Letter: Gibbons going in wrong direction on energy

Thursday, March 1, 2007 | 7:10 a.m.

I read, with a great deal of dismay, Wednesday's front page of the Las Vegas Sun headlined, "Gibbons holds out."

The story was about an alliance among five Western governors, but not ours, to arrest scientifically proven greenhouse gas emissions causing global warming - primarily attributable to fossil fuels - by developing cleaner burning renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and geothermal power and other sources which, by the way, are abundant in Nevada.

But Gov. Jim Gibbons wants to further study the issue. This is outrageous and contradicts every tenet of leadership that Mr. Gibbons was elected to do - act!

I and the nonprofit organization I represent, the greater Las Vegas Regional Clean Cities Coalition Inc., have been advocates and at the forefront of deploying cleaner-burning alternative fuels in this community for going on 14 years. In fact, because of our efforts, we have more than 7,000 vehicles operating on some form of cleaner-burning alternative fuel in this community. That is a stunning achievement and goes a long way to mitigating global warming as the fuels we deploy are "eco-friendly," such as natural gas, hybrids, propane, hydrogen and biodiesel.

After all this effort we are finally attracting both national and international attention that showcases Nevada as an example of exemplary and decisive leadership in the alternative energy field as well as developing business models that attract investment in our state to diversify our economy.

All of this effort is now being questioned and lampooned because of a lack of visionary and decisive leadership personified in Mr. Gibbons. Mr. Gibbons' solution to the energy problem is to look to coal liquefaction and further study the problem? Coal is a main contributor to global warming, so Mr. Gibbons' "solution" is to enhance the problem?

Dan Hyde, Henderson