Elections Have Consequences XXIV
To The Editor:
April is when we celebrate Earth Day. In 2005, less than 1% of U.S. electricity was generated by wind and solar. In 2025 it was 17%. Our first solar installation here in town was a 5 KW system at Reed School. Today 100% of our town’s electric usage is sourced from solar — directly and indirectly, saving the town approximately $1 million per year. We recently completed new installations at the Municipal Center, Head O’Meadow School and the Waste Water Treatment Plant. This year we will add a 1MW system on the High School and we will begin construction of solar canopies at the High School, Reed School and Sandy Hook School and the Police Department.
These may be the last municipal installations for some time since federal subsidies are being phased out. For some reason our backward thinking president would rather see our tax dollars go into keeping aging coal plants powered than investing in clean energy sources. This year in the U.S. newly added utility scale electric generation will be 51% solar, 28% battery storage, 14 % wind and 7% natural gas. Utility-scale solar and onshore wind are the cheapest sources of grid electricity followed by natural gas. Offshore wind and coal would be the next highest and nuclear power the most expensive.
For decades we have had policies to help reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. Efficiency standards for autos, appliances, and lighting were enacted and were proving to be effective. Trump’s policies will unwind many of these efforts. Because of the cost advantage there will still be a demand for solar and wind by the power generators — it will just cost the consumers more. So far over 170,000 jobs in the clean energy field have been lost. Planned electric vehicles assembly plants will not be built. China will own the EV market.
Trump gave the okay for Detroit to go back to making gas guzzling vehicles, and then he invaded Iran — pure genius. What are we hearing from elected Republicans??
Join us for our annual Earth Day celebration — April 25 at the Newtown Middle School, 10 am to 3 pm.
Kathy Quinn
Newtown
The Bee publishes about 3,800(1) copies each week. This is now the 24th installment of “Trump’s Triumphs,” and these pieces generally run about 9 to 11 column inches each. Given the Bee’s broadsheet page size of 16.75″ by 22.75″ — or roughly 136 column inches per full page — that means this series has consumed the equivalent of about 6,700 full broadsheet pages over 24 installments, or roughly 0.42 acres of paper surface.
If those pages were laid down end to end, sheet by sheet, they would stretch from the flagpole all the way to the transfer station — about 2.4 miles.
On the theme of Earth Day, it is worth remembering that at some point, it stops being civic discourse and starts looking like a remarkable waste of paper.
Source figures: 3,800 copies per week, approximately 10 column inches per installment, 136 column inches per full page, 7.35% of a page per installment, across 24 installments.
Thank you for continuing to read my letters and bringing attention to them. As I said the last time you went through this tortured calculation, the Bee would be printing the same number of pages with or without my contributions. Why not spend your time writing a letter to the editor trumpeting all the great triumphs you think Trump has accomplished?
So your counterpoint is that The Bee prints the same number of pages regardless of how much content appears in it. If that is true, then I stand corrected. I actually doubt that is the case.