NATE FREEMAN opined on Facebook the other day that he wants "to see strong leadership toward 100% clean energy because I'm a father. My girls, now 7 and 8 years old, will live to see the years 2050, 2075 and possibly 2100."

"I am a father. This is why I want the people of our country and every country to demand 100% clean energy in 20 years or less," he added.

Clean energy is, all would agree, a laudable goal. It is also more easily said than achieved.

What are the reasons people are so seriously polluting the planet?

Is it due to the use of fossil fuels or is it over population, or is it a combination of both?

If you'd like to comment on this or any of the comments that we write in this column, we'd like to hear from you.

This week, I'd like to discuss how we generate energy. Next week, I'll talk about over population which may be the biggest culprit leading to a potential global catastrophe.

There has been a rush to promote renewable resources, particularly wind power to produce electricity.

However, with the promotion of wind power, there has been a brewing controversy surrounding industrial wind turbines.

What seemed to be a good idea to harness wind power is proving to be anything but promising, according to critics.

People and organizations world wide are opposing the giant turbines for many reasons.

They don't want to spoil the view. Teddy Kennedy has fought incessantly to keep the turbines from Cape Cod even though they are far off shore and can't be seen from his family's Hyannis estate.

In Vermont, forces have opposed putting them where they would interfere with the view and point out that they are a killer of birds and bats who may run into them.

Electric cars have been offered as an alternative to gas powered cars that pollute the air and cause global warming.

However, to power electric cars, there would be the need for an ever increasing source of commercial electrical power generation to charge the batteries in those cars.

William Morrison of Des Moines, Iowa is credited with building the first electric car in 1891.

It was successful, except it had two problems: the batteries were heavy and expensive, and it wouldn't go very far on a charge.

This year, Ford and General Motors showed their new line of electric cars at the Detroit Auto Show. They were as pretty as you can make a vehicle. But they have two major problems: the batteries are heavy and expensive, and they don't go very far on a charge.

So how expensive are they? The Chevrolet Volt has a sticker price of $40,000. Though announced to be in the showrooms in November 2010, there are indications the batteries haven't been developed according to engineers that are insiders. So at this late date, there are no working prototypes.

Ford's un-named competitive model is also un-priced. But Ford has mentioned the car will go 100 miles without recharging. With current technology, I understand that this event would take "at least" six hours.

But what if you actually want to go somewhere in your car, beyond driving five miles to your work and back?

Let's say you decided to drive to Florida and averaged a speed on the interstate of 70 miles per hour. Unless there were pony express type charging stations at regular intervals, you couldn't do it and if you could, it would take most of the winter to get there. By time you made it there, it would be time to turn around and come home.

Some have suggested that we do away with cars and trucks altogether.

The return of trains they say might be an answer. Not the fossil fuel burning diesel powered trains that whisk by Northfield these days but an all electric railway like they have in southern New England and along the eastern seaboard.

In fact, I have read that in Europe, new housing developments are being built without the availability of cars at all. There are garages on the town's edge where there is municipal storage for people who absolutely insist upon owning a car.

Those who need to commute to work do it on the train, an electric train, of course.

In the end, it all comes down to the production of electricity with current technology.

How does electricity get produced? Either by water power, nuclear power, solar, wind power, natural gas turbine, wind turbine or coal generation.

For each of these sources of generation, there are critics. Building any kind of power plant today requires the power company to run the gauntlet before the corner stone can be laid.

Dams keep fish from moving up-steam to breed.

Nuclear power plants have spent fuel that must be stored for thousands of years somewhere. No one wants to store them in their neighborhood.

The environmentalists against renewing Vermont Yankee's license despoil the environment themselves with graffiti on the railroad bridge over Route 12 going to Montpelier. Despoiling the environment to save it, is that the answer?

Coal is dirty. The President says that clean coal technology is right around the corner. Many doubt that. Ads run on TV say that clean coal technology doesn't exist and never will.

Even solar power has its critics. The solar arrays are ugly and in commercial application only work well in places like the California desert. There are a lot of people who don't want the desert ecology ruined by thousands of solar arrays all over the landscape.

Natural gas is perhaps the cleanest burning fossil fuel and there's plenty of it. However, to accommodate the need for power plants in an all electric society would require a large number of new gas powered power plants to be built.

Wind power is already on line in the California deserts, mainly on Indian lands where the critics can't interfere with planning or construction.

Unfortunately, I expect that in twenty years, we'll still be talking about it unless there is a technological breakthrough. Certainly, that could happen.

In the meantime, we should all work to reduce our carbon footprint by recycling, lowering the thermostat in winter and raising it in summer, doing all of the things that we know we should be doing but many don't.

Of course, the real culprit is not carbon fuels but overpopulation and on that subject, we'll be discussing next week.

We'd like to hear from you if you have any comments. You can e-mail us at

thenorthfieldnews@gmail.com