I’ve been doing what I can to protect the environment since I was a child. At first, the best I could do was pick up recyclables and trash. I’d have my parents drive me around and I’d collect them from the roadside. I imagined I could do more, but I didn’t have many options.
Of all the organizations that might have offered me an opportunity to do more, it was the Marine Corps that actually did. After training me to support combat operations, they had the Army Quartermasters teach me to manage bulk fuel operations and the environmental concerns surrounding them. With them I trained as a fire fighter, hazardous materials handler, and as a first responder to environmental disasters like those that result when pipelines fail.
I’d be expected to remain proficient in both areas for the rest of my career. In 1992, I was assigned to the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force and trained as a machine gunner. I was to support the rapid response battalion they maintained in case called upon to invade Iraq. As part of that training I learned to protect myself and others from nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. After it became clear Saudi Arabian extremists trained in guerrilla warfare and sabotage in preparation for our return, I learned terrorism counteractions as well.
I thought to go on embassy duty from there, but when provided an opportunity to train Marines to fight fires I put that idea on hold. It would provide an opportunity to lead large groups in training, something I wouldn’t have the opportunity to do on embassy duty, so I jumped at it. It came with the added responsibility of enforcing environmental policies that weren’t particularly popular with Marines who’d seen so much petroleum dumped into the deserts of Kuwait while dodging bullets they’d become numb to it, but I was happy to explain why they should be.
I’d use fire fighting to gain their attention. Everyone would listen in exchange for the opportunity to dawn those reflective proximity suits they’d seen in the movies and get up close and personal with an aircraft fire. No one turned it down.
In 1994, I was transferred to the 2nd Marine Air Wing where I was finally able to put everything I learned with the Army Quartermasters to the test. I was now in charge of environmental and safety concerns surrounding operations that kept six fighter squadrons, two search and rescue aircraft, and visiting aircraft mission ready. I actively monitored 3 tank farms that containing about 2 million gallons of jet fuel, ship to shore fuel deliveries, truck to tank, and tank to tank transfers, the distribution of fuel to active aircraft from fixed refuelling points, and to staged aircraft via truck. I also trained every Marine or civilian employee who worked those facilities for 4 years.
As part of that work, I was asked to develop a water-borne fuel spill response team. Our Natural Resources and Environmental Affairs Office would bring in the contractors who managed the Exxon-Valdez disaster to aid me in that effort. With them I’d identify what equipment was needed and learn what was necessary to prepare those who’d use it. In the end we had 5 water-borne vessels and two land based stocked with boom and other devices necessary to contain and remove fuel from water. I trained everyone and drilled them periodically.
I enjoyed that work, but gave it up in 1998, when provided what I hoped would become an opportunity to prepare Marines to guard against terrorist attack and to ready them to fight the guerrilla warriors who prepared for our response to it. I was motivated by the understanding that terrorist attacks were part of a military strategy, the bulk of which would be satisfied only if successful in drawing us in and those guerrilla warriors prepared for our arrival were able to cause enough trouble we lost influence in the region.
I left the service when I realized our politicians wouldn’t fight that effort strategically by developing the capabilities I just discussed. They could have. This understanding was out there and imagined agencies much like the Department of Homeland Security and Transportation Security Agency in the mid to late 90’s, but they wouldn’t be deployed until it was too late for them to be of any strategic use.
This is how politicians are. They delay, fearing they’ll be accused of overreacting if they don’t, then throw their support behind a solution whose time has passed. They don’t listen as experts tell them the situation has changed, they and their supporters just trudge on.
Something similar happened here in recent years, as Tom Saviello and a three other current or former state officials lobbied against an environmental response that passed every requirement established by state or federal government to win approval. I understood this because after the military I spent eight years studying and conducting research in Earth Science so was able to investigate every criticism raised against it. I applied that understanding to the research both sides pointed to and found opponents were more often than not working with an incomplete understanding of the science state and federal regulators considered.
State and federal regulators continue to support the use of hydroelectric operations to curb carbon emissions because they rely on readily available resources to generate electricity. This means they require less study, less mining, less refinement of raw materials, and less manufacturing to generate electricity while exacting a smaller toll on the Earth. They support nuclear power generation for the same reason, which is largely why the institution that developed much of that technology, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, received a full third of the funding set aside for environmental response in the Infrastructure Reduction Act of 2022.
The only piece of energy infrastructure that demands more mining, refining, and manufacturing than battery and solar development is the transmission line. In fact, they require a couple thousand times more mineral ore per unit energy stored or generated than any other solution, so much so mining experts suggest they’ll have increase the global output of some minerals by as much as 40 times just to keep up. If we rely more on geothermal solutions, hydrogen fuel cells, hydroelectric, nuclear, and wind power generation instead, they can significantly reduce those expectations and the impact they’ll have, such as price volatility and water shortages in those regions affected by mining.
Absent these obstacles the experts are still beginning to worry we won’t be able to deploy transmission lines fast enough. You see, we’re not the only region struggling to convince populations concerned by the routes they’ll have to take to allow them. This is happening all over the world. Though far less concerning than the environmental damages done to develop battery and solar technologies, those associated with transmission lines are local and more difficult to ignore. As a result, federal governments everywhere are toying with the idea of assuming jurisdiction over this aspect of infrastructure design.
We have to be concerned about the big picture. That’s the stage on which carbon pollution acts to affect climate. The local concerns raised during this debate ignored them. The suggestion that hydroelectric reservoirs emit an unnatural amount of carbon was a distortion of measurements taken in an effort to begin separating those resulting from power generation from those which would naturally occur regardless. They also ignored the fact that electric costs were expected to soar due to volatility in natural gas prices if a project of that scale were not immediately undertaken.
Jamie Beaulieu
Farmington, Maine
