Gov. Paul LePage considers Maine’s high energy costs a deterrent to attracting new business, and most folks would agree, since they aren’t too happy with their own high utility bills, either. Out of state visitors add insult to injury by telling us how much lower their own costs are back home.

A lot of options are being explored to reduce costs to everyone in Maine, including the availability of natural gas, development of solar and wind power options, and converting homes and businesses to heat pumps.

We must admit that we’d never really heard of heat pumps until the governor started promoting them, and while we still don’t fully understand the concept of drawing cold air inside from outdoors to warm your home In winter and in the summer months drawing in warm air and cooling it to air condition your home, it really has our attention now. It makes good sense, and is saving an estimated 10,000 Maine homeowners who have converted to heat pumps a lot of money.

We’ve always been disappointed that Maine didn’t go all-out to make solar heat available to the average homeowner. Most of us love the concept but find it too expensive, unless you’re in the process of building a new house. Wind power, too, while it has become widely used in our state on a large scale, and for public buildings such as schools, isn’t cheap for private, already established, residences.

Not too much has been said of late about offshore oil exploration in the Gulf of Maine, which suits us just fine. We watched a TV special earlier this month on the BP oil spill in Louisiana, and shudder to think what could happen to our pristine shoreline in case of an accidental oil spill. All the precautions in the world are not always good enough to prevent a disaster, as Louisiana learned the hard way.

The show focused on the area around the small town of Jean Lafitte and what the spill did to 125 miles of the state’s 400-mile coastline, killing shrimp, crabs and other fish and wildlife and devastating the commercial fishing industry. It’s been five years since the spill, and oil continues to wash ashore and affect the bayous and estuaries along a huge section of the coastline.

Jean Lafitte holds an annual celebration each spring similar to our own Fishermen’s Festival, promoting their world-famous shrimp and crabs. A highlight of the festival is a Blessing of the Fleet boat parade. Life for Gulf fishermen, their families and communities has changed forever, and we couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to be in their shoes. Not a pretty picture.

As we look for solutions to our energy problems here in the northeast, we can only hope that we never gamble with our environment to achieve our goals.