It has recently come to my attention that the Massachusetts Food Association (MFA) has released a statement of support for the Kinder Morgan pipeline, declaring that “The pipeline project …will provide a reliable, firm, clean burning and more affordable source of energy to our region that will help our member food stores and locations operate more economically and compete in this highly competitive marketplace.”
The MFA is wrong:
The pipeline will not help our region. “The ultimate goal of some natural gas pipeline proposals being made in New England is not to help our residents with expanded infrastructure but to use New England as a throughway to export U.S. natural gas to Canada and ultimately to overseas markets,” explains U.S. Sen. Ed Markey.
The pipeline will permanently impact our forests, farms and wildlife habitat. “Conservation commissions in towns along the intended route and citizen groups dedicated to protecting our state’s environment have also raised concerns that this proposed natural gas pipeline would needlessly disrupt environmentally sensitive conservation land. Because I share many of these concerns, I do not support the current proposal,” says U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
We don’t need the pipeline, concludes Attorney General Maura Healy, who thoroughly studied the issue and found the “the region is unlikely to face electric reliability issues in the next 15 years and additional energy needs can be met more cheaply and cleanly through energy efficiency and demand response.”
Indeed, if the MFA is looking for “clean” and “reliable,” then they should support sustainable technologies that already exist here at home, instead of piping gas in from elsewhere. Perhaps adding solar panels to all store roofs would be a good start.
If the MFA wants to take such a destructive and misguided stance, then I, for one, will be boycotting the MFA by buying direct from local farmers at farmers markets and shopping at my local co-op which sources their food from the same.
JOSH KNOX
Holyoke