Forest dwellers of India losing their land to wind energy development

Add the Adavasis of India to the Zapotecas of Mexico, the Aborigines of Australia, and the Maori of New Zealand (not to mention rural and remote communities everywhere) on the list of indigenous peoples whose land and heritage is being taken by giant energy companies for the questionable fad of industrial wind energy (or rather the carbon credits they "generate" despite not producing useful energy that can actually displace other sources).

See the March 18 story from The Hindu at National Wind Watch:

Adivasis [forest-dwelling indigenous people] in Dhule district, Maharashtra, are protesting the diversion of forest land for wind power projects. About 340 hectares of forest land has been diverted for wind energy projects in Sakri taluka of Dhule district, promoted by Suzlon Energy Limited.

With the passing of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006, adivasis in Dhule as in other parts of the country were hopeful that the land they were tilling for years would be regularised in their names. In 1982, the first petition on regularising forest land in the name of adivasis was filed from Dhule by Karan Singh Kokani in the Supreme Court. Today Karan Singh, secretary of the Satyashodhak Gramin Kashtakari Sabha, says instead of giving adivasis the land, the government has allotted it to a private company. ...

A related piece by Praveen Bhargav about the destruction wrought in the name of clean energy was published in the March 14 Central Chronicle (also available at National Wind Watch):

Today, habitat fragmentation and its consequent 'edge effects' have been scientifically recognised as the primary cause for the destruction of biodiversity rich forests.

Yet, we continue to persist with a myopic, short-term exploitation perspective, which fails to recognise the immense and diverse long-term value of biodiversity rich landscapes.

In the absence of a clear land use policy, many development projects are pushed through without proper scrutiny. While projects like big dams and mining are more carefully scrutinised, those branded as 'clean and green' sneak in through the approval process. They then infiltrate into ecologically fragile landscapes and cause huge negative impacts. Environment Impact Assessments (EIAs) though mandatory, lack teeth. They are further reduced to a farce by EIA consultants who masquerade as environmentalists. The reports they rustle up are bereft of data. So projects get approved without proper analysis of their impacts. ...

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism, human rights

Oaxacans oppose taking their land for wind energy

The first bulletin below describes the taking of community farm land in Oaxaca for a giant wind project to benefit the Spanish energy company Iberdrola. Spain will claim the resulting production as a reduction of its own carbon dioxide emissions. The second bulletin describes the wider situation of harassment and violence, under cover of which the industrial wind energy projects are being pushed. A 3 March news report of this opposition as well as the serious threat to migrating birds is available at wind-watch.org.

UCIZONI -- La Unión de Comunidades Indígenas de la Zona Norte del Istmo (Union of Indigenous Communities of the Northern Zone of the Isthmus) -- is a group of 84 communities and neighborhoods in 9 counties of the state of Oaxaca in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Ejidatarios are the people who communally farm ejidos, former private lands that are now owned by the federal government. The original Spanish versions of these bulletins are available at iberica2000.org.

UCIZONI press bulletin no. 8 -- 28 February 2007

The execution of the wind energy project La Venta II, that has begun in La Venta, Juchitán, Oaxaca, has meant a true plundering of the land for the ejidatarios of that region. Although the Mexican Government was required to inform and to consult the population affected by massive investment projects, until now it has refused this right to the ejidatarios and indigenous neighbors.

For more than two years the farmers faced harassment and deceptive offers. Nevertheless, the resistance of the community was broken down when ministerial police threatened to jail the Ejidos Committee President Rafael Solorzano Ordaz, to whom they dishonestly imputed responsibility in several crimes, forcing him to resign his position. They then installed in his place PRI [Partido Revolucionario Institucional (the party that dominated Mexico through most of the 20th century)] member Carlos Antonio Ordaz.

With the intervention of the Commissariat and base threats and lies, dozens of ejidatarios have signed predatory rental contracts that favor the Federal Commission of Electricity [CFE]. These contracts, which were signed before a Notary Public but copies of which have not been delivered to the ejidatarios, are a true plundering: they cover a period of 30 years and commit the farmers to surrender their land for an average annual payment of 12,500 pesos [850 euros or 1,100 dollars] per hectare [2.5 acres] where an aerogenerator tower is erected.

Nevertheless, in spite of the pressures and deceits, the contracted land comprises only 40% of that originally required by the project that has gone forward with an investment of more than 110 million dollars from the transnational Iberdrola. Dozens of ejidatarios have resisted and as yet have not rented their land.

On the other hand, in an illegal assembly last year, which was plagued by irregularities and to which corrupt employees of the Agrarian Attorney's office made sure only a minimum number of ejidatarios attended -- the Ejidos Commission ceded common lands for the CFE to use as operation bases.

This cession was not approved by most of the ejidatarios and caused a large group of farmers on 3 April 2006 to occupy one estate, demanding the return of five hectares [12 acres] that were given to the CFE and payment for the damages caused by the clearings already done in the area.

Before this mobilization, the CFE promoted criminal action against the ejidatarios of La Venta by agents of the Federal Public Ministry of Matías Romero and of Mexico City for the supposed crime of impeding the execution of public works.

By unofficial means we have learned that a federal judge of Mexico City has decided to pursue criminal action against the uncooperative ejidatarios and is preparing at this moment an operation of the Federal Preventative Police to evict the ejidatarios who have formed the "3 April Colony" on the estate that the CFE had tried to take over illegally.

With this serious situation, we make an urgent call to national, state, and international organizations to offer necessary solidarity to the ejidatarios of La Venta, Juchitán, Oaxaca, and we demand the Interior Secretary to halt the repressive operation against the indigenous farmers who face the massive plundering already seen from the CFE to benefit transnational companies.

UCIZONI press bulletin no. 7 -- 27 February 2007

Ramiro Roque Figueroa, UCIZONI representative in the community of Niza Conejo, El Barrio de la Soledad, was stopped with excessive violence by elements of the ministerial police on 22 February, accused of aggravated assault of a city council employee. At the time of his arrest, the police tried to plant a weapon on him and they indicated to him that his detention was the result of his participation in the mobilizations organized by the APPO [Assemblea Popular del Pueblo de Oaxaca, Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca].

The head of the Lower Court based in Matías Romero, Oaxaca, judge Modesto Isaías Santiago Martinez, acting in complicity with the PRI authorities of the municipality of Barrio de la Soledad, had issued an arrest warrant against Ramiro Roque in Penal Docket 21/2007, imputing his responsibility in a crime he did not commit.

In the afternoon of 24 February, ministerial police assigned to the Deputy Attorney General in Tehuantepec appeared in an aggressive way at the address of Moisés Trujillo Ruiz, leader of UCIZONI in La Ventosa, Juchitán, who they tried to detain in an act of continuing intimidation as promoted by Porfirio Montero, the old cacique of the place, who arranged a meeting at the end of the last year between evangelical leaders and Ulises Ruiz [the PRI governor of Oaxaca whose violent police action in June 2006 against the annual Oaxacan teachers strike created the APPO and its actions referred to above], where the governor indicated publicly that he was keeping his job by divine will.

To these repressive acts that are part of the intimidation campaign by the police corps of the state of Oaxaca, add the military operations through all of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, where even red berets from the Army's GAFE [elite U.S.-trained airborne special forces groups] have participated: thus at enormous cost they have been unconstitutionally arresting anyone they consider suspicious.

UCIZONI mobilized the next week in Matías Romero and Tehuantepec to demand an end to harassment and the dismissal of judge Modesto Isaías Santiago as well as of deputy attorney general María del Carmen Chiñas.

Also, a large contingent of UCIZONI women participated in the 8 March demonstration called by APPO, where they demanded freedom for the political prisoners, the end of violence against women, and the dismissal of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, the person directly responsible for the climate of violence and confrontation that is life in Oaxaca.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism, human rights

New Zealanders not excited about more wind turbines

Two recent articles by Helen Harvey in the Manawatu Standard, via National Wind Watch:

Turbine 'desecration' under fire

Maori have attacked plans for more wind turbines in the Tararua Ranges, saying turbines are weakening the mauri (life force) and mana of the hill tops.

He Kupenga Hao i te Reo (Inc) secretary Ian Christensen objected to the proposed Motorimu Wind Farm at the resource consent hearing in Palmerston North yesterday. It proposes 127 turbines for the hills behind Tokomaru and Linton.

He told the three commissioners that the Tararua ridge line had enough turbines and "further desecration of the ridgeline" with more would weaken mauri to a point where the "wellbeing of people would be in jeopardy".

"Manawatu has been desecrated by the pollution of human beings. We urge that the whole of the mountain range not be desecrated as well," he said. ...

Turbines 'intrusive'

A Massey University survey shows that 80 percent of people in Manawatu who live within 3km of wind turbines find them intrusive.

And 73 percent think the turbines are unattractive. ...

[Robyn] Phipps [who led the survey] was due to give evidence and present the report last night at the resource consent hearing into Motorimu Wind Farm Ltd's application to build a 127-turbine wind farm on the Tararua Ranges.

"[The survey results] could reflect the reality of living with wind turbines as opposed to the ideology of renewable energy." ...

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights

What We See in Hugo Chávez

From Luisa Valenzuela, writing in the New York Times (of all places!), Mar. 17:

The new vocabulary transcends distinctions of class: the middle classes have now merged with the poor to demand their rights. Hence many students and professionals were in attendance that day, not necessarily attracted by the figure of President Chávez himself so much as by the anti-imperialist opportunity he symbolized. We Argentines, who once imagined ourselves more sophisticated, or more European, than the citizens of neighboring states, were brought closer to the rest of the continent by our impoverishment, and we find ourselves more open to the idea of pan–Latin American solidarity.

Perhaps last week's crowd also recognized the part that President Chávez's monetary aid played in our recuperation of that illusion known as "national identity." For Argentina had virtually disappeared as an autonomous country during the presidency of Carlos Menem from 1989 to 1999, the era of our "carnal relations" with the United States, which took the form of spurious privatizations and a fictitious exchange rate.

While many in Argentina would, nevertheless, not hesitate to call the Venezuelan president a clown or a madman, it's worth keeping in mind that a very heady dose of megalomania is a prerequisite for even dreaming of confronting a rival as overwhelmingly powerful as the United States -- which is also led by a president viewed, in many quarters, as a clown and a madman.

Reminder

The livestock industry -- raising animals for meat, milk, and eggs -- generates 18% of the world's greenhouse gases from human activity. That's more than worldwide transport, and more than the entire E.U.'s total.

Animal farms account for 9% of human-caused CO₂ emissions, 37% of methane, and 65% of nitrous oxide. Methane has 23 times and nitrous oxide 296 times the warming effect of CO₂.

Whereas human-generated CO₂ comes to only 3% of natural emissions, human-generated methane is 150% that from natural sources. And whereas CO₂ stays in the atmosphere for more than a hundred years, methane stays only 8-16 years. Therefore, a drastic reduction of methane would have a much quicker effect on the climate.

Curtailing the livestock industry would also reduce the waste of other resources, such as agricultural land (33% of which worldwide is used for animal feed), water (including its pollution), and forests (deforestation for grazing land being another major contributor to global warming).

environment, environmentalism, ecoanarchism, animal rights, vegetarianism

David Obey meltdown

From a report by Barry Grey in yesterday's World Socialist Web Site (click the title of this post):

Rep. David Obey (Democrat from Wisconsin), a 20-term congressman who chairs the powerful House Appropriations Committee in the new, Democratic-controlled 110th Congress, lashed out at the mother of a Marine and another antiwar activist when they approached him in a congressional corridor and asked if he planned to vote against a supplemental funding bill to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. ...

Obey is the lead sponsor of [the] supplemental war funding bill announced last week by the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives. The measure is an attempt by the Democrats to present a bill granting the Bush administration's request for more than $100 billion to continue and escalate the war in Iraq as a plan to end the war. ...

The video clip initially posted on YouTube shows a woman, later identified as Tina Richards, and a colleague approaching Obey outside his office in the Rayburn House Office Building. Richards explains that her son is a Marine who has served two tours of duty in Iraq and is facing a third tour. She tells Obey her son suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and has attempted to commit suicide. "It took us six months to get his first appointment with the VA (Veterans Administration)," she tells the congressman. "They told him after ten minutes it sounds like you have childhood issues."

Obey responds politely, if somewhat curtly, clearly anxious to end the discussion. However, when Richards asks him if he plans to vote against the supplemental war spending bill, he grows increasingly agitated.

"Absolutely not," he declares, "I'm the sponsor of the supplemental. We're trying to use the supplemental to end the war. ... You can't end the war if you go against the supplemental. It's time these idiot liberals understand that."

Obey goes on to raise the standard pretext of "supporting the troops" (by continuing to send them into battle): "I'm not going to deny the troops body armor," he says. He follows with another sophistry, pointing to the Democrats' proposal to add nearly a billion dollars for medical care for soldiers and veterans to Bush's war spending request as further justification for voting to fund the war. "I'm not going to deny funding for veterans' hospitals and defense hospitals," he declares, "That's what you do if you vote against that bill."

Richards attempts to speak, but Obey cuts her off, saying, "I hate the war. I voted against it to start with. ... But we don't have the votes to de-fund the war and we shouldn't." ...

Obey grows even louder and more hysterical ... "I'm the sponsor of the bill that's going to be on the floor and that bill ends the war. And if that's not good enough for you, you're smoking something illegal. ... I'm not going to debate anymore. Go talk to somebody else. Goodbye."

With that, the congressman rushes into his office and slams the door behind him. ...

What Obey displayed toward his questioners was not mere frustration [as he stated in a later apology], but hostility and contempt. And the frustration Obey and the rest of the Democratic Party apparatus feel is not so much with the war, as with the mass popular opposition to the war.

The Democratic Party is entirely complicit in this colonialist enterprise, and fully defends the imperialist aims that underlie it. But having ridden to power in Congress on the back of the massive antiwar vote cast by the American electorate last November, the Democrats have the task of appearing to oppose the war while opposing any action that would lead to an outright defeat for the United States in the Middle East.

Obey's assertion that he and the rest of the Democratic leadership are in agreement with the American people on ending "US involvement in that war," and that the only question is how to do it, is false. The majority of Americans want to withdraw US troops and end the slaughter now because they know the war is based on lies and they sense it is being waged for deeply reactionary ends. Increasingly, they associate the war with the assault on their jobs, living standards and democratic rights.

Frontier Natural Foods buys "green tags" not green energy

To the people of Frontier Natural Foods Co-op:

I was saddened to read that Frontier -- where I buy several essential oils, not to mention the bulk herbs and teas from my local food co-op -- has jumped on to the "green tag" fad. While supporting the expansion of renewable energy sources is good to do, it is a quite a leap to claim that you are "converted to 100% green power" or even that you have "offset" your power use with credits for renewable energy used elsewhere.

As your web site states, "Frontier buys its green power, sold to us as renewable energy credits, through Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF)."

Despite BEF's claim, renewable energy credits (RECs) are not green power, since the actual energy is sold separately from the credits. The credits are only tokens. This was a scheme invented by Enron to make their wind energy facilities in California more profitable. They magically separated the "environmental attributes" of the energy source as a separate product. After selling the energy into the grid, they could then sell it again as green tags.

It would be like Frontier selling empty tea bags to people who have access only to Lipton and Red Rose teas. They could say they are offsetting their use of nonorganic tea, but obviously they are not.

It is impossible for two customers to enjoy the benefits of the same energy. Your purchase of a kilowatt-hour of green tags is in addition to another customer's purchase of the same kilowatt-hour of the actual energy. The purchase of green tags only makes renewable energy more profitable. That's a fair enough goal, but it does not change anybody's energy use. The green power is generated and used with or without your purchase of its RECs.

A true statement would be, "Frontier donates x dollars for every y units of its energy use to encourage the development of renewable energy."

Further, the assumption of one-to-one offset is quite debatable. Especially with an intermittent and highly variable source such as wind power, it is doubtful that it reduces fuel use or emissions at other plants to a degree anywhere near the amount of energy it generates.

This is because even as other plants are required to reduce their generation in response to wind, they either have to stay warm to be ready to kick in again when the wind drops or they use more fuel because of more frequent restarts. In either case, they are forced to run less efficiently, with the resulting extra emissions canceling out much of the theoretical benefits from wind on the system.

Despite BEF's claim that buying green tags is the same as buying green power and replaces fossil fuel generators, no fossil fuel generator has ever been shut down or even used significantly less because of wind energy on the system -- not even in Denmark. (I can only speak authoritatively about large-scale wind, which I have been studying for over 4 years now.)

Besides the green tokenism of RECs, and the elusive benefits, large-scale wind energy is not environmentally friendly. It threatens birds and bats, requires huge areas of clearance (as well as wide strong roads and transmission rights of way), and disrupts the lives of humans and other animals with noise and visual distraction. At this scale, it is not green. The major players are multinational energy conglomerates who are as heedlessly predatory in this area as in the rest of their business. (A recent story at Tierramérica described the exploitation of the Oaxacans on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, as well as the disregard of the fact that it is the most important bird flyway in the hemisphere, by the Mexican government, the Spanish Iberdrola company, and others.)

I urge you to read more at the web site of National Wind Watch, a coalition of groups and individuals formed in 2005 to raise awareness of the negative impacts of industrial wind power: . I would like to suggest AWEO.org as well, which features the paper "A Problem With Wind Power."

I ask you: first, to assess the reality of green tags beyond their simplistic sales pitch; and second, to consider that support of industrial-scale wind power is incompatible with ecological values.

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

Israel's 'Right to Exist'

Saree Makdisi writes in the Los Angeles Times (click the title of this post):

First, the formal diplomatic language of "recognition" is traditionally used by one state with respect to another state. It is literally meaningless for a non-state to "recognize" a state. Moreover, in diplomacy, such recognition is supposed to be mutual. In order to earn its own recognition, Israel would have to simultaneously recognize the state of Palestine. This it steadfastly refuses to do (and for some reason, there are no high-minded newspaper editorials demanding that it do so).

Second, which Israel, precisely, are the Palestinians being asked to "recognize?" Israel has stubbornly refused to declare its own borders. So, territorially speaking, "Israel" is an open-ended concept. Are the Palestinians to recognize the Israel that ends at the lines proposed by the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan? Or the one that extends to the 1949 Armistice Line (the de facto border that resulted from the 1948 war)? Or does Israel include the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which it has occupied in violation of international law for 40 years — and which maps in its school textbooks show as part of "Israel"?

For that matter, why should the Palestinians recognize an Israel that refuses to accept international law, submit to U.N. resolutions or readmit the Palestinians wrongfully expelled from their homes in 1948 and barred from returning ever since? ...

The Palestinians are not the world's first dispossessed people, but they are the first to be asked to legitimize what happened to them.

"like a giant heartbeat shaking the earth"

Following the logic that because they have done so much damage already they might as well complete destroy the place, the Powergen company in England wants to add more giant turbines at Deeping St. Nicholas, about which we have posted news of the extreme noise problems already extant (Jan. 12 and Jan. 13). The following is excerpted from an article in the Mar. 10 Daily Mail by Harry Mount:

Like the sound of an approaching train that never comes, the thumps that break the still air are not overpoweringly loud -- at about 65 decibels, they're the level of a lorry going by at 30 miles an hour 100 yards away.

But what is so menacing is the regularity and the scope of the noise, which feels like a giant heartbeat shaking the earth. ...

The turbines hove into view from the Peterborough to Deeping St Nicholas road several miles before you reach the little village, and they dominate the skies from here to the North Sea, 15 miles away.

Five of these monsters are set in a straight line heading away from Deeping St Nicholas. And if you trace that line onwards for half-a-mile on the map, your finger slams slap-bang into the middle of Grays Farm.

And there, in the farmhouse sitting room, with its wood-burning stove and its bookshelves jammed with family photos, are Julian and Jane Davis -- wan, sleepless and very angry indeed.

Three generations of the Davis family have farmed these 300 acres of tenanted land for wheat, sugarbeet, beans, oilseed rape and -- ironically, given the green glow of windpower -- the new generation of biofuel crops. Mr Davis's elderly parents live in a bungalow a few yards away along a gravel track. ...

For the past eight months, the Davises have lain awake at night, staring at the ceiling, driven to distraction by the thump of the blades and feeling the whole house resonating around them.

During the odd moment of silence when the wind is in the right direction, they lie awake, still, dreading the inevitable return of the whoompfs.

Ever since the Davises were first woken from their sleep three days after the turbines were installed, they have kept a log of the noise. Of those 243 days, 231 have been disturbed.

Sometimes, the noise has been so bad that they have fled the house for friends' sofas, and once for the comfort of the local Travelodge. It is on the busy Helpringham roundabout but, for the first time in weeks, they slept through until 7.20am.

Noise generated by a constant flow of traffic is easier to ignore than a repetitive thump that seems to go right through the body. "It's just that little bit faster than the noise of a heartbeat," says Mr Davis, aged 42. "So your body is constantly racing to catch up."

As well as the thump-thump-thump -- which makes the television flicker -- there is a low-level hum from the electric motor housed in the turbines' main shaft, which gets the blades going and controls the mechanism's air-conditioning.

This noise often mutates into what the Davises call the WD-40 noise -- a grating sound similar to that produced by an engine that needs oiling.

"It drives you mad," says Mr Davis. "Your whole body becomes sensitive to it. It draws you to it. Your mind is constantly looking for the noise. I can be farming half a mile away or watching telly, and then suddenly you'll hear it. It's destroyed our lives."

Things have now become so bad that the Davises have been forced to rent out what they call a "sleeping house" in the village for £600 a month.

Now, every night at around 10pm, they take a look at the weather and decide if they should abandon ship for the evening. The noise is particularly irksome if the wind comes from the south along the line of the turbines, whipping them up in unison, so their individual noises are harmonised and amplified. ...

Jane Davis's 17-year-old daughter, Emily, recently had a sleepover destroyed by the turbines. Her friends, bedding down in her room, couldn't get to sleep because of the constant vibrations thrumming through the floorboards.

The list of disasters goes on and on, all recorded in the Davises' scrupulously kept logbook. Last July, reads the book, "we tried to have a BBQ and had to go inside due to noise and vibration -- felt by guests also. Difficult to get to sleep. Wind SSE, SSW.

"Whoosh -- yes. Pulse -- yes. Hum -- yes. We are so tired today that the simplest things -- following a recipe, assembling a cupboard -- seem impossible. Everyone very tired and totally exhausted. This is not living any more."

Even the moles who had plagued the Davises' lawn for 25 years have scarpered. "We used to shovel off tons of earth from molehills, but now they don't come within 25 yards of the house because it's vibrating so much," says Jane ... "They couldn't take the noise."

As the toll of broken nights has mounted, the Davises have grown increasingly emotional. In one logbook entry, Jane wrote: "Woken at 04.37, ears pulsing, whoosh, throb and house humming. I cried.

Eventually got back to sleep by putting fan on facing wall."

The fan is just one of the devices the couple have used to try to drown out the noise. Ear plugs, sleeping pills, turning on the radio -- "or a bottle of red wine," says Jane, half-smiling. ...

And things are only going to get worse. Another 16 of the noisy leviathans are being planned for the site, and the Davises are pessimistic about their chances of stopping them being put up.

First time around, they were aware of the planning application for the eight turbines but, having researched windfarms on the internet, they wrongly concluded they couldn't be too objectionable.

As it turned out, it wouldn't have made much difference if they had objected. The initial application was turned down by the local council, only to be reinstated by John Prescott's office.

The Davises have spent £4,000 on solicitors' fees to see if they can take on Powergen, which operates the wind turbines through its more cuddly-sounding subsidiary Fenland Windfarms. The company did at least cooperate with them by offering to install recording equipment at the farm to measure the amount of noise. This was done last October.

"They measure out the sound as an average over ten minutes," says Julian. "You can stop a dog barking or a noisy neighbour, but you can't stop the turbines because they make an intermittent noise and don't break the guidelines."

As the law stands, the Davises have no chance of ever stopping the noise or of obtaining compensation. Nor does it help that the Government's guidelines for turbine construction near private houses were written in 1996, when the typical blade swung round in a circle a tenth of the size of the ones in Deeping St Nicholas.

The Government has repeatedly promised to review the rules, but has ended up doing nothing. In the meantime, it has given enthusiastic backing for new turbines, following the fashion for all things green. And the Stern Review, published last October, is pushing for more windfarms as a solution to global warming.

This trend is mirrored across Europe, though the restrictions abroad are much tighter -- in France, for example, you can't build a turbine within two kilometres of a private residence. In Britain, the limit is just 500 metres.

At the moment, there are more than 120 applications pending all over the country to erect windfarms close to houses -- ranging from plans for just a pair of turbines to great clumps of 80 whirring away on the Humberhead Levels in Yorkshire ... even though the jury is still out on the effectiveness of windpower, which is completely dependent on the whim of the weather.

Meanwhile, the complaints keep pouring in, particularly from rural beauty spots: from Bears Down in North Cornwall to Askham in Cumbria, prospective neighbours of mega-turbines are up in arms.

Of the 126 windfarms erected in Britain so far -- most of which are far from human habitation -- 5 per cent have engendered complaints about the overwhelming noise.

The next tranche of building is likely to attract far more outrage because the power companies are simply running out of wilderness. ...

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, human rights

Israel using Palestinian children as human shields

From the Guardian (U.K.):

Israelis soldiers were filmed using Sameh Amira, 24, as a human shield on February 25, during a week-long raid into the West Bank city of Nablus. Mr Amira was made to search homes in the city's casbah, or old city, during a search for wanted men and bomb-making laboratories. The casbah in the centre of the city was placed under curfew for two days and a Palestinian man was shot dead when he went onto the roof of his home.

Mr Amira's cousin, 15-year-old Amid Amira, told B'Tselem that soldiers also forced him to search three houses, making him enter rooms, empty cupboards and open windows.

An 11-year-old girl, Jihan Dadush, told B'Tselem that soldiers took her from her home three days later, on February 28, forcing her to open the door of a neighboring apartment and enter ahead of them. The soldiers then took her home, she said. 

In August 2002, a 19-year-old Palestinian student, Nidal Daraghmeh, was killed when troops in the West Bank town of Tubas forced him to knock on the door of a neighbouring building where a Hamas fugitive was hiding. Gunfire erupted and Daraghmeh was killed.

Yesh Din, another Israeli human rights group, has reported that the Israeli army used peaceful Palestinian villages to carry out training exercises. The group said that the villagers were harassed and scared as two battalions of reservists acted out a battle in their midst for three hours. The exercises were carried out without warning in the early morning in the villages of Beit Lid and Safarin last month.

Progressive Vermont ...

People are confused. There was quite a hullabaloo created recently by John Odum, membership director of the Vermont Natural Resources Council, upset that there are secessionist movements in the world that could be characterized as racist or fascist. Second Vermont Republic is also a secessionist movement. Therefore, according to Odum -- and even his nemesis, the otherwise perceptive "Snarky Boy" -- Second Vermont Republic is racist and fascist, despite all evidence to the contrary. Snarky Boy even equates Second Vermont Republic with the homophobic "Take Back Vermont" campaign of several years ago.

Which is as absurd as the following editorial from northeastern Vermont's main newspaper, the Caledonian-Record, last Friday, a hate-filled effort to portray Cindy Sheehan as hateful for working to end the war on Iraq, the killing of both Iraqis and Americans.

On Saturday, Cindy Sheehan will appear and speak at St. Johnsbury School. Sheehan is a notoriously controversial peace activist who is so vicious and non-discriminating in her hate-filled broadsides that she once called the Islamo-fascist militants who are killing our troops, "freedom fighters."

These are the same people who killed her son, Casey. We aren't interested in Sheehan's desperate quest for a fame that diminishes every day for her. We want some answers that, so far, no one is willing to provide.

Does the school board have a policy regarding political use of its public buildings? Is the school automatically available to any group who asks to use it, regardless of their political or religious or other controversial orientation? Who asked, and how did they ask, to use our public school for this highly partisan political purpose? Is this group paying for use of the school? If so, how much? If not, why not?

Who on the St. Johnsbury School Board said "Yes" to this petition? Would the same people who approved this group OK a petition to use the facilities from the Ku Klux Klan? Or from the American Man/Boy Love Association? Or from the Aryan Brotherhood? Or from the American Nazi Party?

Or from Second Vermont Republic, one of whose advisors is Dan DeWalt of Newfane, who invited Sheehan to Vermont??

George Bush and Dick Cheney killed Cindy Sheehan's son, a victim along with the Iraqi people (not to mention the American people) of corporatist (i.e., fascist) imperialism. Continuing acquiescence to their war is killing yet more. That is a political statement and ought to be debated. Those who, like the infantile, reactionary, and just plain stupid about so much publisher of the Caledonian-Record, would silence that debate have forgotten what democracy is. It is the duty of citizens to question our government. That's what participation means.

Rather than shout this "editorial" out from his hideyhole, demanding answers, why didn't he act like a journalist and call up the school and school board? That's no fun! Where would the hate be that keeps the system going?

Similarly, John Odum on his up-to-now irrelevant blog reproduced without question the accusations of another's -- anonymous, though likely himself -- blog about Second Vermont Republic and demanded answers. Why didn't he simply call up and ask them the questions he had? Because he, too, is infantile, reactionary, and just plain stupid about so much.

The fact is, we are all shut out of our own democracy. Impeachment bills languish in statehouses because the Democratic party (and "Independent" Bernie Sanders) run from their duty to challenge a tyrant (to which power each of them obviously aspires -- any problem they have with Bush and Cheney's crimes is envy, not horror -- thus they bully state legislators to not act according to the people's clear mandate). Rightwingers can only hurl invective at those who take their responsibility as citizens seriously, who don't on the one hand fetishize power and on the other worry about the sensitivities of our military families. The "vital center" does the same. The left is famous for splintering into accusatory camps. We are as occupied a country as Iraq, turning on each other because our government gives us the finger at every turn. The crumbs are meager, but even while we fight for our share, we ought to be able to recognize the crime that only crumbs are given us -- by people whose power we pay for and is in our name!

Hating is easy, to defend your tribe's claim of crumbs. Democracy has become something to fear. Second Vermont Republic advocates a vital democracy, in which everyone's voices would be part of our self-government, whose purpose will be to serve the people, not wage war. There won't be a Democratic/Republican Party to keep us distracted from the real work of the occupying power. Most people wouldn't know what to do. Freedom is something else they fear. In Vermont as much as anywhere in this dying republic.

Vermont, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism

Impeach Bush and Cheney

Come on, already!

A state legislature can introduce articles of impeachment in the U.S. Congress. A joint resolution to do so is languishing in the Judiciary Committee of the Vermont House, because the Democratic party and so-called independent Bernie Sanders are not comfortable with the people acting against a tyrant (they might be next!).

Something like 27 towns in Vermont have an impeachment resolution on the warning. Ohttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifthers may have it raised as "other business."

Go to the post office and buy a bunch of postcards and send them to your representatives in the House and Senate, to Speaker Gaye Symington, President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin, and members of the House Judiciary Committee (Lippert of Hinesburg [Chair], Grad of Moretown [Vice-Chair], Flory of Pittsford, Allard of St. Albans Town, Clarkson of Woodstock, Donaghy of Poultney, Gervais of Enosburg, Jewett of Ripton, Komline of Dorset, Marek of Newfane, Pellett of Chester, Clerk). Demand that they move to impeach Bush and Cheney. Click on the title of the post for more information.

Here's a link to the legislative directory.

Here's where you can check on the status of the resolution.

Vermont

Transnationals vs. birds and farmers in Mexico's Isthmus of Tehuantepec

From Tierramérica (click on the title of this post), via National Wind Watch:

The Mexican government is preparing a big wind energy project, but peasant farmers and bird experts aren't too happy about it.

The government's aim is for wind-generated electricity -- which now accounts for just 0.005 percent of the energy generated in Mexico -- to reach six percent by 2030. ...

Achieving that goal involves setting up more than 3,000 turbines in Mexico's windiest zone, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in the southern state of Oaxaca ...

But erecting the windmills, tall towers with a 27-metre blade span, requires negotiating with landowners, most of whom are farmers. Some have complained that they were taken advantage of when the first wind farm was created in 1994.

Meanwhile, ornithologists experts warn that many bird species are at risk of being killed by the giant blades, which could cause an environmental chain reaction across the continent, because various birds are migratory.

"Everything is bent towards facilitating the wind farms, but there is not much interest in the birds, which in the long term could bring much broader problems," Raúl Ortiz-Pulido, spokesman for the Mexican office of Birdlife International, told Tierramérica. ...

In the environmental standards for wind farms now being debated, the officials propose eliminating the environmental impact studies that other projects require. This requirement would be replaced by a "preventive report", which is of a lower category and reduced scope.

In the introduction of the new norm, which by law must be open for public discussion for 60 days (with the deadline being the end of February), it is recognised that wind turbines can have "impacts on avian fauna".

It states that the head of the project [emphasis added] should make an "inventory of species that utilise the area, detailing their relationships to determine the repercussion of the displacement of some of them, mating seasons, nesting and raising of young."

But some scientists say it would not be enough for the isthmus area. Six million birds fly through Tehuantepec each year, including 32 endangered species and nine autochthonous species. ...

In La Venta, part of the Juchitán municipality in Oaxaca state, is where most of the official plans for wind turbines are concentrated. The impoverished region is home to 150,000 people, most working in farming and livestock.

There the farmers are also upset with the official plans.

"The landowners were fooled with fixed arrangements, ridiculous payments for rent for installing the turbines and impediments to farming. We won't allow any more plans to be carried out," Alejo Girón, leader of La Venta Solidarity Group, told Tierramérica.

The first wind project, La Venta I, began operating in 1994, and in the past two years continued with La Venta II. Now the government of Felipe Calderón has announced that it will open bidding for La Venta III, and others will follow, like the Oaxaca and La Ventosa projects.

They are projects in which transnational corporations like Spain's Iberdrola and France's Electricité have shown great interest, as have local firms like Cemex cement company, which are considering wind turbines for their own energy needs, and in some cases sell their surplus to the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE).

Finalising these plans means convincing the landowners, to whom CFE pays for each one of the 100 turbines already installed in La Venta less than 300 dollars a year, which is 10 to 20 times less than what their counterparts in other countries receive, says Girón.

"The wind projects created almost no new jobs and they don't benefit the residents. Here nothing changed. We remain poor despite the fact that the CFE promised that this would change," Feliciano Santiago, municipal secretary of Juchitán, told Tierramérica.

[For those with Spanish, read two recent press releases from UCIZONI (La Unión de Comunidades Indígenas de la Zona Norte del Istmo) about their struggle, posted at Ibérica 2000. Update: now in English!]

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

Second Vermont Republic

Thomas Naylor, founder of the current Vermont independence movement, writes:

The U.S. Empire is going down -- with or without Vermont. The federal government has lost its moral authority. It is owned, operated, and controlled by Corporate America. National and Congressional elections are bought and sold to the highest bidders.

Vermont is no exception to this rule.

Nationally, we have a single political party, the Republican Party, disguised as a two-party system. The Democratic Party is effectively brain dead, having had no new ideas since the 1960s.

The United States of America has become unsustainable politically, economically, agriculturally, socially, culturally, and environmentally. It is also ungovernable and, therefore, unfixable.

Go saoraid!

Vermont, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism,

Wind power opens doors for new coal plants and transmission lines

A couple of recent news items illustrate how wind energy development is being used as the frontman for new coal plants and expansion of transmission lines.

First, a letter in the Feb. 28 West Central (Minn.) Tribune notes that a large new coal plant with transmission upgrades will be a necessary part of Minnesota's new effort to get 25% of their electricity from renewables.

The law is based on the results of the Minnesota Wind Integration Study, a project undertaken by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission resulting from 2005 legislation. The study report, which was published late last year, shows that by 2020 up to 20 percent of the state’s electrical energy could economically come from wind without adverse supply or reliability impacts. The report assumed, as part of its baseline, that certain facilities already were in place. [The study also misleadingly used wind data smoothed to hourly averages.]

Included in those assumptions was that eastern North Dakota and eastern South Dakota would contribute to Minnesota’s wind energy resource and that Big Stone II with its associated transmission would be built. The [coal] plant is needed as a source of baseload generation and to help ensure voltage stability between the Dakotas and Minnesota. Big Stone transmission upgrades are needed to help deliver energy from Minnesota’s wind-rich Buffalo Ridge.

Thus, in order for Minnesota to realize the goals of the Legislature’s “25 by 25” mandate, there must be a Big Stone II. ...

And an article in the Feb. 27 Newsday reports that the developer of a giant new high-voltage transmission line in central New York is selling it as a spur to wind energy development. Interestingly, Senator Hilary Clinton is critical of the transmission project yet an active proponent of wind development. It thus appears to be purely symbolic for her as it proves to be for all.

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

Avram Patt doesn't know what he's talking about.

To the editor, Rutland (Vt.) Herald:

Avram Patt (Perspective, Feb. 18) obviously did not read Metcalf's Feb. 11 letter past the first paragraph. Metcalf uses capacity rhetorically in the same way the industry does in leading people to believe that 1,000 megawatts of wind is indeed the same as -- and will thus replace -- 1,000 megawatts of other sources. The rest of the letter does not follow the industry in that misleading use of capacity, but instead cites, e.g., a German government study that 48,000 megawatts of wind capacity would be the same as only 2,000 megawatts of capacity from other sources.

It is Patt who is confused. He has evidently imagined the rest of the letter so he could more easily criticize it. His analogy about a car not burning gas until it's going somewhere is simple-minded. What if the car is sitting in a traffic jam or even a stop light? In city driving, because it must slow down and stop and reaccelerate so much more, the car actually burns more gas although going much smaller distances than it might on a highway. That is a more accurate analogy for much of the grid. If the wind rises, and energy from wind turbines requires other sources to stop or slow down their electricity generation, it does not mean that fuel at those other sources is no longer being burned. They have to stay "warm" to be available when the wind drops again. The few modern plants that can shut down must start up again more often, and that uses more fuel, too.

Wind energy on the grid is not like riding a bike and leaving the car in the driveway, as Patt suggests. Wind energy on the grid is more like riding a bike and having someone follow you in the car in case you get tired (lose your wind, so to speak).

But Patt's complaint (along with his attempted correction) is not only wrong, it is a red herring. After showing wind's minuscule potential contribution to our energy supply, Metcalf's letter is about the substantial noise from the giant machines. As the turbines have recently started operation in Mars Hill, Maine, for example, their noise is now undeniable, robbing people of sleep and the peaceful enjoyment of their homes and land.

He explains that sound is relative. What might be unnoticeable in a city during the day would be intolerable during a typically quiet rural night. And where unnatural noises are not the norm, especially at night, the rhythmic pumping and mechanical grinding of giant wind turbines (augmented by flashing lights) are much more intrusive than their absolute measures (as estimated by the developers) are meant to suggest.

That was the point of Metcalf's letter, and it was completely ignored by Patt. Just as the industry exaggerates the value of electricity from wind, it downplays its negative impacts. Even then, the cost-benefit balance is doubtful. When the facts are not ignored, the costs overwhelm.

Industrial wind turbine facilities are a not only a visual and auditory insult, they degrade and fragment wildlife habitat, they threaten bats and birds, they open up wild areas to sprawl with roads and transmission lines. As Vermont industry rep John Zimmerman has said, "wind turbines don't make good neighbors."

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont

Industrial wind vs. the environment

Which side are you on? (as the old union song asks) ...

Maryland is facing bills to protect industrial wind developers from environmental scrutiny as they pave roads and string transmission lines over the Appalachian ridgetops and ram in giant wind machines that serve no purpose beyond making politicians and "green" consumers feel as if they've "done something" about our energy problems.

According to the blog My Commonplace Book (click the title of this post, and thanks to National Wind Watch for the tip), "The bill would eliminate any requirement for public review or notification -- or even for informing adjacent land owners whose property values could plummet [and would suffer from the noise]. Nor would there be any environmental review of the impact on wildlife, endangered species, or forest fragmentation. All an applicant for a wind project would have to do is request a construction permit from the Public Service Commission."

For an industry that claims to be green, they sure don't like actual scrutiny. No longer able to deny the substantial negative impacts of their projects on land, animals, and people, they now hope to exempt themselves from the law. This is an industry shaped by Bush's pals at Enron, after all.

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

Quote of the day

"It's like everything we do in this country. We jump in with both feet and we don't think about any of the consequences."

--Mike King, Illinois, on industrial wind

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

Conservation Law Foundation weeps for polluters

Like Peter Shumlin, President Pro Tem of the Vermont Senate, Christopher Kilian of the Conservation Law Foundation is worried about global warming's effect on ski areas and snowmobiling (as expressed in a column recently appearing in Vermont newspapers). He wants to appear serious about fighting global warming but ignores the fact that ski areas and snowmobiling are contributors to global warming, not its victims. As examples of environmentally harmful recreation, they should be admonished not pitied.

environment, environmentalism, Vermont, animal rights

Animal farms and deforestation and global warming

Here are some "inconvenient truths" from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations news room last year (underscoring added) ...

Livestock a major threat to environment

29 November 2006, Rome - According to a new report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent -- 18 percent -- than transport. It is also a major source of land and water degradation. ...

With increased prosperity, people are consuming more meat and dairy products every year. Global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million tonnes in 1999/2001 to 465 million tonnes in 2050, while milk output is set to climb from 580 to 1043 million tonnes.

Long shadow

The global livestock sector is growing faster than any other agricultural sub-sector. ... But such rapid growth exacts a steep environmental price, according to the FAO report, Livestock's Long Shadow -- Environmental Issues and Options. "The environmental costs per unit of livestock production must be cut by one half, just to avoid the level of damage worsening beyond its present level," it warns.

When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9 percent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure.

And it accounts for respectively 37 percent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 percent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain.

Livestock now use 30 percent of the earth's entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 percent of the global arable land used to producing feed for livestock, the report notes. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70 percent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing.

Land and water

At the same time herds cause wide-scale land degradation, with about 20 percent of pastures considered as degraded through overgrazing, compaction and erosion. This figure is even higher in the drylands where inappropriate policies and inadequate livestock management contribute to advancing desertification.

The livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the earth's increasingly scarce water resources, contributing among other things to water pollution, eutrophication and the degeneration of coral reefs. The major polluting agents are animal wastes, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and the pesticides used to spray feed crops. Widespread overgrazing disturbs water cycles, reducing replenishment of above and below ground water resources. Significant amounts of water are withdrawn for the production of feed.

Livestock are estimated to be the main inland source of phosphorous and nitrogen contamination of the South China Sea, contributing to biodiversity loss in marine ecosystems.

Meat and dairy animals now account for about 20 percent of all terrestrial animal biomass. Livestock's presence in vast tracts of land and its demand for feed crops also contribute to biodiversity loss; 15 out of 24 important ecosystem services are assessed as in decline, with livestock identified as a culprit.

Deforestation causes global warming

4 September 2006, Rome -- Most people assume that global warming is caused by burning oil and gas. But in fact between 25 and 30 percent of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere each year -- 1.6 billion tonnes -- is caused by deforestation. ...

Trees are 50 percent carbon. When they are felled or burned, the C02 they store escapes back into the air. According to FAO figures, some 13 million ha [32 million acres, 50,000 square miles] of forests worldwide are lost every year, almost entirely in the tropics. Deforestation remains high in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia.

environment, environmentalism,, ecoanarchism, animal rights, vegetarianism

How it ends

Boston Globe, Feb. 18, 2007, end of "Rally targets US base expansion": "I don't want any more Americans here," said Pucci Mori of Vicenza. "Wherever they go in the world, Americans cause trouble."

New York Times, Feb. 18, 2007, end of "Jailed 2 years, Iraqi tells of abuse by Americans": "The United States through its actions made people hate the Americans much more than before."

Bolshevik wind energy: "for your own good"

Marshall Rosenthal writes, in response to the dogmatic love of and defense of industrial wind energy against all reason and sense:

Self-convinced "enlightened," educated, environmentally "liberal" folks have accepted renewables as a matter of faith, just like American "lefties" accepted Joe Stalin and the Soviet "experiment" in the 30's and 40's, notwithstanding his genocides and depredations on his own people. Wind is just one part of the litany that they have embraced. If you approach them with the displacement of property owners and their destroyed property values, they simply don their anti-Republican blinders. If you appeal to their love of threatened wildlife, they toss the birds and bats and your concerns onto the fires of "global warming." If you present them with the abundant evidence that shows wind to be a failed technology, their anti-techno-speak goggles and ear plugs are deployed. If you show them the driving financial boondoggle and scam that wind actually is, they will brand you a conspiracy theorist and seek to silence and exile you from their midst. If you succeed in stopping the intrusion of these monstrous "toys for boys" they will revile you, or worse.

[See Emma Goldman's 2-volume My Disillusionment in Russia (1923) and My Further Disillusionment in Russia (1924) about her experiences in Soviet Russia from 1920 to 1921 and the Bolsheviks' betrayal of the revolution. --Ed.]

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

Chavez -- no need to worry yet

"Chavez’s decision not to renew RCTV’s license is not exactly akin to George W. Bush shutting down CBS or NBC because they ran a few stories critical of him. If RCTV were operating in the United States, it’s doubtful that its actions would last more than a few minutes with the FCC.

"RCTV is not exactly your average television station. In April 2002, it promoted and participated in a coup against Chavez in which a democratically elected president was overthrown by military rebels and disappeared for two days until large street protests and a counter-coup returned him to power. For two days before the coup, RCTV suspended all regular programming and commercials and ran blanket coverage of a general strike aimed at ousting Chavez. Then it ran non-stop ads encouraging people to attend a massive anti-Chavez march on April 11, 2002, and provided wall-to-wall coverage of the event itself with nary a pro-Chavez voice in sight.

"When the protest ended in violence and military rebels overthrew the president, RCTV along with other networks imposed a news blackout banning all coverage of pro-Chavez demonstrators in the streets demanding his return. Andres Izarra, a news director at RCTV, was given the order by superiors: no Chavistas on the screen. He quit in disgust and later joined the Chavez government.

"On April 13, 2002, after the coup-installed president Pedro Carmona eliminated the Supreme Court and the National Assembly and nullified the constitution, media barons, including RCTV’s main owner, Marcel Granier, met with Carmona in the presidential palace and, according to reports, pledged their support to his regime. While the streets of Caracas literally burned with rage over Chavez’s ouster, the television networks ran Hollywood movies like Pretty Woman. [One should also note our own New York Times' promotion of the coup. --Ed.]

"Likewise, Chavez is not creating a single-party state as widely reported but is melding together an amorphous array of parties that support him. He is not outlawing opposition parties. He has no need to, as he showed when he glided to a record landslide victory in the Dec. 5 presidential vote by a 63-37 percent margin in a free and fair election. Chavez also is not nationalizing the entire economy without compensation to companies, as Castro did in the early days of the Cuban Revolution, but rather is buying back a few key strategic utilities such as the CANTV telecommunications company or taking a majority government share in four oil projects."

Where are the environmentalists?

[You know things are bad when you have to depend on conservative lobbyists to sound the alarm about threats to the environment.]

Like a tsunami, the politics of global warming has washed over the State House this past month. As the water recedes, the enormity of the problem has begun to sink in. Everybody is pumped up and ready to do something, anything, to solve the problem. The hard fact remains that in the short term there is not much the tiny State of Vermont can substantially accomplish. This is not to say there's not a problem that should be addressed and that all of us should be more responsible for our planet. Caution and thoughtfulness should be the rule that guides the legislature as they move to answer this problem. Let's be sure the solution doesn't lead to a whole new set of problems. Attempting to place huge 400 foot wind turbines on Vermont's mountain tops is a perfect example.

For almost 40 years, Vermont has carefully created a set of land use laws specifically designed to protect the state's beautiful landscape. From the banning of billboards on Vermont's highways in the early 1970's to the development and implementation of Act 250, an entire generation of Vermont politicos, lawmakers, environmentalists and lawyers has made it next to impossible to build any new structures above 2,500 feet. It is so difficult to build in this state that many believe that had the ski areas not been in existence before Act 250, they would never have been developed. ...

Where are all the environmental organizations that helped develop our land use legacy?  In one fell swoop, behind the cloak of global warming, 40 years of Vermont development control policies are being threatened. The placement of huge wind turbines on Vermont's ridgelines flies in the face of Vermont's land use policies. How can this happen? One legislator put it best, "How can we be seen as leaders in the fight against global warming if we don't have industrial wind farms in the state? We would be no different that any other state."

Arguably the cleanest energy user and one of the most beautiful states in the union, Vermont is very different from any other state. Precisely because of things like Act 250 and related policies, Vermont is a national leader on environmental and land use issues. How can this state turn away from its environmental roots by defacing its ridgelines for a marginal generating technology? Wind turbines perform at only 35% of their potential capacity and require a 100% backup generating system for when wind conditions are less than ideal. Is this about feeling good? There is no compelling reason to promote the construction of industrial wind farms in Vermont. Global warming needs to be addressed, but that should not come at the expense of Vermont's land use policies. Simply put, industrial wind farms that destroy Vermont's picturesque ridgelines are not the solution to global warming.

MacLean, Meehan & Rice, Montpelier, Vt.
Monday Briefing, February 12, 2007

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

Wind paving way for nuclear

William Oxenham, in a letter to The Scotsman, notes,

The only long-term benefit of the Lewis wind farm will come at the end of its 20-year lifetime, when, with the Beauly to Denny pylon line in place, the newly industrialised area of Barvas Moor will be the ideal site to place a 1000MW "clean energy" nuclear plant.

The issue of wind energy is now entwined with a call for massive expansion of the grid. One has to wonder why politicians and utilities would so eagerly spend billions of dollars for an at best occasional peak provider such as wind. Mr. Oxenham, I think, has put his finger on it.

Wind is the excuse for new transmission infrastructure to support new nuclear plants in remote areas.

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

Fat cats kill birds on bad site

The critical and none too lucid -- much less informed -- letter originally reproduced here has been removed out of pity.

"Our purpose is to project potential noise into the community,"

UPC Group, backed by almost $1.8 billion in European financing, is nearing completion of a wind energy facility on Mars Hill, Maine. But the noise complaints have already begun, with just a few of the turbines operating. The Public Service Board hearings for UPC's project in Sheffield, Vt., is currently in progress. From the Barton (Vt.) Chronicle, February 1, 2007 (click the title of this post):

Until now the issue of noise, which some believe should be included in an aesthetic assessment [which has been a farce of denial, self-rationalization, andd dismissal of local sensibilities -- Ed.] has been relegated to studies from competing experts, who often challenge one another's methodology.

But last week, as complaints about turbine noise begins to surface from places like Mars Hill, Maine, where a UPC wind farm recently went on line, a debate has started to shape up over how much weight the board should give tests that measure noise.

On the stand testifying as a panel for UPC were sound experts Chris Menge and Chris Bejedke. They testified that tests they conducted in the area indicated that turbine noises would not have an adverse effect on the community.

"Our purpose is to project potential noise into the community," noted Mr. Menge.

Under the revised layout that cut the original project from 26 turbines to 16, Mr. Bejedke testified that although the new Clipper turbines are bigger, they will produce less noise on the order of one to two decibels. Testimony from the panel also indicated that noise levels would come well under existing Environmental Protection Agency standards. And at high wind speed, according to their testimony, the noise of wind through the trees would tend to mask the noise from the turbines.

[Three decibels is generally described as the smallest difference detectable by human ears in normal conditions, so "one to decibels" will hardly make a difference, especially since being taller the Clipper turbines will project their noise farther.]

Yet, under cross examination from Sutton's attorney, Mr. Hershenson, the panel acknowledged that noise complaints have surfaced in other host communities despite test results. Displaying an article written by Mr. Bejedke that appeared in a trade magazine, North American Wind Power, Mr. Hershenson cited passages showing that complaints over noise began airing as soon as the turbines came on line.

In Lincoln, Wisconsin, for example, the attorney noted that complaints surfaced even when the noise levels were in compliance with the permit. As a result, he added, a moratorium had been imposed throughout the county on wind farms.

Vermont has no standards for noise studies, but according to testimony, a Massachusetts public agency uses as a cap ten decibels over the measured background noise. [Emphasis added] No permit is awarded if the noise exceeds the cap.

[An increase of ten decibels is perceived to be a doubling of the noise level. It has been stated that community concerns generally begin around an increase of six decibels.]

Mr. Hershenson argued there are numerous locations in the Sheffield project where turbine noise would exceed the ten-decibel cap. That was an assertion that Mr. Bejedke rejected.

Argument Monday suggested there may be a bias at work when background samples are collected in rural areas that are quiet.

Most of the complaints at the Lincoln wind farm came during the night. According to expert testimony on the Sheffield project, none of the studies was conducted at night. Mr. Bejedke testified that most of the samplings were collected between 8:45 a.m. and 2 p.m.

However, Mr. Menge contended that if there were a bias, it would work against wind farms. Quiet background noises at night in the country, he said, "would require the wind turbines to be practically silent."

[Exactly! Not only is it quieter at night, sound typically carries farther. Wind turbines don't care if you're trying to sleep. In Oregon, the 10-dB limit was modified to use urban noise levels instead of those of the actual (i.e., rural) site -- this was done at the behest of wind developers, who, as Menge concedes, know that giant moving machines in a rural area will be distinctly, intrusively, and disruptively noisy. So, as with the "issue" of aesthetics, change the law when reality is in the way.]

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, Vermont

Cross-Over Politics and the Ideology of Scale

By Sam Smith

[Part of a continuing series on devolution -- the opposite of governmental centralization, commercial monopoly and cultural domination. Devolution is the art of conducting public affairs at a practical level closest to the human spirit and human communities]

In an age of conglomeration and domination, the cross-political nature of devolution -- or the ideology of scale -- attracts little attention. One can go through a whole political campaign and never consider it. But that doesn't mean the issue is not there.

Consider two current examples: the assault on local control of public schools and the smart growth movement. Both are driven by a curious alliance of liberal, conservative and corporate interests. And both attempt to replace the decentralization of decision-making with centralized, bureaucratic choices.

For example, only Vilsack among the Democratic candidate for president has challenged the No Child law despite it being based on absurdly inadequate justifications, proposed by the least qualified president ever to hold office and pushed by a bunch of child profiteers who will probably be the only clear winners under the legislation.

Similarly, the smart growth movement is being increasingly driven by a dubious alliance between "we know what's good for you" liberal planners and developers who initially resisted the idea until they realized how many new high-rises might result.

Liberals and conservatives who favor America's two centuries of local school control, or wish to resist the transformation of successful communities into high-rise factory farms for globalized serfs, find themselves ignored, ridiculed as NIMBYs or considered behind the times. ...

No Child Left Unregimented

The assault on community-controlled public education is not only a result of Bush's No Child law. Bill Kauffman once noted in Chronicles that it was liberal Harvard president President James Conant who produced a series of postwar reports calling for the "elimination of the small high school" in order to compete with the Soviets and deal with the nuclear era. Says Kauffman, "Conant the barbarian triumphed: the number of school districts plummeted from 83,718 in 1950 to 17,995 in 1970."

Writing in Principal Magazine, Kathleen Cushman pointed out that the small school movement was driven by

the steady rise in school size that has seen the average school population increase five-fold since the end of World War II. A push to consolidate schools has reduced the number of districts by 70 percent in the same period. Ironically, this trend toward big schools coincides with research that repeatedly has found small schools -- commonly defined as no more than 400 students for elementary schools -- to be demonstrably better for students of all ability levels, in all kinds of settings. Academic achievement rises, as indicated by grades, test scores, honor roll membership, subject-area achievement, and assessment of higher-order thinking skills. For both elementary and secondary students, researchers also find small schools equal or superior to large ones on most student behavior measures. Rates of truancy, classroom disruption, vandalism, theft, substance abuse, and gang participation all are reduced in small schools, according to a synthesis of 103 studies.

Education is one of those human activities clearly centered on two people (teacher and student). As the system surrounding this experience becomes larger, more complex and more bureaucratic, the key players become pawns in a new and unrelated bureaucratic game. The role of the principal also dramatically shifts -- from being an educational administrator to being a cross between a corporate executive and a warden. It is such a transformation that helps to bring us things like what happened at Columbine.

Consider, for a moment, that not a single private school has merged with five or ten other academies in the name of efficiency and improved learning. No one has suggested an Andover-Exeter-Groton-Milton-Choate-Kent School Administrative District. ...

Yet not only do we find George Bush, with lots of Democratic support, actively destroying local control over public schools, mayors and governors rushing to join the attack.

For example, inspired by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg who has yet to produce convincing results for his corporatization of public education, DC's 36-year old new mayor Adrian Fenty is following suit. He wants to abolish the elected school and put the system under his control despite his impressive inexperience in education. But Fenty, like many in politics and business, is absolutely convinced that certainty is an adequate substitute for competence.

How little he really understands was well described by Colbert King in the Washington Post:

If governance and lack of accountability are the main problems, why do students attending Lafayette and Murch elementary schools, which are west of Rock Creek Park, exceed proficiency targets in reading and math by wide margins while students at Ketchum and Stanton elementary schools, east of the Anacostia River, fall far short of the mark? The four schools are in the same governance structure. Their principals report to the same superintendent and are guided by the same school board policies. True, Lafayette and Murch, located in middle-income neighborhoods, have more white students. But before going off on a racial tangent, consider this: Black students attending Lafayette and Murch, in contrast to their counterparts in Southeast, also excel in reading and math.

King asked Fenty why his takeover would help matters: "His bottom line: he has the energy, determination, and sense of urgency that he feels are missing among school leaders to make those things happen." In other words, he thinks what the schools really need most is himself.

Perhaps even more bizarre is what is happening in Maine. The plan itself is familiar: the pursuit of the false god of educational efficiency through the concentration of school districts as ordered by the governor. 290 school districts would be merged into 26 regional administrative units.

What makes it stranger is that Maine is one of a handful of New England states where one can still find the remnants of American democracy functioning at human scale thanks to such institutions as town meetings and lots of small villages that do what they want without excessive interference from above. This tradition has produced in recent years more independent governors (although not the present one) than just about any state and a culture of honest independence in politics and governance that would best be emulated rather than reorganized.

And who suggested the course that the governor is following? None other than representatives of that citadel of Washington anti-democratic elitism, that hospice of prematurely aging MBAs and political science majors: the Brookings Institution. This is like Arianna Huffington coaching the Chicago Bears.

To add to the oddity, it is all being done in the name of "smart growth." ...

This is not a left-right struggle but one that may be far more important for our future: a struggle between communities and bureaucracies and between humans and systems. At present, the communities and humans are not winning.

Smart Growth

The tie-in with smart growth is quite revealing. The smart growth movement started as a largely well intentioned movement led by planners and environmentalists. Many of their proposals made sense but it had some serious problems, beginning with the insulting manner it treated suburban communities in which many Americans lived, had improved their lives and educated their children. As is traditionally the case with planners, these citizens were expected to adapt to a purportedly ideal physical model -- even at the cost of having to move or being evicted -- instead of having the emphasis placed on improving -- for them as well as the environment -- the communities in which they currently lived.

This is not a new problem with planners. In 1910, G.K. Chesterton described two characters, Hudge and Gudge, whose thinking evolved in such a disparate manner that the one came to favor the building of large public tenements for the poor while the other believed that these public projects were so awful that the slums from whence they came were in fact preferable. Wrote Chesterton:

Such is the lamentable history of Hudge and Gudge; which I merely introduced as a type of an endless and exasperating misunderstanding which is always occurring in modern England. To get men out of a rookery, men are put into a tenement; and at the beginning the healthy human soul loathes them both. A man's first desire is to get away as far as possible from the rookery, even should his mad course lead him to a model dwelling. His second desire is, naturally, to get away from the model dwelling, even if it should lead a man back to the rookery.

Neither Hudge nor Gudge had ever thought for an instant what sort of house a man might probably like for himself. In short, they did not begin with the ideal; and, therefore, were not practical politicians.

Much of American politics and planning follows the Hudge-Gudge model, producing failure for both conservatives and liberals -- the former offering us an army of the homeless and the latter presenting us finally with drug-infested housing projects.

In the case of smart growth, the Hudge-Gudge conflict could have been avoided by considering not just a community's ecological liabilities but its assets, and then figuring out how to lessen the former without harming the latter. ...

It is helpful also to bear in mind that next to economists, no profession has been so consistently wrong and harmful to the human spirit as urban planning. ...

The human, the community, the small were repeatedly considered archaic, insignificant and regressive.

From the progressive movement of the early 20th century on, well-meaning but excessively self-assured members of the elite have controlled the debate, the money and the plans, with barely restrained contempt for the reservations, concerns and resistance of the less powerful. And so it is with smart growth.

Listen to Grow Smart Maine:

Many of Maine's smaller cities and towns are experiencing unplanned growth but lack the resources and experience to manage that change in ways that protect the character of their community. ... The Model Town Community Project will work with a selected town during 2006 and 2007 to provide tools and advice that will help the town shape its future. The project will mobilize local, state and regional resources, enable the town to explore new growth strategies and fully engage local residents by combining the best elements of New England town meetings with ground-breaking new technologies.

In other words, we'll come in and show you how to run a town meeting our way, just like we learned at business school.

But if smart growth is meant to be about environmentally sound planning, how come we have to consolidate our school districts and our town offices?

Because once you put your faith in the sort of expertise that a planning-managerial elite offers, once you turn to MBAs like others turn to Jesus, then you don't really need democracy, town meetings or small schools. What you need is efficiency and managerial skill and you have been promised that, so why worry?

Further, even over smart growth's short life, a disturbing alliance has developed between some liberals and developers thanks to the latter discovering that the environmentalists didn't really want to stop them from building, they just want them to build somewhere else and most likely in a place where they could get more per square foot ...

In some neighborhoods, citizens are even being called NIMBYs because they don't want high-rises shoved into their pleasant communities and the name-callers include not just the developers but enabling liberals who think they're saving the planet. Never mind that in their own city, in Greenwich Village or in Europe there are plenty of examples of density without high-rise factory farms. ...

In both the school consolidation and the smart growth debates the issue of human scale -- and not some liberal-conservative conflict -- is at the core. But we have been taught -- by intellectuals, by the media, by politicians -- to revere a promise of efficiency and technological advance over the empirical advantages of living the way humans have traditionally lived, including valuing the small places that host, nurture and define their lives. We have been trained not to even notice when our very humanity is being destroyed in the name of mere physical change.

We should notice, though, because in the end, if we lose the fight for staying human, whether we were liberal or conservative won't have mattered a bit.

Snarky Boy

Be sure to read Vermont Snarky Boy, for fine and fun commentary on Vermont politics and journalism (and beyond).

"... Vermont, a place where the thick coat of denial can run deep, where the hype of all-things-perfect can lead to most-things-being-false."

Of special recent note is his wonderment at how swiftly the demand by voters for universal health care became instead a clamor by governor and legislators for universal cell phone coverage (though not even universal cell phones, i.e., socialism only for the already-haves). That sure is incremental. Anyone who still thinks the Democrats (with their huge majorities in both houses and still refusing to take this issue to a real solution) are any different from the Republicans is, to borrow the term from Snarky Boy, a ninny.

Vermont, anarchism

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.

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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]

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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