Doublethink in the promotion and defense of wind power

Doublethink is an aspect of Newspeak, the language used in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four to simplify and control thought, not only of the general public (the "proles"), but also of the very bureaucrats running the state. Doublethink acknowledges cognitive dissonance betweeen what the state says and what it does and simply asserts that they are the same. This is exemplified in the slogans: "War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength." This is the kind of language that is called "Orwellian".

"Ignorance is Strength": This doublethink concept is the basis of modern propaganda (and marketing), in which simple lies are propagated and those who question them or recognize them as such are marginalized as "conspiracy theorists", kooks, Luddites, flat-earthers, Nimbys, sockpuppets, "virulent", "vitriolic", "opportunist", "terrorist".

Large-scale industrial wind power, marketed as "green energy", must use such smear and doublethink to avoid the undeniable fact that it is not "green" in the slightest. Recently, for example, complaints of adverse health effects and examination of that issue have been attacked as a campaign to harm the industry: "Wind farms don’t harm human health, anti-wind campaigners do." The victims and those who listen to them are blamed for the ill health obviously caused by wind turbines. The aggressor is the victim.

Health is Disease. Ignorance is Health. Effect is Cause. Noise is Silence.
Wind industry flacks have achieved the level of doublespeak that distinguishes the Ingsoc bureaucrats of Orwell's Oceania, seemingly believing as true what they nonetheless know to be false. In addition to turning the table on health effects, they use doublespeak to deny or rationalize wind power's adverse environmental effects, lack of fossil fuel reduction, dependence on subsidies, and unreliability:

Development is Conservation.
Blight is Beauty.
Add is Subtract.
Poverty is Wealth.
Dear is Cheap.
Wayward is Sure.
Update, May 9, 2013:  "Wind Watch" posted the following (and suggested a couple of corrections made here) on Facebook:

Is it significant that the most vehement hatred of those who question any aspect of industrial wind power comes from that part of the world called Oceania, which is what George Orwell also called the English superstate in Nineteen Eighty-Four? Often it seems that the industry and its committed defenders take their guidance from Orwell's (presciently) dystopian government. They use "doublespeak" to call industrial development green, to describe the industry as victimized by those it harms, to insist that killing birds is actually beneficial, and so on. Comment forums transform into "Two Minute Hates" when someone challenges the party line. And the busiest attackers are in present-day Oceania: anti-tobacco activist Simon Chapman, IBM employee Mike Barnard (from Ontario), and Infigen employee Ketan Joshi. The work of this triumvirate readily suggests three of the four ministries of Oceania: respectively, the Ministry of Love, the Ministry of Truth, and the Ministry of Plenty. The Ministry of Peace is of course represented by the wind industry itself.

Addenda, May 12, 2013:  “The common Fluency of Speech in many Men and [...] Women is owing to a Scarcity of Matter, and Scarcity of Words; for whoever is a Master of Language, and hath a Mind full of Ideas, will be apt in speaking to hesitate upon the Choice of both; whereas common Speakers have only one Set of Ideas, and one Set of Words to cloath them in; and these are always ready at the Mouth.” —Jonathan Swift

“Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” —George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language” (1946)

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

Hasta la victoria siempre!

“Men and women of the new age: you have arisen to do battle for the race! . . . There is no easy victory before us.

“This night is a beginning. This battle that is coming, this battle that rushes upon us to-night, is only a beginning. All your lives, it may be, you must fight. Take no thought though I am beaten, though I am utterly overthrown. I think I may be overthrown.

“I come out of the past to you, with the memory of an age that hoped. My age was an age of dreams — of beginnings, an age of noble hopes; throughout the world we had made an end of slavery; throughout the world we had spread the desire and anticipation that wars might cease, that all men and women might live nobly, in freedom and peace. . . . So we hoped in the days that are past. And what of those hopes? How is it with man after two hundred years?

“Great cities, vast powers, a collective greatness beyond our dreams. For that we did not work, and that has come. But how is it with the little lives that make up this greater life? How is it with the common lives? As it has ever been — sorrow and labour, lives cramped and unfulfilled, lives tempted by power, tempted by wealth, and gone to waste and folly. The old faiths have faded and changed, the new faith—. Is there a new faith?

“Charity and mercy; beauty and the love of beautiful things — effort and devotion! Give yourselves as I would give myself — as Christ gave Himself upon the Cross. It does not matter if you understand. It does not matter if you seem to fail. You know — in the core of your hearts you know. There is no promise, there is no security — nothing to go upon but Faith. There is no faith but faith — faith which is courage. . . .”

—The Sleeper Awakes, H. G. Wells, 1899

anarchism, ecoanarchism, anarchosyndicalism

Ironic Times - April 29, 2013

U. S. NEWS
	Congress Quickly Allocates Funds to End Airport Delays Just before booking flights home for one week vacation.
	New Poll: Obama’s Approval Ratings Same as G.W. Bush’s Obama's policies same as G.W. Bush's.

Ironic Times - April 22, 2013

U. S. NEWS
	Senate Blocks Background Checks for Gun Buyers Keeps them for voters.
	Boy Scouts Will Consider Allowing Gay Scouts Just as long as they're not atheists.

Tofurky claims to be, but is not, "wind powered"

As a devoted Tofurky fan, I was upset to notice on a package of Tofurky Deli Slices that you claim to be "100% wind powered".

Unless you have your own on-site wind turbines without backup and without connection to the grid, that is obviously not true. You are no more wind powered than your neighbors who get the same power from the same grid.

In fact, the accounting trick with which you claim to be "wind powered" was invented by Enron, who convinced regulators that renewable energy could actually be sold twice: once as energy, and once as "environmental benefit".

So your purchase of "green tags" that allow you to claim to be "wind powered" simply represents the purchase of the right to claim the wind power that is actually going to everyone on the grid, perhaps not even the grid you are on.

It's as if meat-eaters could "offset" their burgers and drumsticks by purchasing Tofurky packaging, thereby purchasing the right to call themselves vegan, with actual vegans thereby losing that right.

If you feel strongly about supporting wind energy development (and there are many reasons to be dubious, with its addition of industrial harm to our environment, particularly in previously undeveloped areas, with little or nothing to show in corresponding reduction of fossil and nuclear fuel use), then please limit your claim to that: You offset your electricity use by helping to subsidize the expansion of wind energy on the grid.

For the animals,
~~~

============================

Thanks for your interest in Tofurky. I wouldn’t [sic] be interested in where you see this claim made because as far as I know we do not claim anywhere that we are 100% wind powered. We are however committed to making an environmental difference and have been for the past 31 years. We currently purchase wind power through our local utility and by purchasing Blue Sky Power in the last year we have reduced our own emissions by 3,842,657 pounds of C02 [sic].

Thanks,
Wes Braun
Customer Service/Marketing/Design
Turtle Island Foods
541-386-7766 ex. 19

============================

But you haven't reduced your emissions at all. You're getting exactly the same electricity you would get if you did not purchase Blue Sky Power. ~~~

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

Wind industry wants to silence inquiry

Editor of the Reformer:

Charlene Ellis and Fred Taylor (letter, April 6) write that "Only with a concerned effort by all of us to formulate renewable energy policies based on science, rather than propaganda, will be able to protect the Vermont landscape we cherish." Yet they ignore that call and only defend their smearing of those fighting to protect Vermont's ridgelines from energy development with smearing them some more.

Despite their call for science, they simply ignore the possibility, let alone the clear evidence, that giant wind turbines erected on sensitive ridgelines do more harm than good. Instead, they accuse anyone who questions such industrial development as dupes of fossil fuel, as if the biggest wind developer in the U.S. isn't coal giant Florida Power and Light (aka Nextera), as if the biggest turbine manufacturer isn't nuclear and gas plant (and military weaponry) giant General Electric, as if Enron and George W. Bush weren't the ones who more than anyone created the modern U.S. wind industry.

Science rather than propaganda seems to be precisely what Ellis and Taylor do not want, as they cite only pro-wind hype and demonize all who disagree with them. One is reminded of Joseph McCarthy more than Rachel Carson, of an enthusiasm for censorship and slander more than honest discussion.

Their need to explain it as an "ultra-conservative" plot hatched last year in Washington also apparently prevents them from learning much about their neighbors fighting big wind in Vermont, particularly that the fight goes back more than 10 years, from the seeds planted with the erection of 11 Zond turbines (bought by Enron the next year, then by GE in 2002) in Searsburg in 1996. The statewide advocacy group Energize Vermont arose from the fight to protect the ridges west of Rutland which began at least 5 years ago. They build on the work of the Kingdom Commons Group, the Glebe Mountain Group, Ridge Protectors, and many others that have brought Vermonters of every political leaning together in common cause. And there are countless other such groups around the world, from Oaxaca (where Reporters Without Borders last week condemned international companies and the state for the harassment, arrests, and physical abuse of journalists covering wind energy development on Zapoteca land) to Denmark (where virtually no new onshore wind capacity has been added since 2002), New Zealand to Germany, India to Ireland.

The fight to protect our landscapes from poorly considered, profit-driven, big energy development that does such clear harm to the environment, to human and other animal habitats, has always represented — and does so still — a concerted effort by informed citizens to use science guided by the heart rather than profit or tribal dogma.

The provision of S.30 that most scared industry was for greater involvement of host and affected neighboring communities in the permitting process. Informed citizens thinking for themselves seem to be exactly what they don't want, or more cynically, can't afford.

• Opinion piece: What's the origin of Vermont's anti-wind sentiment? Fred Taylor and Charlene Ellis, Brattleboro Reformer, March 15, 2013.
• Response letter: Not a Koch Bros. flack. Sally Warren, Brattleboro Reformer, March 18, 2013.
• Response to response: Beware of 'wind warriors'. Charlene Ellis and Fred Taylor, April 6, 2013.
• Two responses to that response: April 16, 2013

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

As towns with fire: so won, so lost

Anthony C. West, As Towns With Fire (1968):

No one seemed to know how wonderful it was to wake and listen to trees talking to new mornings and it was disturbing, even frightening, to realise that these fellows couldn’t seem to hear a thrush or blackbird while they could look up and accept the physical reality of hundreds of loaded bombers rumbling eastwards to rendezvous on Germany.

Had he the mind, he was more free than in civvy street to call the war names, since all his companions disliked and mistrusted it now they were next door to the risk of operations. They had bluffed an early enthusiasm to cream off the doubtful disappearing glamour and were realising that press and politician had coaxed them into hazard: they had only wanted to fly and to experience flying much as young bucks wanted to roar about on motor bicycles and drive fast cars with innocent simulation of sexually mature importance, a pillion or a car seat a kind of bed with the ghost of a woman on it: sex and its impotent extensions.

But free as he was to name the war its dirty name or intimately to describe the erotic possibilities of a waafine nest, he couldn’t say: look, now, how lovely that old oak. It was an acorn when Shakespeare died in Stratford. To hate, to scorn, to be salaciously falstaffian and sexually cynical was legal and logical but to love the conversation of a branch with wind was abnormal: sex, some blood and something of the flag – although these lower bourgeois boyos knew nothing of it more than newspapers untold them.

He could see freedom and could see unfreedom and know how much he was free and was unfree and watching these others he could see how they were free and how, on their own terms and expectations, they couldn’t be free since no one had bothered how to teach them how to make thinking. He had slowly moved away from many elementary notions of existence, from most of the things these boys were trying hopefully to grow into before the hairs on their chins were able to stand up to a razor: the forcing-house of war had hurried them, miscalling them fighting men, mature martyrs to chauvinism disguised as patriotism. Nevertheless it was very lonely: he felt old and able if necessary to die, as of senility.

War was not unique and this one was only a little more concentrated, noisier, better bruited. Nature was incessant war and contained it even as space held stars. If he asked nature what life was, she immediately answered: it is death, the sum of death as life is total living and dying. Were he to mention death in a conversation he would never live down a morbid reputation: it was so unfair to teach the fellows how to kill and not also to teach them how to die. The ancient tribal priest-chiefs were more charitable.

Peace: it was much more difficult and diffuse to wage. Sometimes for seconds he was really peaceful, sweetly tense, not lax. Peace was a terrible thing to endure, everyone scared of it, scared of drowning in it, rather to get drunk. No one really wanted peace. They only wanted plenty, plus safe excitement. ...

The boys in the billets had often talked of a Butch Harris, Bomber Command’s top brass who wielded the whole air force like a whip and put all Germans, good bad and indifferent, women, aged and children, as much in the front line as battle-hardened soldiers, it being popularly assumed that an experienced soldier was not any longer a suffering human being. He often wondered what these aloof leaders and high-ranked officers were as fallible human beings, what hates and loves they had as children, what fears and snubbed frustrations; naked they were only men, two-legged, two-armed, headed, bald men with or without chest hair, they bathed, ate, shat, pissed, breathed, sweated in heat and shivered in cold, scratched themselves when itchy, cleaned their teeth, cut their nails, shaved, belched, were sometimes tipsy, laughed, swore, were angry, pleased, proud, boarded their wives or concubines in the laid-down way, pushed home their common phalluses and endured the passing storm; and yet the nation gave them zeus-powers, their signature sufficient to kill ten thousand men. Maybe they even went to church and prayed and took the Elements, had gracious children . . . and O what was this demonism of power to make them all so ruthlessly mad. Did they not know they would die and meet the faceless legions of their slain?

[[[[ || ]]]]
It’d be a hell of a thing, going about and meeting one’s mere estimations of people. Some saint has said that if we could really meet and listen to another instead of trying to murder him with preconceptions, we’d hear the voice of Jesus Christ, Himself. We all use each other like a gambler uses a deck of cards. If we don’t stop doing that, sooner or later we’ll have to put up with blokes like Hitler or Joe Stalin, the big professionals, their jokers regiments of secret police who really would act on their prejudiced psychopathic estimations.

[[[[ || ]]]]
Last daylight lingered slowly into moonlight as a rising moon in a green cirrus-ring rose swiftly – a moon-dawn reversing all the shadows’ leaning, autumn’s grey mist filling up the land’s shallows like a flooding tide, as if in memory of the days when seas broke their waves across this same sandy shore: time the long rememberer.

anarchism