorest, and extracting remaining coal is done at the cost of pumping salt into the Levisa Fork or taking down the mountains in their entirety and dumping the “overburden” into the streams below. When do the benefits of the Industrial Revolution reach the coalfields?

Or take a ride west of Richmond out 60 or 360 and see the wonderland of the Chesterfield suburbs, a world built on cheap energy where we need never walk or ride the bus and the windows never need to be opened because it is always 70 degrees.

Go to the eastern side of Chesterfield where the coal ash from Dominion’s Dutch Gap coal-fired power plant, Virginia’s largest polluter, is spread out. Virginia’s regulations for coal ash disposal are lax.

Or visit the beaches of the Chesapeake, where the sea level has risen a foot in the last century. How much more and how soon?

Mr. Framme speaks of “increased domestic energy production across the spectrum of energy supplies.” However, so long as the true costs of fossil fuel use are not accounted for, renewable energy from solar and wind, as well as the gains from conservation and efficiency, will not be the moneymakers they could be. Unless we take government action to increase the cost of using fossil fuels, renewables, conservation, and efficiency will lack the incentives for deployment.

The nuclear panacea has many problems as well. Uranium supply is limited. Plants are expensive, and have been subsidized by Federal dollars. Mining, refining, and disposing of nuclear fuel all pose big risks.

Hydro does have unused potential, but building new dams would not be easy because there are environmental costs and people would lose land, nor will hydro dams be particularly productive if the drought continues. It would be good to see existing dams such as Flanagan on the Pound River, Chesdin on the Appomattox, and Schuyler on the Rockfish make a contribution though.

Before I learned of global warming, I still thought our headlong race to use up our fossil fuels was foolish beyond belief. Global warming makes it imperative that we leave these resources in the ground, sequestered forever. We must stop burning fossil fuels as soon as possible. Mr. Framme does not acknowledge this obvious “inconvenient truth.” His plans for Virginia’s energy future seem little different from those of the oilmen who just left the White House. He uses the restless natives of southwest Asia as an excuse to accelerate extraction of America’s fossil fuels and run roughshod over the environment in other ways. The fact that he has played a key role in the other party reveals why Virginia, despite its’ mild climate and potential, is a laggard in developing real solutions to our environmental and energy problems.

We can do better.