On Topic: When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie

Seeing around corners is tough work, but that's what executives get paid to do.

So what are we to make of the conflicting future landscapes painted by MidAmerican Energy President William Fehrman and Patricia Kampling, chief executive officer of Alliant Energy?

Not that long ago, Alliant was gung-ho to construct a brand-new $1.8 billion coal-fired electricity generating facility in Marshalltown. But plans didn't work out quite to its liking, so the utility decided to switch over an existing plant there to natural gas.

CEO Kampling cited the dramatic plunge in the cost of natural gas as one reason for the change in direction.

In 2007, the price tag was an average of $9 per thousand cubic feet, she told the Des Moines Register in February. By early this year? Less than $3.

The numbers make sense, right?

Well, not necessarily, MidAmerican's Fehrman countered. His fear is based on the reverse-gravity economic principle that what comes down most likely will bounce back up.

“Natural gas has some good things about it, but we have to be sure about the price and supply before we would make any decisions …,” he said to the Register a couple months ago.

“If I could find a gas company that would guarantee me a price for 10 years, I'd go with natural gas. So far, no company will make that commitment.”

His caution makes good business sense. But in some parts of the country these days, nary a bad word can be said about natural gas.

That's especially true in eastern Ohio, where two massive shale formations are being taken for all they will give. Some estimates contend work there will create more than an astonishing 200,000 jobs over the next three years.

And those positions will be across a broad swath of skill levels - from engineers and geophysicists to welders, heavy-equipment operators and even general laborers to lift and carry.

It's a boon to Ohio, which saw its unemployment stats bridge 7.9 percent at the end of 2011. Heck, it's more like a miracle to the town that sits at the heart of the exploration, Steubenville, a barely surviving straggler from the dying days of steel-mill dependence - it's jobless rate was a blinding 15 percent two years ago.

Until work at the formations began, Steubenville was known only for rusted-out buildings and - maybe - its annual Dean Martin Festival.

(This June, in case you're curious, festivities in honor of the hometown celebrity will feature Dino impersonators and an “accordion artist,” among other entertainment. No mention of Jerry Lewis tributes on its official website.)

MidAmerican, as you know, wants to go nuclear.

Much of the recent debate over the whys and wherefores of building more nuke plants in Iowa centered on who should pay and when.

And, oh yeah, the issue of safety popped up, too. Place names such as Fukushima and Chernobyl floated back into the discussion.

Even the 1979 movie “The China Syndrome” got dusted off. That was the picture that, on opening day, was met with “Oh, it's an exciting movie, but that could never happen.”

Twelve days later there was “an incident,” as the accident was called, at the nuclear generating station on Three Mile Island, not far from Harrisburg, Penn.

I'm no energy expert, and I can't predict the volatility of future energy costs. (Oh, if I could.)

But I do recall a line from “The China Syndrome” in which Jack Lemmon's character, an engineer at its fictional facility, remarks, Cassandra-like: “In anything man ever does, there's some element of risk.”

More than a few have spoken as to how we in this country and the rest of the world may have turned “complacent” in recent years about nuclear safety, to quote Yukiya Amano, International Atomic Energy Agency director general.

Jack Lemmon's engineer was speaking of his concerns about nuclear power. But natural gas, too, carries its own potential dangers.

When I first read about fracking, I wondered what “Battlestar Galactica” had to do with natural gas extraction.

As I found out more about hydraulic fracturing - injecting water and sand at high pressures to split open shale formations such as at the Marcellus Shale site in Steubenville and release the natural gas - I also came across the accompanying environmental concerns.

It's as if all those 1960s worries we'd stuffed in our collective closet - air and groundwater contamination from fracking, radioactivity from leaking nuke plants, smoke-choked clouds from coal - are creeping back out.

Common sense, good business practice and planet stewardship charge us to consider all options for energy supply and energy security. But let's keep a wary eye open, too, for what also might slink out of that closet.

And I'm not just talking about Dean Martin impersonators.