March 24, 2009

Social taboo to question leaders

Allegra Stratton writes in today's Guardian (U.K.):
Opposition to wind farms should become as socially unacceptable as failing to wear a seatbelt, Ed Miliband, the climate change secretary, has said. Speaking at a screening in London of the climate change documentary The Age of Stupid, Miliband said the government needed to be stronger in facing down local opposition to wind farms. He said: “The government needs to be saying, ‘It is socially unacceptable to be against wind turbines in your area — like not wearing your seatbelt or driving past a zebra crossing’.”
We have always been at war against climate change.

The government's faith in the wind industry's sales brochures is bad enough. If they listened to people who have actually examined wind energy's record, they would not be in the hole they have dug for themselves. But like any sociopath, they blame the very people who are trying to save them, who, perhaps foolishly, have thought that an injection of reality into the debate is in the interest of all but in time have learned that the issue of wind power has and wants nothing to do with reality but only wishful thinking.

It is government's habit to let itself be bought and to persuade itself that it is serving the public good. And when the public doesn't buy it, it claims to be serving a "higher" good, such as spreading democracy (by squelching it at home!), otherwise saving the planet, or simply preventing something "even worse". Thus the government places itself amongst the angels and those who question it in the slimepits of hell. And democracy is dead. By the government's own definition, it is above dispute and no longer open to discussion with those who would tear down all that the government deems good and worthy, that is, the furthering of the interests of those who bought it.

Or, more simply, here's another idiot unable to defend his position with rational argument so instead using his political power to force it on people instead of letting democracy work. Who is harmed? The people (and the landscape and wildlife). Who benefits? One specific industry.

And the argument that it is necessary to save the planet from climate change? Please. Wind turbines require a huge industrial base, destroy huge swaths of countryside and mountaintops, and require continuous thermal-powered backup. They add to the problem!

Well, that's politics. A politics that has lost not just its bearing but its legitimacy.

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, Vermont, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism, ecoanarchism