Fingernails, a gas pipeline, and a migration corridor

Fingernails, a gas pipeline, and a migration corridor

As a person who has very recently turned 70, I spend more time than I like visiting funeral homes.  It makes you think.    

Factoid: After a person dies, their hair and fingernails continue growing. 

This is not something I think about a lot, but I’ve heard it all my life. Shocking and scary, but that’s life. I get it.

What I CAN’T grasp is the logic that after I die MY hair and MY fingernails could continue growing, but I’m dead.  My living brain won’t focus on this and slides around the idea in a really funky way.

Psychologists know it’s hard to get our heads around ideas that conflict, especially when they involve survival. Thinking about LG&E-KU’s proposed gas pipeline bulldozing through a protected migration corridor is one of those funky conflicts. 

I live in the same woods as Bernheim Forest and so, I have a particular interest in how that conflict resolution is going, but I didn’t always live here. 

I grew up in a gas-connected neighborhood in Louisville. My great-uncle was the land developer. 

The entrance to Willmar Avenue was distinguished by two brightly lit gas lanterns, and we cooked on a gas stove and had not one, but two gas furnaces in our basement. Natural gas absolutely provided a tangible improvement over coal, kerosene or wood heating. Louisville Gas & Electric infrastructure was something we took for granted, but I do recall gas commercials on a black-and-white TV set.

Now I live in a different place and time where conservation of natural resources is obviously not keeping pace with land development. Bernheim Forest’s Cedar Grove Wildlife Corridor shores up a dangerously weak point in migration between forests to the north and the great Daniel Boone and Appalachian forests south and east. The value of protecting and enhancing that disputed bit of a wildlife corridor is clear as day to some people and invisible to others. I see that. Again, it’s life.

I am a person who knows that I and my life-support systems need to immediately change course to use clean energy. Our country and the world are aiming for a target of reducing carbon emissions (the ones that are propelling and intensifying extreme weather).  The target is net zero emissions by 2050. Net zero means completely negating the amount of greenhouse gases produced by human activity. In order to do that, we have known for over a decade that we can and must reach a halfway point by 2030. 

2030. 

Seven. Years. From. Now. 

Lives depend on this, but as communities, we are all having a hard time coming to grips with scary and conflicting levels of knowledge.

Can we see that now is not the time to be extending carbon and methane emitting infrastructure?   

Even without the Bullitt County pipeline extension, Louisville Gas & Electric can and will continue their mission of supplying energy to customers who need it. The existing pipeline services and jobs are not going anywhere in a hurry. There is a natural lifespan of the transition that will likely work out over decades. 

As energy users, we ARE already transitioning to cleaner, better and more efficient technology, and there is great opportunity in transitioning well.  A corporation whose name encompasses both the new electric power and the old fossil fuel is in a good position to do that.

I expect Kentucky needs and wants continued good service provided by LG&E-KU. 

Maggie Hettinger is a volunteer with Citizens’ Climate Lobby, a non-partisan, non-profit, grassroots organization that exists to create the political will for a livable world.

Louisville Gas & Electric (LG&E-KU) and Bernheim Forest are in court dispute over land protection vs. acquisition by eminent domain.  

Published Feb 6, 2023  in Kentucky Standard, Bardstown, KY