Jeremy Lent Photo
Amid prehistoric dinosaur skeletons and a swarm of 2010 statewide office-seekers gathered in New Haven, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate DIck Blumenthal called for an immediate ban on offshore drilling in the wake of the disaster in the Gulf. Republican Congressional hopeful Jerry Labriola, meanwhile, called that a nice idea — but premature.
Blumenthal and Labriola were among a parade of pols passing through the Peabody Museum’s Great Dinosaur Hall Sunday night. They were there for the 33rd annual fundraising dinner for the Yeshiva of New Haven, which was also a benefit for the Edgewood Elm Housing Inc. neighborhood group.
As the candidates schmoozed beneath the fossils, the Independent asked about some of the dinosaur remains that weren’t on display: fossil fuels. Oil continues gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s damaged rig in the nation’s worst-ever spill. The candidates had different ideas about how to respond, both locally and nationally.
Blumenthal (pictured at the top of the story conversing with U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro staffer Chuck Swirsky) called for an “immediate and indefinite moratorium on any new offshore drilling projects.”
Only if the U.S. government can come up with fool-proof plans to prevent future spills, Blumenthal said, should any new drills be allowed to hit the ocean floor.
Labriola (at left in photo), the Republican contender for Democrat Rosa DeLauro’s Third U.S. Congressional District seat, wouldn’t be so fast to silence the rigs.
He said the government should phase out offshore drilling only as alternative energy technologies — such as those harnessing wind, solar, and nuclear power — become cheap and available. For the time being, Labriola said the government should cut back on entitlement spending (for instance, health care) in order to have more money to deal with the Gulf disaster.
“We have an administration and a Congress that has spent us into oblivion and can no longer respond to crises,” he warned.
(Click here for a previous story on his and DeLauro’s views on the Gulf disaster.)
Meanwhile, several of Connecticut’s gubernatorial contenders present at Sunday night’s event agreed on the state’s need to decrease its dependence on oil and invest more in clean energy technologies.
RepublicanMike Fedele (at right in photo,with James McAdim), Connecticut’s current lieutenant governor, said cities around the state should adopt a “decentralized power generation” scheme.
That would involve connecting homes and other buildings to their own power transformers, which would store energy generated by wind, solar, oil and other sources, then discharge that energy as needed. (New Haven’s soon-to-open 360 State St. is installing a fuel cell.)
Democratic candidate Ned Lamont (at left in photo, with Neighborhood Housing Services chief James Paley) seconded Fedele’s call for more diverse energy sources, adding that the state government should be the catalyst.
Lamont called for reviving the energy bill that Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed two weeks ago — a bill that would have set targets for solar energy use and demanded a 15 percent reduction in energy consumption across the state.
Lamont’s Democratic Party-endorsed competitor, Dan Malloy (at left in photo with event organizer Eliezer Greer), had a similar goal in mind.
“As mayor of Stamford, I helped cut energy use by 19 percent in Stamford’s municipal buildings. I’d like to see at least a 15 percent cut across Connecticut,” Malloy said.
To make their energy goals a reality, all of these candidates would need either to work with, or overcome opposition from, energy companies like Connecticut Light & Power — which was being honored on Sunday night with the Yeshiva’s 2010 Civic Achievement Award, for supporting low-income housing in the Edgewood Park neighborhood.
Also among the night’s honorees were Andy and Paige Weinstein, co-owners of Star Tire and Wheels, who received the Yeshiva’s Community Service Award.