Green M&M's

I have been an opponent of legislative efforts of restricting carbon emissions.  I firmly believe that the vast majority of climate change is naturally occurring.  Efforts to legislate emissions through cap and trade programs will only hurt our economy and raise costs of energy and other goods.  This will negatively impact the vast majority of Americans with the poor and middle classes hurt the most.

That is not to say that I am opposed to the goal of obtaining clean energy like wind and solar power.  I just think that there are better ways to achieve those goals of switching to cleaner energy.  Voluntary efforts should be encouraged and rewarded.  That is why I thought it was pretty cool to read a story about how the Mars corporation has unveiled an 18 acre solar garden to provide energy for their plant in Hackensack, NJ.

I think that Mars should be commended for making this investment.  They should get a lot of corporate goodwill from their actions.  For those folks who make this an important part of their lifestyle, they should reward companies like Mars with their business.

The one negative that I would take from the story though is that the 18 acres of solar panels only provide enough electricity to cover 20% of the plant's power needs.  To me, that just seems like an awful lot of land use to provide a relatively small amount of electricity.  By comparison, I found a document on the US Minerals Management Service website that stated that 1/30th of the power generated by a nuclear power plant on only 12 acres of land would power a city of 100,000 for a year.  Seems like a lot more bang for the buck.

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