Never mind
August 25, 2008 - 9:00 pm
All that talk last week about energy at Sen. Harry Reid's alternative fuels summit in Las Vegas sure got New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg fired up.
Not "coal-fired" up, mind you. But fired up with that seemingly endless supply of clean energy long preferred by politicians: hot air.
On Tuesday at the National Clean Energy Summit at UNLV's Cox Pavilion, Mr. Bloomberg vowed to make New York City the "No. 1 city in the nation" when it comes to producing green power. He laid out a vision that included wind turbines off the coast of Long Island and atop the city's bridges and skyscrapers. His comments won him plaudits in some quarters as a visionary.
A day later, though, Mr. Bloomberg left Green Fantasyland and reintroduced himself to reality.
"I have absolutely no idea whether that makes any sense from a scientific, from a practical point of view," Mr. Bloomberg told Newsday on Wednesday. "Are you going to put a big windmill on top of the Empire State Building? I think that's very unlikely. ... Windmills are no panacea for our problems."
As Newsday noted, "Erecting wind towers in the densely populated city would be met with great opposition." And a previous plan to build wind turbines off Long Island was killed last year due to high costs.
As Emily Litella always used to say on "Saturday Night Live": Never mind.