"Disney Land" at Riverhead

Let me explain this blog. Kate and I live in about the middle of Long Island. Twenty-five miles east of us is a town called Riverhead. A few miles beyond it is the Hamptons, the summer playground of the rich and famous. For Kate and I it has become a boundary line of class.

There is a proposal to build a “Disney Land” at Riverhead on 775 acers, once used to build military aircraft and now proposed as yet another great party playground. What we don’t seem to recognize is the fact that “the party” of cheap fuel is over. In face of this simple fact, a 360 foot indoor ski jump is an absurd notion. This is a letter I am sending to a local newspaper called “The Press.”

“Disney Land” at Riverhead

To the Editor of The Press

Riverhead Resorts is proposing to build a 360 feet high indoor ski mountain, eight resort complexes each with its own hotel totaling 2,200 rooms a 100,000 square foot convention center, 2,050 time share units and a 92 acre artificial lake. So far the environmentalists have weighed in heavily calling it, “Humongous and horrendous.”Causing severe traffic problems, increased air pollution etc. All of that I certainly agree with. Yet there is another issue at play here. We, as responsible “caretakers” of the environment for future generations, need to start considering the effects of todays decision on those who come after us. What with our minimal concern for global warming, and probably far more immediate impact of using up of the earth’s greatest gift to us, fossil fuel, we have been very poor custodians of our children's future.

Stop and think for a minute what Riverhead Resorts will require in energy to create the “humongous” project? If I had more details I am certain I could tell the readers exactly what we are talking about in terms of how much oil, coal, natural gas or nuclear energy it’s going to use up to make this thing work? Add to that the amount of carbon dioxide it will create so some folks can go indoor skiing? It is mind boggling to think that in a time when oil has peaked and the price is heading to $4.00 a gallon we don’t seem to get the connection between the supply and demand of cheap energy.

This Riverhead Resorts proposal reminds me of what the environmentalists were saying back when Nelson Rockefeller proposed the building of the World Trade Center. They pointed out that the 86 story buildings with all their elevators, escalators and lights would use more electricity than the whole city of Syracuse N.Y. Was anyone listening? I don’t think so. That was then, this is now and we ought to know better as we approach the end of the great party of cheap oil. (By the way, Governor Rockefeller needed the support of the construction unions in a pending election hence the WTC idea.)

As I write I am reminded of an observation Lee Iacoca’s made some time ago. He asked, “Where are our leaders?” It is simply amazing that not one person in that large crowd of would be leaders in Washington has had the courage to step up to the plate on the diminishing supply of oil. The party that sparked the industrial revolution that started about 150 years ago is coming to an end. We can start recognizing that fact by husbanding the energy we have left and not blowing it away on an indoor ski resort and all the rest of the overdevelopment being proposed. Of course I understand the temptation of the number of jobs it will create and the new taxes for Riverhead etc. But stop and think about what it will take to make it work as well as the environmental impact and therein is the trade off. Today versus our children's future. You decide.

Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y. In future blogs I will be spending considerable time on the developing end of the cheap oil catastrophe.