Geneva, IL -

Energy conservation and a proposed wind farm became underlying issues at a recent town meeting, as environmentalists and a notable conservative tried to sway a crowded city hall chambers on the debate about global warming.

It was part of the city’s Strategic Planning Advisory Committee annual town meeting Oct. 21 and the Green Geneva group had asked for a discussion on energy issues.

“That’s what Green Geneva is about,” Green Geneva founder Mary Zaander said.

Proposed wind farm
A question that will soon come before the city council is whether they want to move forward with a plan to buy into a 12-megawatt wind farm near Rochelle as part of the Northern Illinois Municipal Power Agency.

Geneva, Batavia and Rochelle make up NIMPA as a conglomerate to negotiate better energy prices.

The wind farm would provide enough energy to power 3,000 homes, but could initially cost property owners an additional 40 cents to $2 on their monthly energy bills, depending on what grants and bonds could be secured.

Don Dears, a retired General Electric Co. executive who is now president of conservative think tank TSAugust, said alternative energies — such as wind, solar and hydro — would be just a drop in the bucket to reduce carbon emissions, since 50 percent of carbon dioxide comes from coal plants.

“They’re too small in scale to be able to do the job,” Dears said.

He said about 500,000 wind turbines would be needed to replace coal, yet only 3,900 have been installed in the last three years.

“You can see the formidable challenge of trying to see that wind will replace coal,” Dears said.

However, College of DuPage physics professor Tom Carter said wind power cannot be ignored just because it is not the only solution.

“You can’t have all your energy coming from wind,” Carter said.

He said about 20 percent of power could and should come from wind, but only about seven percent of energy in the U.S. comes from renewable sources and less than one percent of that is from wind.

“We’re not even close,” Carter said.

Global warming debate
Dears provided an information packet to audience members, which included charts showing cyclical changes in the earth’s climate history and a recent trend in the past decade of falling temperatures while carbon levels continue to rise.

“People can conclude that carbon dioxide is not causing global warming,” Dears said.

Carter presented some charts of his own, which demonstrated trends in the earth’s climate for the past hundreds of thousands of years. The charts indicate that a rise of carbon in the atmosphere correlates with the rise of temperature since the Industrial Revolution began in the 1800s.

Carter said science groups, such as the National Academy of Science, the American Meteorological Society and American Association for Science, agree with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s AR4 report, which concludes global temperature increase is the result of rising greenhouse gases.

Carter said there will be more days with temperatures higher than 100 degrees in the Chicago area by 2070, which would affect farming and increase energy use through air conditioning units.

Economic costs
The panelists also discussed the economic impacts of reducing energy consumption. Dears said if the Waxman-Markey bill being considered by Congress were to pass, it would reduce carbon levels to what they were in 1914.

“Just picture what that is going to mean to our economy if we try to do that,” Dears said.

Carter urged Geneva residents to look at the long-term economic costs of climate change and how increased flooding would destroy crops.