The recent flap between the Environmental and Energy Research Center at UND, Dakota Resource Council, and Blair Henry is discouraging to say the least.

As we approach the 2005 legislative session it is important for those with an interest in energy production in North Dakota to put together a comprehensive and cooperative plan. If you caught this Wednesday's West Wing you saw a protrayal of the competing interests in sustainable energy. It rings quite true with the current flare-up in the news. We're so good at cutting one another apart, we don't need opponents. It's time for the larger picture to come to the fore!

Are there some points on which can agree and work together so that sustainable energy interests don't get shut out of the community and economic development decisions that get made. I'll throw up a few:

A place for community scale (schools, non-profits, small co-ops on the lines of MINWIND) investment and ownership.
Support for Governor Hoeven's proposed Transmission Authority that includes room for renewable energy.
Recognition that continued development of North Dakota's lignite resource will be part of the picture. Can we tie emissions standards to sustainable development, including wind, in the way Minnesota has tied nuclear power and sustainable energy?
Incentives for Rural Electric Coops to purchase green power for distribution on their locally owned transmission grids.

I'm obviously a newbie at all this and don't pretend to understand all the ins and outs. However I believe we have to do better for the future of the state.

I'm tired of going to meetings where the presenter talks about the two buckets of crabs - one with a cover, the other without. When asked to distinguish between the two the crabber says the bucket with North Dakota crabs doesn't need a cover because they keep pulling each other down.

For the record, I'm a member of DRC and NDSeed and have an EERC monitoring station on land owned by my parish.