Clean Energy Splits Environmentalists

Flickr: andjohan

Important clean energy projects have opened a rift in Hawaii's environmental community.

Some ambitious efforts designed to help Hawaii kick its addiction to imported oil have met with lukewarm support or even outright opposition from some erstwhile allies.

Many share the desire to slow climate change using solar photovoltaic facilities, large-scale wind farms, geothermal energy, and biomass or biodiesel crops. But that desire can run up against competing interests, splitting those who are generally referred to as "environmentalists" into smaller subsets.

"All these other issues that we care deeply about — protecting wildlands, species protection, clean air and clean water — all that is academic if we don't figure out the energy problem," says Jeff Mikulina, executive director of the Blue Planet Foundation, a clean energy advocacy group. "The car is about to go off the cliff and we're arguing about which radio station we're listening to.

"I think the challenge for us, for residents in Hawaii, is to sort out what the priorities are," he said.

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