BRATTLEBORO — Sitting in the gym at the Vernon Elementary School on Sept. 15, listening to hours of testimony about the future of Vermont Yankee, I couldn't help but see a clear connection to what seems to be the major issue in the presidential race, albeit a mostly unspoken issue.
The issue, of course, is fear.
Fear of change that cannot be controlled or accurately predicted. Fear of loss - either of the present or the future. Fear of fear.
Testimony about our local nuke praised VY as a safe, clean, and reliable source of energy. Many of its supporters echoed the sentiment that, yes, we need and support the quest for renewable energy, but we're not there yet, so we need to renew VY's license for another 20 years so that its reliable energy can serve as a bridge to the renewable future that we all want to see.
Other supporters played the economic card: VY employs X people making high salaries, contributes Y dollars in payroll, another Z dollars in direct financial support of community efforts, and its employees can always be counted on to give up their days off to help out with local community projects.
There was even testimony from the local United Way and Chamber of Commerce that, without VY's presence, life here in Windham County just wouldn't be as sweet. Did you know that VY is the largest single contributor to United Way? Did you know that it is the largest employer of veterans? And how, exactly, should this figure in any relicensing decision? The implication was that VY's demise would punch a big hole locally.
The not-so-subtle subtext here was: Without VY, we just don't know how our community will survive or how our refrigerators will keep running (yes, someone actually said that!). Fear of change, fear of loss, fear of fear.
Testimony on the “other side” was equally predictable, also echoing its own unspoken fears: loss of our environmental integrity, loss of our incentive to jump-start the renewable energy future by shutting down non-renewable generators by a date certain. Fear of allowing the status quo to keep us from moving into the future - a move that we all know will require all of us to make sacrifices.
And this, I think, is the biggest fear that we all carry, even if we don't acknowledge it to ourselves or to others: the fear of the need to make sacrifices in the name of the future.
These fears are felt viscerally on both sides of the debate. They are very real. And, we know that we cannot be easily talked out of our fears. On the other hand, our fears can very easily be played on.
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See the connection to the presidential campaign?
The McCain/what's-her-name ticket, similar to the VY supporters, plays on fear because it has nothing substantive to offer.
What are the fears? I think it boils down to the fear of loss of self-image. We're clearly not the country we once were, nor are we the country we used to hope we could be. The “hope” still exists, yet people know in their gut that something is very wrong. And we're afraid of looking at it because it might ask more of us than we're willing to give. We might need to sacrifice our American way of life.
The Obama camp plays on fear in a more subtle way - mirroring the more subtle fears expressed by the VY opponents. It's the fear that says, “If we don't do something very creative very soon, we will lose whatever measure of control over our lives we may actually have.”
This is a harder fear to identify, and it certainly won't easily fit onto a bumper sticker. The Obama folks sense the threat of an even greater sacrifice - that of our ability to exist as both a nation and an ecosystem.
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Perhaps the most telling testimony came from a gentleman who said, simply, “Nuclear power is 20th-century technology. It's time to pay more attention to 21st-century technologies.”
This certainly got my attention. What he was saying was that nuclear power worked for a while. It held a big promise - remember “too cheap to meter?” - but, unfortunately, that promise didn't pan out, much in the same way that the last half of the 20th century was, in many eyes, the “American Century” that also held big promise, accomplished many things, and is now on its way out.
Isn't it time to say “thank you” to both of these 20th-century concepts, and move as quickly and seamlessly as we can into the 21st century?
Wouldn't it have made more sense, and made their argument more acceptable, if the VY supporters had backed up their claims to an interest in moving toward renewables with this pledge: “We would like to see our license renewed, and have the renewal tied directly to the generation of replacement, renewable energy. As renewable production increases, our output will decrease megawatt for megawatt, until there's simply no reason for us to be here anymore.”
I know, I know: Nobody will finance a nuclear plant under those conditions, but isn't that part of the problem?
Franklin Delano Roosevelt said it best: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” I would love to be able to say, with absolute confidence, to those people who fear their personal or community loss resulting from a VY shutdown, that they don't have to worry, because they will be taken care of. That they may be in for some rocky times, but things will come around again for them.
In the same way, I'd love to tell all the McCain supporters that, yes, he will be able to bring the healing and creativity that this country so desperately needs. And I wish I could tell myself that it's absolutely OK to “just sit back and relax - that the meltdown (nuclear, economic, constitutional, etc.) won't happen if Vermont Yankee gets renewed or McCain moves into the White House.
I'm just not so sure that I believe any of these things - or that I could say them with a straight face.