Destroying the world for "green" fuel

Tracy McVeigh writes in The Guardian (click the title of this post):

... The eviction of the villagers to make way for a sugar cane plantation is part of a wider land grab going on in Kenya's Tana Delta that is not only pushing people off plots they have farmed for generations, stealing their water resources and raising tribal tensions that many fear will escalate into war, but also destroying a unique wetland habitat that is home to hundreds of rare and spectacular birds.

The irony is that most of the land is being taken for allegedly environmental reasons – to allow private companies to grow water-thirsty sugar cane and jatropha for the biofuels so much in demand in the west, where green legislation, designed to ease carbon dioxide emissions, is requiring they are mixed with petrol and diesel.

The delta, one of Kenya's last wildernesses and one of the most important bird habitats in Africa, is the flood plain of the Tana river, which flows 1,014km from Mount Kenya to the Indian Ocean. ...

Wind industry decries "delegitimization"

The industrial wind industry is a lot like the state of Israel. Both began in an idealistic spirit of creating an vibrant alternative. Both soon came to antagonize their neighbors. As uncomfortable facts about their operations became undeniable, both have retreated to an aggressive self-righteous bravado and emphasize their important economic contributions: rural jobs and nanotechnology. Both rely on demonization of an imagined enemy behind all criticism: the coal lobby or Iran. Both can only answer their critics by calling them names: Nimby, climate science denier, antisemite.

Both have delegitimized themselves. The game is over.

Ecopsychology, solastalgia, nature-guilt

Daniel Smith has written an article in today's New York Times Magazine about the psychologic relationship of humans and the rest of the natural world, particularly that part not altered by humans: "Is there an ecological unconscious?". While recognizing the benefits of reconnecting with the earth and the mental toll of environmental degradation, one should also consider that we are indeed somewhat apart from nature and therein lies the nub of the problem. Nature mocks us and reminds us of our crimes against her, many of which, to a modest degree, are necessary for our survival. A proper humility is in order, and a conscious effort to do the least harm (such as by the concept of "ahimsa") would help us as well as the rest of nature. But the human mind's coping devices tend to become their own reason for being, and our natural relationship is replaced by the rites of displacing our guilt.

This aspect of our natural/unnatural mind was written about in my 1996 essay "Nature-Guilt".

Which side are you on?

Industrial-scale wind development is not green. No development can be green. It can only be necessary and less harmful than it or an alternative might. As in Maryland, where a wind developer's political connections got his and other facilities exempted from environmental review, many developers assert the presumption that wind's benefits trump any other concern and therefore -- despite carving wide strong roads through wildlife habitat and wetlands, clearing several acres per turbine, blasting and filling sites for each platform, pouring tons of cement into the ground, erecting 400-feet-high machines with blades sweeping up to 2 acres at tip speeds up to 200 mph in bird and bat migratory pathways -- they claim that they do not need to be subject to the same review that any other project would have to face.

They also resent local concerns about noise and visual intrusion, and so look to faraway bureaucrats to bypass the democratic process and people's control of their own communities.

In Britain, the national government is poised to shove several projects through against local opposition, claiming them as vital infrastructure (like invading Iraq was vital to our security). These projects include huge waste incinerators, major road schemes, new and expanded nuclear power stations, airport expansions, tidal barrages, and water reservoirs (such as one that would flood 5 square miles in Oxfordshire).

And 16 wind energy facilities.

This is the company they keep. If industrial wind were green, they would not need to pull favors to strong-arm their way into our neighborhoods. But once anyone looks beyond their spiel, that is the only recourse they have.

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

Community outreach, or another broken soul crying for help

Our friends at National Wind Watch received the following e-mail, reproduced here in its entirety. It reveals the brutal instincts, limited cognitive functioning, and ultimately sad lives of many, perhaps most, industrial wind developers. It betrays an utter lack of concern for the environment and for other people.

Subject:  Drunk
Date:     Mon, 5 Feb 2007 19:50:17 -0500
From:     Jay Wilgar <jwilgar@aimpowergen.com>
To:       <query@wind-watch.org>

You guys are a real treat of an organization.  Get the facts dumb ass.  Give me a call 647-286-4234

The following information is from the web site of AIM Powergen Corp.

Jay Wilgar, Vice President - Field Operations

Jay's career has spanned investor relations and several entrepreneurial ventures. Prior to co-founding AIM he was a partner in Pentagon Capital Partners Inc., an asset based financing company. Jay has often spoken to student groups on small business development and was most recently a judge of the Nestle "Reach for Your Dreams" entrepreneurship challenge. Within AIM, Jay heads up land acquisition and project design team.

------------------------

In Ontario AIM has identified several project sites that leverage the excellent wind resource of the Great Lakes basin. The most advance project is the Erie Shores Wind Farm located along the northern shoreline of Lake Erie between Copenhagen and Clear Creek. It is anticipated that this project could be commissioned by the first quarter of 2006.

Exploration and development work continues on several other Ontario project sites including the Lowbanks Wind Farm located near Dunnville, and the Simcoe Shores Wind Farm near Beaverton.

AIM has expanded its development activities across Canada with the development and exploration of various sites in the Maritime and Prairie Provinces.

AIM continues to identify and evaluate potential wind power development sites throughout Canada and internationally.

Project Locations in Canada [interactive map]

------------------------

AIM PowerGen Corporation
200 Consumers Road, Suite 604
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M2J 4R4

Tel: 416-502-0993
Fax: 416-502-1415
Toll Free: 1-877-AIM-POWR (1-877-246-7697)
Email: info@aimpowergen.com

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism, ecoanarchism

AWEA: Wind energy capacity passed 1% of U.S. total in 2006

The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) issued a press release last Tuesday boasting that 2,454 MW of new wind energy capacity was erected in 2006, an increase of 27%, to 11,603 MW. That brings it up to 1.2% of the total generating capacity in the U.S.

More than 35,000 MW of new non-wind capacity is estimated to have been added in 2006 to bring the total to an estimated 980,000 MW.

According to the Energy Information Agency of the U.S. Department of Energy, wind produced 0.36% (14.6 billion kWh) of the total electricity generated in the U.S. in 2005 (4.036 trillion kWh). (That represents an average (some days more, most days a lot less) output of 21% capacity, only two-thirds of the 30% claimed by AWEA. Assuming a 2% increase in the total, the 27% increase in wind would bring its share to 0.45%.

The large space requirements and aggressive visual intrusion of industrial wind are already causing resistance to its continued expansion. Just to stay at its current level of 0.45% "penetration" would require adding over 450 MW (at about 50 acres per MW) in 2007 and progressively more each year thereafter.

A "modest" 5% penetration today would require 130,000 MW of new wind capacity, increasing every year. The total today would require 6.5 million acres, or 10,000 square miles, about the total land and water area of Massachusetts. That's outrageous enough, but imagine the more ambitious goals of two to four times that. These are giant moving machines, strobe-lit day and night, each sweeping an vertical area of 1-2 acres with blades traveling 150-200 mph at their tips.

This does not even consider the massive amounts of new high-capacity transmission infrastructure that would be needed to get all that wind energy from the formerly bucolic rural and wild provinces to power the lobbyists at AWEA.

This is not a green alternative but industrialism running amok. Big wind is clearly irrelevant to our energy plans, a source of more problems than it can claim to solve, an obvious dead end.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism, anarchism, ecoanarchism, animal rights, vegetarianism

"Wind power not such a good idea"

Richie Davis of the Greenfield (Mass.) Recorder wrote a fair article (click the title of this post) about opposition to industrial wind energy, featuring a couple of the founders of National Wind Watch.

I want to call attention to the final quote from William Labich, resource planner for Franklin County: "The technology isn’t the issue; it’s the siting of the technology, and how you apply it."

Notice how that attempts to evade the fundamental problem industrial wind energy on the grid has had, namely, showing that the technology actually reduces other sources, especially carbon-emitting fossil fuels.

Saying, as Sally Wright -- of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst -- does elsewhere in the article, that "for every kilowatt hour that you make with a wind turbine, that’s a kilowatt hour not made with a fossil plant" ignores the real-world effect of adding large amounts of a highly variable, intermittent, and significantly unpredictable source such as wind to the grid. The extra work to balance the wind-generated power and the lower efficiency of extra ramping appear to cancel out much, if not all, of the benefits hoped for from wind.

In other words, every kWh from wind may indeed replace a kWh from other sources (and not necessarily fossil-fuel plants), but that is very different from actually reducing the fuel use of other sources, what with standby, spinning reserve, or extra fuel burned in ramping up and down.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

More about extreme wind turbine noise

Farmers Weekly, 12 January 2007, p. 10, has an article about the Davies, a farming couple in Lincolnshire who have had to sleep away from their home 60 nights since September, because of the Deeping St Nicholas wind energy facility 3,000 feet from their home (see the excerpts from forum posts by "wiggyjane" posted yesterday). The article is accompanied by a sidebar:

The Wind Turbine Noise Working Group has been asked by the DTI [U.K. Department of Trade and Industry] to provide expert advice and guidance on issues surrounding what has become known as Amplitude Modulation of Aerodynamic Noise.

This is a low-frequency whooshing sound caused by the passage of air over turbine blades under certain atmospheric conditions. So far, little is known about the phenomenon or how it might be controlled.

Because amplitude modulation is difficult to predict, it is often not until a turbine is erected and fully working that the noise becomes evident. An acoustics expert, who asked not to be named, said that, although rare, it was becoming more common.

"The concern is that bigger, more modern turbines may be more prone to this problem," he told Farmers Weekly. ...

Because of the nature of sites required for wind farms, turbines are often in areas of low background noise which makes the noise of the blades all the more noticeable -- especially for rural residents used to peace and quiet.

Last month, noise worries contributed to the withdrawal of an application to build three turbines at Weston, Herfordshire. Noise has also been an issue for residents living near wind farms at Bears Down, North Cornwall and Askham, Cumbria.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism

Unintended consequences

Industrialists are seizing the opportunity created by the successful effort of many environmentalists to scare everyone shitless about global warming, as seen in these recent stories, courtesy of the Climate Crisis Coalition (click the title of this post).

Schwarzenegger Argues that Global Warming Justifies Two Big Dam Projects. By Bettina Boxall, The Los Angeles Times, January 12, 2007. In proposing two big, expensive dam projects this week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made a novel argument to justify the old-fashioned public works projects. Advocating $4 billion in bonds to build reservoirs in Northern and Central California, the administration emphasized not population growth or the specter of future drought, but global warming. 

Construction Begins on Giant Quebec Hydro Plant. CBC News, January 11, 2007. "Construction has begun on a controversial $5-billion hydroelectric project, the Quebec government announced Thursday, calling it the biggest and most important of its kind in a decade. ... To construct the two power stations, Hydro Quebec will build four dams and 72 dikes, and will flood 188 square kilometres of forest land along the river. Quebec Premier Jean Charest announced the start of the project at a press conference at Hydro Quebec's headquarters on Thursday, a last-minute venue chosen after the government cancelled a northern ceremony in Waskaganish, where it was rumoured that Cree opponents to the project were going to protest… Charest lauded hydroelectricity as a cornerstone of Quebec's heritage that has 'become a tool of economic development for Quebecers,' including the Cree. ... Quebec Environment Minister Claude Béchard said the project will create cleaner, more environmentally friendly energy than other power sources. The power stations are 'long-term solutions to fight greenhouse gas emissions' that will put Quebec at the forefront of the fight against climate change, he said ...

Tighter CO₂ Caps Push Finland to Nuclear. By Sami Torma, Reuters, January 11, 2007. Finland can meet EU limits on carbon dioxide emissions by 2010 through more use of renewable energy and biofuels but further tightening of the limits would push it to build more nuclear plants, its energy minister said. ...

Give Conservation Another Chance

By John H. Herbert, Baltimore Sun, Jan. 1, 2007:

Since 1997, utility demand-side investments such as efficient lighting programs, heat recovery systems and advanced electric motor drives have yielded returns for consumers that far exceed the cost. Since 1997, every 3 cents worth of conservation investment by utilities has reduced demand by 1 kilowatt-hour. Electricity costs about 9 cents per kilowatt-hour. Thus, for every 3 cents worth of conservation investments, consumers avoid paying 9 cents and thus obtain a 6-cent gain. ...

Why is there no federal support? Because Washington understands the impact of programs that involve tax credits, subsidies and government expenditures that increase energy supplies rather than reducing demand. Support for these programs provides paybacks for specific industries. ...

In the 1970s, prices were high and energy security was a pressing issue as Middle East oil supplies were at times curtailed. The national government responded by promoting energy conservation on several fronts such as tax credits for domestic conservation investments, energy-use labeling of appliances and automobiles, and frank talk about the value of saving energy for economic and security reasons. ...

By 1985, U.S. imports from OPEC fell to 1.8 million barrels per day from a peak level of 6.2 million in 1977, a decline of 70 percent. ...

According to the Department of Energy's Annual Energy Review, from 1978 to 1982, energy consumption per household declined by 26 percent, and in the major consuming region in the nation, the Midwest, it declined by 32 percent.

From 1973 to 1982, industrial consumption of natural gas declined by 32 percent. The industrial sector is the major user of this most environmentally benign hydrocarbon. During the same period, fuel consumption per vehicle declined by 19 percent. ...

[W]ill we stay entrenched in the known comforts of energy dependency and legislation written by lobbyists supportive of particular groups? The smart money may be on the latter, but there will be more money and security for everybody if we give conservation another whirl.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism

Noam Mohr on meat-eating and the environment

The global costs of a meat diet
The Green Times (Penn Environmental Group), Spring 1997

If you care about the environment, you had better be a vegetarian. Why? Because meat consumption is one of the primary causes of environmental devastation, including the misuse of natural resources, the polluting of water and air, and the destruction of rainforests. All this comes in addition to the immense cruelty to animals and the contribution to the world hunger problem caused by the modern meat industry. In short, a carnivorous environmentalist is a hypocrite. Strong words? take a look at meat industry and judge for yourself.

Modern meat production is both wasteful and destructive. Each pound of steak from feedlot-raised steers that you eat comes at the cost of 5 pounds of grain, 2,500 gallons of water, the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline, and about twenty-five pounds of eroded topsoil. Indeed, over a third of the North American continent is devoted to grazing, and over a half of this country's cropland is dedicated to growing feed for livestock. What is more, the livestock industry consumes over half of the water used in the US.

In every one of these ways, as discussed below, a vegetarian diet exerts less strain on our resources that does a carnivorous one. ...

Meat production around the globe not only wastes the water it uses, it also pollutes the water it does not use. ...

Perhaps the most devastating environmental impact of America's appetite for meat is deforestation. The primary reason for the destruction of rainforests in countries like Costa Rica, Colombia, Brazil, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia, is to provide grazing land for cattle, virtually all of which goes not to the poor in these third world nations, but rather is exported to wealthy countries like the United States. ...

Meat production is not only damaging to the environment, but in more immediate ways to the global human population as well. Land that could be used to grow food to feed hungry people is instead used to grow food for the animals we eat.

How environmentalists are overlooking vegetarianism as the most effective tool against climate change in our lifetimes
The McDougall Newsletter, December 2006

Summary: Global warming poses one of the most serious threats to the global environment ever faced in human history. Yet by focusing entirely on carbon dioxide emissions, major environmental organizations have failed to account for published data showing that other gases are the main culprits behind the global warming we see today. As a result, they are neglecting what might be the most effective strategy for reducing global warming in our lifetimes: advocating a vegetarian diet. ...

By far the most important non-CO₂ greenhouse gas is methane, and the number one source of methane worldwide is animal agriculture ["Global Warming Potentials," National Emissions, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency].

Methane is responsible for nearly as much global warming as all other non-CO₂ greenhouse gases put together [Hansen, James E. and Makiko Sato, "Trends of measured climate forcing agents," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 98, no. 26, 18 Dec. 2001, p. 14778-14783]. Methane is 23 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO₂ ["Global Warming Potentials"]. While atmospheric concentrations of CO₂ have risen by about 31% since pre-industrial times, methane concentrations have more than doubled ["Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2002," Chapter 1, Energy Information Administration, U.S. Department of Energy, October 2003]. Whereas human sources of CO₂ amount to just 3% of natural emissions, human sources produce one and a half times as much methane as all natural sources ["Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2002"]. In fact, the effect of our methane emissions may be compounded as methane-induced warming in turn stimulates microbial decay of organic matter in wetlands—the primary natural source of methane [Hansen, James E. et al., "Global warming in the twenty-first century: An alternative scenario," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 97, no. 18, 29 Aug. 2000, p. 9876].

... [U]nlike carbon dioxide which can remain in the air for more than a century, methane cycles out of the atmosphere in just eight years, so that lower methane emissions quickly translate to cooling of the earth. ...

Moreover, the same factory farms responsible for these methane emissions also use up most of the country's water supply, and denude most of its wilderness for rangeland and growing feed. Creating rangeland to feed western nations' growing appetite for meat has been a major source of deforestation and desertification in third world countries. Factory farm waste lagoons are a leading source of water pollution in the U.S. Indeed, because of animal agriculture's high demand for fossil fuels, the average American diet is far more CO₂-polluting than a plant-based one [Pimentel, David and Marcia Pimentel, "Sustainability of Meat-Based and Plant-Based Diets and the Environment", American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, col. 78, no. 3, September 2003, p. 660S-663S; Tidwell, Mike, "Food and the Climate Crisis: What You Eat Affects the Sky," Sierra Club Redwood Chapter Newsletter, Dec./Jan. 2005].

Click here to see a graph showing the greenhouse effects of various diets.

tags: environment, environmentalism, ecoanarchism, animal rights, vegetarianism

Sierra Club flacks for big energy

The January/February edition of the Sierra Club magazine explores the energy issue, starting off with an essay by the tireless Bill McKibben.

He sets the tone of mockery (of logic, mostly) right away, causing one to wonder just how seriously the Sierra Club wants to be taken in these articles:

Much of what passes for discussion about our energy woes is spent imagining some magic fuel that will save us. Solar power! Fusion power! Hydrogen power!

But not wInd power, Bill?! No -- much of the rest of his article is a paean to wind industry insider Jerome Guillet, a developer of wind energy who boldly envisions more government subsidies to protect his investors.

McKibben is equally courageous, gratuitously attacking most defenders of New England's (and mid-Atlantic) ridgelines as "semi-ridiculous NIVMVDs, or not in view of my deck." He also threatens them, asserting wind "will continue to grow."

This fine nature writing serves only to ignore the many other reasons for opposition, most notably preservation of much needed forest habitat. It is pathetic indeed to see the Sierra Club -- along with many other now mainstream environmental groups -- shutting out environmental concerns and instead acting as peons of big energy.

Another article, by Frances Cerra Whittelsey, looks at the impact of wind turbines on birds and continues the mockery of not only reason but also passion.

Whittelsey first establishes that the decimation of raptors and other birds in Altamont Pass, California, is an exception. (In fact, what is exceptional is that bird deaths have routinely been counted there.) She admits that "at least 22,000 birds, including some 400 golden eagles, have collided with wind turbines (or been electrocuted by power lines) there." Per turbine, however, that's 4.1 birds -- total since the 1980s! That's a lot less than her later-cited study of turbines outside California showing "only" 2.3 birds killed each year per turbine. So if Altamont is a recognized problem, other turbines appear to be even more dangerous to birds ...

Never mind, though, because she then allows the industry trade group American Wind Energy Association assure us that new turbines are safer. Laurie Jodziewicz sez, "today's turbines are taller and more efficient." Yep, they are now "above the flight paths of many birds" -- and now in the flight paths of more birds. And the giant new models are not "more efficient." They are just bigger. More energy per turbine, yes, but not more energy per wind resource, acreage, or area swept by the blades (which are moving 150-200 mph at the tips).

Not reassured? "Some residents remain opposed on aesthetic grounds," writes Whittelsey in an effort to corral anyone left standing after Jodziewicz's not quite incisive analysis. No, Frances. A lot of people remain opposed for other environmental and wildlife concerns as well. You have convinced only a straw doll of your own imagining.

Most people are also not reassured that the industry is now working "to find a means to warn bats away from the spinning blades."

But ultimately, Whittelsey writes, why should we care? Millions of birds are already killed by domestic cats, radio towers, windows, and cars.

With friends like these, wildness ("the preservation of the world," in the words of Henry David Thoreau) clearly doesn't stand a chance.

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism, animal rights