To the editor:

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is belatedly getting interested in energy issues, but she has a lot of catching up to do. I would suggest that it is because her energy advisers haven’t been doing their jobs all that well, and the governor herself is too busy looking over all the damage from global warming, such as the record-breaking snows that have recently piled up in the far western part of the state.

The governor is quoted in a Jan. 3 article in the Journal-World as saying: “Coal-fired plants typically are seen as the least costly way to generate electricity.”

She should have said: “Coal-fired plants historically have been seen as the least costly way to generate electricity.” But now people typically understand that severe weather events such as droughts, storms (yes, even snowstorms) and floods are more frequent and more severe as the climate warms, and providing remedies for those who suffer damage from such events must be added to the overall cost of fossil-fuel-fired power generation, as well as to the costs of running our vehicles on ever-more expensive fossil fuel.

So even though coal-fired power plants were once seen as the least costly way to generate electricity, the people today know better, and so should the utility regulators and even the governor herself.

Les Blevins,

Lawrence