“The retreat brings people together, builds community in the forest, gets participants outside and off their screens, and uses nature sustainably to heal and inspire minds and souls,” stated Great Mountain Forest Executive Director Michael Zafros. Retreat registration closes on July 30.
Ultimately, as several speakers explained, the path to advancing this clean energy economy is being blocked by the tremendous wealth and power that the fossil fuel industry exerts over the nation's political and regulatory system. A study by the Political Economy Research Institute at UMASS-Amherst, on the other hand, that found that rapidly transitioning to a renewable energy economy could create over 2 million net new jobs.
Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist David Cay Johnston wrote a prescient story last May about how electricity prices might soar if Wall Street succeeds in its attempts to manipulate power supply. New England will be a “test-case” for “Enron-style price-gouging,” which is “making a comeback. Under the rules of the electricity markets, the best way to earn huge profits is by reducing the supply of power.”
"I can confidently say that the pace of renewable energy technology adoption is increasing, and the very certain progress in electricity storage will allow residential and utility scale solar to offset demand for those peak winter hours in the years 2020-2030 that this study says can be fulfilled by new pipeline capacity."
-- Berkshire Photovoltaic Services’ Christopher Kilfoyle
The general public has not been included in the development of energy projects, and in the words of the Conservation Law Foundation, “formulation of and negotiations around [energy] proposals have been conducted almost completely behind closed doors.”
