Brian Greenspun finds answers, raises questions on the golf course

Sunday, March 11, 2007 | 7:40 a.m.

Reaching for the low-hanging fruit.

I owe whatever business and other success I have to the game of golf. At least, that should be my mantra after years of listening to my father justify his occasional sojourns from the office to his wife and, then, my doing the same thing to my mother. It was our way of rationalizing where we wanted to be with the place we thought our wife and mother wanted us to be. The long and short of that conversation is that my mother played more golf than either one of us did and was only looking for someone to be at work so she could.

I mention this because it really is true that much of what we do in the business, social and philanthropic world happens - or gets its start - on the golf course. People have time to get to know one another and get to know what others are like, whether they can be trusted, whether they take shortcuts, whether they live by the rules and, most importantly, whether or not they can count.

And so it was earlier this week when I took one of those rare days off in the middle of the week to sneak out to the golf course with some friends. One of those friends was former President Bill Clinton, who was in town to give a speech and visit with his good friend Terry McAuliffe, who was in Las Vegas for a book party honoring his terrific new book, "What A Party." The three of us joined another friend who insisted he hadn't played in five years and proceeded to whip us handily. That also happens on the golf course, especially when the sandbagger is the greatest tennis player in a generation.

So here's what I learned that day: The theory of low-hanging fruit.

Whenever former President Clinton is in the middle of a large group of people, it should not be a surprise that it is his opinion, his understanding of the facts and his reflection on matters of great national and international concern that is sought out by the group. It was no different following our golf game, when we gathered around a large table to swap golf stories.

The conversation immediately turned to the Bush administration's latest effort to continue the "Screw Nevada" scenario that was put into place over 20 years ago by a Congress and a president who cared nothing for us out here in Nevada but who, obviously, cared deeply about the electoral votes of Texas and Louisiana - two states which had better sites for long-term storage and more people (read voters). And just in case you continue not to believe me, or the GOP spin machine takes issue with what I and this newspaper have been saying since what seems like the beginning of time, I need only refer you to an expert.

Edward McGaffigan was the longest-serving member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission when he retired last month. It wasn't until then that he opened his mouth and spoke the truth. Suffering from cancer and looking at an uncertain future, McGaffigan said, "It may be time to stop digging." His view is that Yucca Mountain is unlikely to ever open as a storage site for nuclear waste largely because the politics were flawed at the start. "Nevada never wanted it," he said. And, contrary to what my colleague, Jon Ralston, believes is true, Nevadans still don't want it and they care deeply about that belief.

President Clinton was asked his opinion about nuclear power plants and the utility companies' drive to build many more of them - a situation that would exacerbate the waste issue. Without saying whether he favored that plan or not, he questioned, based on his own extensive research into the subject when Yucca Mountain was on his radar screen, whether nuclear power was really as cheap as the proponents have suggested it is. That, after all, is a major selling point for building multibillion-dollar nuke plants before there is a cogent and responsible plan for safe disposal of the high-level radioactive waste. I suppose when one factors in the cost of disposal the price of that energy starts to soar.

In any event, President Clinton's theory grabbed everyone's attention. Why, he asked, would we embark on a costly and uncertain nuclear power future before we have picked off the easy targets? The low-hanging fruit, if you will. For example, there is reason to believe that clean coal technology will allow us to generate almost twice as much electricity as we currently do with no more greenhouse gas emissions or other environmental damage than is currently the case. And repairing or replacing the electrical grid system in this country, while expensive, will significantly enhance our power delivery capacity. Whatever those costs involved, they are far less than nuclear plants and disposal issues. Why shouldn't we do that first?

When President Clinton spoke to the Nevada Development Authority not too long ago, he laid out a plan for solar and geothermal power in this state that would create tens of thousands of new, high-paying jobs and put Nevada on the map as one of the premier high-tech environmental states in the country. He asked this past week what had happened since that speech and why our governor hasn't made such a program the highest priority for a state with abundant sunshine and geothermal capacity. Those are fair questions. It is the answers that are unfair to the people of this state.

If you go to the nation's midsection - Iowa, the Dakotas and Montana - there is enough wind to drive those new windmills crazy with renewable energy that is absolutely free. Enough, in fact, to power a major part of this country. Why, the former president asked, isn't there a program to develop that capacity?

That's the low-hanging fruit. The obvious and easy things to do first before we risk too much. And only if those efforts prove fruitless and fail to produce what common sense and reason say will happen, only then should we attempt the more difficult, and by doing so risk our lives and our environment on the limbs where the higher-hanging fruit beckons us.

So that's the theory. And I have to say that I cannot find fault with it, especially the part about Nevada, our abundant sunshine and the opportunity to create thousands of new jobs while we become the next environmentally high-tech wonder of the world. I am so convinced, in fact, I think I will head back out to the golf course to see what else I can learn.

Maybe there is someone out there who can explain why the Bush administration and its Republican allies are so hell-bent on putting Nevada families at such great risk.

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