To the Editor, Manchester (Vt.) Journal:
Jane Newton, whom I have proudly supported in several elections, aptly puts the matter of industrial wind power threatening our ridgelines in context ("'Save our Ridgeline' misses the point," letter, August 26). Indeed, compared to the ravaging that Iraqis have endured for decades, a wind "park" looks almost benign.
It isn't, of course, as the campaign against it has made clear. The drive to develop our ridgelines is part of the same industrial arrogance, the same corporate piracy, that drives the war and poverty machine Newton calls attention to. In fact, many of the same investors and companies, notably Halliburton (active in building off-shore turbine facilities) and GE (the major U.S. manufacturer of wind turbines, having bought the business from Enron), are pocketing huge amounts of public money from both.
Spinning, strobing, grinding, and mostly useless 400-foot-high turbines are not as bad as napalm and depleted uranium, but that doesn’t make them good. If we don’t stop the industrial juggernaut here -- and even repeat the developer’s sales pitch as gospel -- how can we expect it to be stopped in Iraq and elsewhere?
Fighting to protect the ridgeline is every bit as important as fighting other injustices. It is the same fight.
categories: wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, anarchism, ecoanarchism, anarchosyndicalism
