This week the Kenai Peninsula Economic Development District, funded with public money, is holding an “Industry Outlook Forum.” On the agenda are Enstar, Buccaneer, Pebble and Donlin Gold — all corporate, extractive development proponents funded by big international banks. In the 1970s I lived in Denmark. There was a school there at the time, a folk high school for people in their late teens and 20s. They needed to power their residential school. The teachers of that school pooled their salaries, lived at the school and spent the coming semester researching and building a windmill with the students. They built what was at the time the largest windmill in the world. It powered the school with excess for the community. None of them knew much about wind power when they started. Their minds, industry and money were free to apply to the project. This gas “bridge” from the oil economy to the sustainable economy is a lie created by the petrochemical industry to squeeze the last bit of servitude and profits from our sheep-like population. Homer does not have to go this route. Homer has smart people, industrious people and enough energy and access to technology now to turn on a dime and get this sustainable power job done now. We are sheep. We are being ripped off and we just want to believe what we are told and go about business as usual asleep at the wheel. Gas lines are too expensive for an energy resource that is and should be on the wane. They will get us hooked up and then the “shortages” will ensue and the price will go up. How many times does this have to happen? Gas is not inexpensive, it’s completely subsidized. It is not clean. Talk to the people of North Dakota. How careful has the industry been with them? Talk to the survivors of Super Storm Sandy; many lost homes due to gas line explosions and ensuing fires. Locally we have wind, water, tides, rocket-stove technology, geo thermal, solar — there is local money and industrious smart people. We don’t need extractive corporate development funded by bank criminals. Occupy Economic Development. Occupy the Economic Forum. Stop this madness here. Jessica Tenhoff