To The Editor: Publisher Art Hall blamed environmentalists and “Know Nothing Democrats" for the current energy and food situation in his April 23 column. I'd like to set the record straight on several points he raised. 1. No major environmental group supports corn-based ethanol. That tax-payer-rip off comes from big agribusiness and its puppets, both Republican and Democrat, in the Senate. 2. The 3-8 billion barrels of commercially extractable oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will last the U.S. between 175 days to one year. Then it's gone forever. 3. Right now, electricity from wind turbines is cost competitive with that from new coal and natural gas plants. Billionaire T. Boone Pickens just announced that he is committing $10 billion dollars to a string of wind farms out west and expects a 25 percent return. 4. There is no such thing as “clean”coal. There is just dirt coal and dirtier coal. 5. Hall speaks of energy supported groups in Utah wanting to open “public” lands to mining, drilling and such. He should have said, "Federal lands." They are not state lands. They belong to you and me, the taxpayers. We already subsidize Utah because the government spends more there than Utah pays in taxes. We don't need them strip mining some of the most scenic land in the U. S. Some of them even proposed drilling inside the Grand Canyon. Let's try serious conservation first.; renewables second, then the polluters a distant third. Allow me to quote the words of the CEO of Duke Power: "The cleanest and cheapest kilowatt is the one we don't have to produce." So I'd like to suggest that we first reduce our consumption. My wife and I have lowered our electric consumption to 250 KWH a month or one third the national average without sacrificing anything. Take that challenge and leave my grandchildren a more livable earth, the earth that God gave us. BRUCE ALLEN Del Haven