And Charles Komanoff writes in Sunday's Times Union (Albany, N.Y.) that all who cherish wildness should support installing huge industrial wind turbines on Gore Mountain in the Adirondack State Park.
He channels the late David Brower to claim the "stature to synthesize, if not reconcile, the opposing positions." He swallows whole, of course, the belief that wind turbines actually displace output from coal plants, and thus he can argue that the benefit can be weighed against the impact.
But opponents also look at the benefit. They find it insignificant, if not utterly absent. That is the argument Komanoff and other "environmentalist" supporters of industrial wind avoid. They trot out the sales brochures as sacred writ and dismiss those of us who demand real evidence or point out the poor record of large-scale wind in, for example, Denmark as unrealistic aesthetes.
Who is defending nature, the "wildness" Komanoff claims to cherish? When everyone who should be opposing development wants to be the mediator instead, there remain only the developers' options. Komanoff, along with the tediously self-righteous Bill McKibben, who also thinks that in the industrial wind boondoggle is the preservation of wildness, thus makes a mockery of concern for the environment.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism
