Showing posts sorted by relevance for query environment. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query environment. Sort by date Show all posts

March 20, 2013

Wind industry fears real scrutiny

To the Editor, Valley News:

What is the real threat of Vermont Senate Bill 30 (Dori Wolfe: “Don't Reject Wind Energy in Vermont,” letter, March 17)? Now stripped of the 3-year moratorium provision, it only requires the Section 248 permitting process to abide by rather than merely consider Act 250 criteria.

It is ironic that business people like Wolfe, while in one breath urging us to save the environment by buying their products and services, in the next express alarm that environmental scrutiny “would severely damage the wind industry.”

But on the latter point she is right: These projects, especially on otherwise fiercely protected ridgelines, are not green. The environmental (not to mention financial) costs far outweigh the necessarily minuscule benefit from a diffuse, intermittent, and highly variable source.

To avoid that conclusion, Wolfe raises the specter of oil and gasoline, which fuel our cars, heat our homes, and power our factories but provide almost none of our electricity. In fact, more wind requires building more natural gas– and even diesel-powered plants just for backup. She notes that housecats kill more birds, as if that absolves the additional deaths caused by wind turbines, and disregards wind energy’s unique toll on raptors (eagles, owls, and the like) and bats, the latter already decimated by white nose syndrome.

Wolfe also touts the latest poll showing continuing support for industrial wind energy (ignoring the broad dissatisfaction everywhere they are actually erected or even proposed). If industrial wind is as popular as the polls indicate, then the greater local involvement enabled by Act 250 would be a boon, not a threat.

But S.30 would make it harder for developers to divide communities and to pit town against town, because Act 250 puts the region’s interests before those of industry lobbyists in Montpelier.

If industrial-scale wind (and solar) are indeed beneficial to the environment and communities, locally as well as globally, then its marketers have nothing to fear from a more democratic and environmentally rigorous permitting process. If they do indeed have reason to fear, that’s precisely why we need to say yes to S.30.

Eric Rosenbloom
Hartland

[Note:  The letter as reproduced here reflects minor editing by the author.]

[Click here to read about Jeff Wolfe's threats regarding S.30.]

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

May 16, 2007

What Can Wind Do About Global Warming?

Tom Gray of the trade group American Wind Energy Association writes:
The following information is from a fact sheet we will be releasing soon.

How much can wind really do to fight global warming?

On average, every additional megawatt-hour produced by wind energy means 1,220 pounds of CO2 are not emitted into our environment.

# A recent study from the National Academies of Science (NAS) reports that adding another 60 gigawatts (GW) of wind energy by 2020, in addition to the 11 GW that we have today, could avoid approximately 130 million tons of CO2 in 2020. This is nearly 30% of expected emission increases by 2020 in the electric sector.

# A National Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) of 20% renewable generation by 2020 could avoid almost 100% of expected emission increases in the electric sector with 180 GW of renewable energy, including 130 GW of wind.
According to data compiled in the International Atomic Energy Association's Energy and Environment Data Reference Bank, The U.S. CO2 emissions from energy = c. 6,000 Mt = c. 6,600 million tons, of which 130 million tons is less than 2%. That's less than 2% of today's emissions, but emissions could be 20% higher by 2020 (according to projections by the Energy Information Agency of the U.S. Department of Energy). The "savings" from wind would then be close to only 1.6% -- accomplished with the sprawling and destructive construction of 71,000 megawatts of giant wind turbines, along with their supporting roads and clearance and transmission lines. And at a cost, three-quarters of which is paid by public subsidies, of 142 billion dollars.

That's simply pathetic. Doubling the amount of wind turbines, as in the second example, only underscores the very small benefit that wind can provide even in theory.

Tom Gray pads the numbers by presenting them as the proportion of new emissions, and even for that lame figure he uses a very low estimate of emissions increase. But global warming is caused by existing emissions -- emissions not only from electricity generation and other energy consumption (e.g., for transport and heat and manufacturing), but also from animal farms and deforestation (responsible for 18% and 25%, respectively, of the human contribution to global warming worldwide). Wind's hope of saving 1.6% becomes even smaller.

Even that slim hope remains theoretical. There is no evidence that wind reduces the use of other fuels on the grid to any degree close to that corresponding to the electricity it generates. Wind is an add-on. The rest of the grid still has to provide power to people when they need it, with the extra burden of balancing the unpredictable and highly variable feed from the wind.

Industrial-scale wind has proved only to be a successful tax-avoidance division for big energy companies and a lucrative means of moving massive amounts of public monies into private bank accounts. Through the selling of fragments of its green mantle (i.e., "renewable energy credits"), it lets other companies and individuals join the self-serving charade. Not surprisingly, however, it has not been shown to reduce carbon emissions. In the fight against global warming, it is a boondoggle, distracting us from real solutions while destroying landscapes, communities, wildlife habitat, and people's lives -- for nothing.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

July 22, 2009

Missing the point about wind energy development

Bradford Plumer writes in The New Republic's environment and energy blog about the action in North Carolina to ban structures taller than 100 feet from the state's mountaintops, which would effectively ban industrial wind energy turbines. His analysis consists only of showing a picture of mountaintop-removal coal mining and asking whether in comparison wind turbines can still be called "unsightly".

If mountaintop-removal is the issue, then the blog should ask why it is allowed.

If coal in general is the issue, then the blog should ask just how much coal would be saved by adding wind turbines to the grid. (The answer is: none.)

Having learned that wind energy does not reduce coal use, then the blog should ask if industrial wind's own adverse environmental impacts, including not just aesthetic but also on birds, bats, hydrology, and wildlife habitat, can be justified by other benefits. (The answer is: hardly. Wind is a highly variable, intermittent, and diffuse resource that only adds to the grid's burden of supplying steady energy in response to demand.)

Instead, the false and unexamined premise that wind turbines on the grid provide substantial useful energy, leading to the next false and unexamined premise that nondispatchable, unpredictable, and variable wind energy displaces coal -- generally a baseload supplier (wind preferentially displaces first hydro, second open-cycle natural gas [at a loss of efficiency]), leads to Plumer simply ignoring the actual debate about industrial wind energy development on the wild mountains of North Carolina.

What is gained and what is lost? Very little, if anything, is gained, and very much is lost. That is not to deny the horrors of mountaintop-removal mining or the pollution from coal burning. Those are irrelevant to the debate about wind. Adding industrial wind development will not reduce them in the least. Wind only adds a new insult to the environment.

So to Plumer's challenge, "There's nothing wrong with finding wind turbines unsightly, but the relevant question here is: Compared to what?"

Compared to a wild mountaintop teeming with flora and fauna -- without heavy-duty cut-and-filled roads, blasted-in turbine platforms, 400-ft-high machines grinding around day or night, flashing lights, acres of tree clearance, miles of new transmission lines, substations, etc. Duh.

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

October 15, 2006

Impact of industrial wind on rural economy

From "UK Energy Policy: The Small Business Perspective & the Impact on the Rural Economy," researched and written by Candida Whitmill for, and on behalf of, the Small Business Council, February 2006 (revised June 2006) [available at wind-watch.org]:

[p. 1, Foreword]  The Small Business Council is a non-departmental public body established in May 2000 to advise the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and the Chief Executive of the Small Business Service on the needs of existing and potential small businesses in order to help them succeed and prosper. Working with Ministers and Senior Policy makers, the Council advises and reports on the effects on small businesses of current and potential policies.

[p. 2, Executive Summary]  This study focuses attention on one particular area of potential impact in the United Kingdom, the impact on tourism, an area dominated by small businesses and of pivotal importance to the rural economy as a whole. Twenty-five percent of all registered businesses are in rural areas.

The rural visitor economy is worth £14 billion in England alone and supports up to 800,000 jobs. Research shows that for an average 75% of visitors, the quality of the landscape and countryside is the most important factor in choosing a destination. Between 47% and 75% of visitors felt that wind turbines damage the landscape quality. In North Devon turbines would deter 11% of visitors, at a cost of £29 million and the loss of 800 jobs. Approximately 7% of visitors would not return to Cumbria, which would result in a loss of £70 million and 1,753 jobs. In the South West, just a 5% overall reduction in visitor numbers would lose the region £400 million and 15,000 jobs. Because of the multiplier effect, a reduction of visitors can have farreaching consequences for the overall regional economy, a fact richly illustrated during the Foot and Mouth crisis. The evidence shows that in some areas, 49% of all sectors of rural businesses experienced a negative impact. [Full analysis, pp. 10-18]

We argue that the current trend towards high levels of wind energy development onshore presents an unacceptable threat to rural businesses and runs counter to almost all other aspects of Government policy relating to the rural economy. This has important implications when assessing the overall cost-benefit equation of the current renewable energy policy.

[p. 20]  Sustainable development, as defined by the Rural Strategy, is characterised by "integrating and balancing environmental, social and economic considerations at every stage." 41 Recognising its potentially negative impact on the environment, UK tourism has long embraced the ethos of sustainability. Today UK tourism is striving to be a role model for sustainable practices. Businesses are investing in energy efficiency, recycling and local purchasing. Many are gaining international accreditation through sustainable programmes such as the Green Business Tourism Scheme. Local partnerships are operating visitor payback schemes that include visitors as stakeholders in reinvesting back into the conservation of the environment they enjoy. It is in the industry's interest to maintain and improve the environment and to contribute to the economic and social stability of local communities.

This symbiosis represents the greatest prospect of achieving the Rural Strategy 2004 goals and the Government's sustainability agenda. In contrast, the current onshore wind policy is at odds with the concept of sustainability. For the majority of onshore wind developments, the environmental costs are local and the benefits are invariably taken or delivered outside the region. In the most striking cases, a large-scale wind farm may be entirely financed by overseas investors, using imported equipment and a team of specialist contractors to oversee the installation. Once operating no one is employed on the site and the income and profits from the Renewables Obligation scheme are repatriated back to the investor country.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms

July 17, 2006

Conservation Law Foundation embraces "wise use"

In flagrant contradiction to their mission of protecting New England's environment, the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) uses the tricks of industry public relations in -- hand in hand with industry -- promoting the erection of giant wind turbines in wild and rural areas.

Their recent fund-raising plea boasts that CLF is a "leading force ... for fair review of renewable energy projects."

The mission of the "wise use" movement is not the precautionary principle that has traditionally guided environmentalists but to show that in balance the harm could be worse, i.e., industry pretends to be "green," pays off a few organizations, and continues to do what it always did.

Part of this effort is to complain that regulations and environmental reviews and public input are unfair burdens, because there is a small chance that a project will be prevented. And the developers take great umbrage that they are not free to do whatever they want.

Thus when CLF calls for fair review of renewable energy projects, it implies that subjecting them to the same review required for any industrial-scale development -- particularly in rural and wild locations -- is unfair.

That is an opposite message from CLF's avowed mission. Those reviews are there to protect New England's environment. Calling a power plant "green" doesn't make its impacts on the land and its denizens any less.

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

June 12, 2006

Wind power saves nothing

To the editor, Kennebec (Me.) Journal (published June 18):

The June 12 editorial ("We need wind power to fight global warming") is unconvincing. To argue for allowing "the loss of a beautiful view, the potential damage to wildlife species and the industrialization of a largely untouched landscape," it says that not doing so would cause even greater destruction.

In other words, we must destroy the environment to save it.

Missing from that harsh logic, however, is any evidence that industrial wind power can indeed "stem global warming's progress." With 20% of its electricity supposedly coming from wind, Denmark's greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. That country has not reduced its use of other fuels despite a landscape saturated with wind turbines.

In other words, wind power destroys the environment. Period. It saves nothing.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

April 15, 2006

Wind power development like logging and mining

According to an Associated Press story yesterday, the Synergics company in Maryland is threatening to sue the state because environmental protection of rare and endangered species may cause their plan to erect seventeen 420-ft-high turbines on Backbone Mountain (Maryland's highest ridge) to be rejected. Their reasoning: there is logging and mining in the area, although apparently outside the state's environmental jurisdiction.

Instead of proving their green credentials by modifying the project to fit the law, Synergics simply threatens the state with legal action. After all, they've spent a lot of investors' money to develop a 40-MW project, and any less could mean some embarrassing losses, threatening Synergics' ability to raise money for future projects. The environment? What's that?

Note that such belligerence which belies the "green" mask is not unusual for wind developers. It was one of their faults in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, which recently passed strict guidelines regulating wind turbine erections. One of the developers there, Emerging Energies, after trying to slip their permit request in the day before a year-long moratorium began last year, stood before the Planning and Parks Supervisors at the last meeting of the ordinance commission and renewed his threat to sue them if they passed the ordinance as it was shaping up. The county attorney was actually so worried that he was urging board members to reject it -- until WINDCOWS members found out and raised the issue at a meeting and got him to admit that it was indeed a defensible ordinance and the behavior of the developers hardly argued in their favor. Another of the developers, Navitas, is in court to get an extension to a conditional use permit they already hold but which expires in December. That county attorney wrote a letter to the judge claiming that the board is in favor of extension. He was forced to admit that he wrote the letter on his own and that the board knew nothing about it and had never even met to discuss the issue.

Shenanigans -- not an interest in the environment or the neighbors -- characterize industrial wind power development. They are indeed Enron's heirs.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, ecoanarchism

February 12, 2006

Alaska governor is insane

A story in today's Boston Globe says that Alaska Governor Frank Murkowsi
wants the state to hire a public relations firm to change the perception of Alaska and its people as greedy for federal dollars and all too willing to plunder the environment for profit.
But wait:
Ultimately, he wants to sway public opinion in favor of opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
So it appears that the idea is not to show that Alaska is not "all too willing to plunder the environment for profit" but simply to persuade the rest of the U.S. to let them.

tags:  ,

October 22, 2004

Is VPIRG lying?

"Section 248 includes the exact same criteria for reviewing a projects impact on the environment and aesthetics as Act 250. Only, unlike Act 250, Section 248 puts the onus on the developer to PROVE his or her project wont harm the environment, as opposed to forcing citizens to pursue a costly legal process as Act 250 now does."

-- Andrew Hudson
Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG) field director
personal communication


In Vermont, Act 250 is the environmental review law, and Section 248 describes the review process for energy-generating facilities. Section 248 relies on a legalistic process before the public service board, who must determine if the project "will promote the general good of the state." That is, local concerns may be trumped by a perceived statewide need or the mere desire of a powerful entity. In contrast to Drew Hudson's claim, it is very difficult -- and costly -- for citizens to be involved in the Section 248 process. Only one public hearing is called for.

It is, again in opposition to Hudson's statement, Act 250 that requires the developer to prove that a project won't harm the environment, either natural or human. Section 248 relies on others to present information about negative impact. But even then, the public service board (Section 248) looks at the effect on the state as a whole, easily dismissing local concerns, whereas Act 250 requires regional environmental boards to examine precisely the local impact of a project. Act 250 facilitates heavy citizen involvement.

When asked if he might have inadvertently gotten the two processes backwards in his description, Hudson did not reply. Of course, the misleading statement makes sense as part of VPIRG's campaign against subjecting utility-scale wind power facilities to Act 250 review. How else can an "environmentalist" group argue against the state's environmental law, except by claiming that the utility-review law is actually better? How else can one-time environmentalists who are now active corporate lobbyists live with themselves, except by calling industrial development of wild mountaintops "environmental" and the state environmental law "anti-democratic"? In short, replace reality with a lie -- an all too common predilection these days.

(An earlier post describes VPIRG's desire to build power plants on state-protected land. And another describes VPIRG's proposal to double what even the developers plan for the state.

September 2, 2004

Help the environment. Eat less meat.

In the September Ranger Rick magazine (from the National Wildlife Federation), a reader asks, "Is there anything I can do to help the environment?" The answer:
  • Eat less meat. (Raising animals for food uses lots of energy and water and can cause awful pollution.)
  • Eat more organic food. (Organic farmers don't use chemicals that harm the environment or people's health.)
  • Drive small cars, live in an energy-saving house, and buy energy-saving appliances.
  • Buy only things that you really need. (Almost everything factories make or people use harms nature in some way.)

November 25, 2012

For Lou, from Miriam

Miriam Jones of VINE Sanctuary writes:

[Factory “farmers”] are honest enough to own their desires, and so they don’t have to create elaborate mental mazes to contain them. They want a paycheck – they want to grill something out in their backyards and it ain’t tofu – and they don’t give a shit about the environment or global climate change or sustainability.

They want what they want, and they’re honest about it. ...

While some of us recognize this destructive phenomenon for what it is, and seek to correct it, happy meat “farmers” deny they’re human supremacists. They like to say they honor and respect all of life while they trample upon it. Because they can’t bear to give up those tasty little morsels of flesh in their mouths – or because they can’t bear to find another job – these “farmers” talk a good talk about holding to a level of environmentalism that exceeds everyone else’s. They claim to love life on the one hand while they bring it to an end on the other. They profess that there exists such a thing as humane murder.

In short, they’re liars. They lie to themselves and they lie to everyone else. ...

Factory “farmers” tend to be more honest about their motivations for doing the things they do than happy meat “farmers,” even though they all do the same thing: use and murder animals.

Because they are lying to themselves, these small producers need to include you in that same lie. They need you to believe that you’re doing something good. You are righteous, you are smart, you are helping the environment. You are better than those (poor, unethical, working class) people who eat factory farmed flesh. You are actively helping the planet by eating flesh, eggs and milk from small-scale animal “production.”

They tell you these things and they need you to believe them. But they are lies.

Click here to read the complete essay.
Click here to read “For Lou, from pattrice”


Lou, who never knew how it feels to be free
Lou, who never knew how it feels to be free

environment, environmentalism, animal rights, vegetarianism, Vermont, anarchism, ecoanarchism

August 15, 2008

Companies face crackdown on electricity greenwash

Someone appears to have wised up to the fact that companies "buying wind power" are in fact getting exactly the same electricity as those who don't ...

From David Adam in The Guardian (U.K.), August 13 (again, thanks to National Wind Watch):

Dozens of companies face having to report embarrassing sharp increases in their carbon pollution under government plans to crack down on greenwash.

The move could undermine the environmental claims of firms such as BT, which have invested heavily in so-called green electricity tariffs to cut their carbon footprints.

Under the proposed changes, companies using such green tariffs, which are also popular with eco-friendly domestic customers, will no longer be able to claim massive carbon savings by using power coming from renewable sources.

BT, which could be forced to double its reported carbon emissions and to scrap an ambitious target to cut carbon 80% by 2020 under the plan, is lobbying heavily against the move, and says other companies back its position. Johnson and Johnson, Vodafone and several banks including HSBC also buy green electricity tariffs.

Hilary Benn, environment secretary, said the change was to make the system more transparent and to ensure that such tariffs brought genuine environmental benefits. "It is increasingly difficult to demonstrate that buying a renewable electricity tariff is offering additional carbon emissions reductions," he said. "Businesses signed up to green tariffs based on the evidence available at the time, but their choices have been producing only limited additional renewable generation capacity."

Individual consumers opting for green tariffs may also "not have been generating the environmental benefits they anticipated", he added.

Green tariffs have become a popular way for firms and individuals to cut their carbon footprints. They exploit the 5% of UK grid electricity generated from clean hydroelectric and wind sources, which suppliers claim they can effectively ringfence and sell separately.

In 2005, the government said companies buying such renewable electricity tariffs could report them as producing zero emissions. It hoped that wide take-up of green tariffs would drive investment in further renewable sources.

But environmental campaigners and energy experts have long questioned the benefits of some green tariffs. Harry Morrison of the Carbon Trust, which advises companies on climate issues, says the market in them has been "a bit cowboy" and needs clearing up. He compared the use of green tariffs to the sale of carbon offsets, with concern over transparency, double counting and additionality – ie whether they cut carbon emissions over and above what would have happened anyway.

He said: "Many companies bought these tariffs in good faith but there are no guarantees that they actually save carbon. They didn't pay much of a premium for the carbon savings they could claim in their marketing statements, so they have basically been given a free ride."

Morrison said many companies were concerned about how the government's changes would affect their green credentials and corporate image. It could also cost them money. From 2010, thousands of UK companies will be forced to calculate, publish and reduce their emissions as part of a domestic carbon trading scheme. "They're worried about being ranked badly. Nobody wants to come bottom of a table of their peers," he said.

Richard Tarboton, energy and carbon programme director at BT, said: "This is a serious problem for a number of companies who have followed the government's guidelines and gone out and purchased green electricity, and are now being told that green source is no longer valid."

BT, one of the country's largest users of electricity, has used the zero-carbon rating given to green tariffs to claim it has reduced its emissions 58% over the last decade. Tarboton said the new rules would see its reported emissions double, and that the increase would pose "communication" problems for the firm.

He agreed that the existing scheme was flawed but said the suggested solution put too much responsibility on energy suppliers and let customers off the hook. BT says the answer is better labelling, with different tariffs given a carbon rating similar to electrical appliances such as dishwashers. It held a meeting of 30 companies this week to discuss the idea.

Defra, the environment department, which announced the changes to the company reporting guidelines in June, now says it will launch a consultation on the proposal. A spokesman denied this was down to corporate pressure and said the department had always planned to consult.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

June 25, 2008

Stop the noise!

From Katharine Mieszkowski, Salon, Jun. 25, 2008:

Modern cities can be so noisy that ornithologists have found birds warbling at the top of their lungs to be heard. Nightingales in Berlin have been documented singing up to 14 decibels louder than their counterparts in woody environs, in an attempt to make their songs audible above all the background noise. Yet the cacophony of modern life is hardly confined to metropolises like New York or Cairo, Egypt, where you literally have to shout on the street to make yourself heard.

In [the movie] "Noise," Bean's protagonist and his family escape to the country for the weekend. Their getaway is besieged by a neighbor's farting leaf blower. Getting away from it all just isn't that easy.

"For 50 years, if people didn't like noise, and they had money, the solution has been: Move to the suburbs. Now we've made our suburbs noisy. They're no longer quiet refuges," says Les Blomberg, executive director of the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse in Montpelier, Vt. "We got our half-acre lots, and now we have our weed whacker, our leaf blower, our hedge trimmer, our riding lawn mower, and then we hop in our car and drive on four- and six-lane highways past thousands of other suburbs to our place of work, noise-polluting every place we pass."

But you don't have to be an anti-noise crusader to suffer physical effects from noise, even if you're sleeping right through it. Scientists at Imperial College London monitored the blood pressure of 140 sleeping volunteers who lived near London's Heathrow airport. They discovered that subjects' blood pressure rose when a plane few overhead even when the subjects remained asleep. A study of 5,000 45-to-70-year-olds living near airports for at least five years found that they were at greater risk of suffering from hypertension, aka high blood pressure, than their counterparts in quieter realms. People with high blood pressure have an increased risk of developing heart disease, stroke, kidney disease and dementia. In 2007, WHO estimated that long-term exposure to traffic noise may account for 3 percent of deaths from ischemic heart disease among Europeans.

Not only can too much loud noise damage your hearing, or disrupt your sleep, it can literally suck the life out of you thanks to the human body's fight-or-flight response. "The human auditory system is designed to serve as a means of warning against dangers in the environment," explains Louis Hagler, a retired internal medicine specialist in Oakland, Calif. "Noise above a certain level is perceived by the nervous system as a threat." The body responds to that threat with an outpouring of epinephrine and cortisol, the so-called stress hormones. "Your blood pressure goes up, your pulse rate goes up, there is a sudden outpouring of sugar into the bloodstream so the body is prepared to meet whatever threat there is in the environment."

If exposures are intermittent or rare, the body has the chance to return to normal. But if the exposure is unrelenting, the body doesn't have a chance to calm down, and blood pressure and heart rate may remain elevated, Hagler explains. That's why what seems like a mere annoyance can actually have long-term health effects. "There is no question that people who live near a busy roadway are experiencing effects on their blood pressure," says Hagler.

... "There is no evidence that noise causes mental illness itself, but there is little doubt that it may accelerate or intensify some kind of mental disorders," explains Hagler. He adds that symptoms of exposure to noise pollution include anxiety, nervousness, nausea, headaches, emotional instability, argumentativeness and changes in mood. No wonder excessive noise has been used as a form of torture.

... In the United States, back in the '70s, when [psychologist Arline] Bronzaft was documenting how children studying in classrooms next to elevated train tracks had delayed learning, there was an outpouring of official concern about the effects of noise, on both health and quality of life. In 1972, Congress passed the Noise Control Act. The Environmental Protection Agency had its own Office of Noise Abatement and Control, which still exists today, but as an unfunded skeleton. What happened? "A man got elected president named Ronald Reagan and everything stopped," says Bronzaft. The Gipper decided that noise was best regulated by cities and states, but federal funding to help them evaporated. Attempts to re-fund the office have failed. ...

[The results of a 3-year study of the physical effects of living near giant wind turbines is planned for publication late this summer. Click here for more information.]

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism<, human rights, animal rights, Vermont

June 24, 2015

Anthropocentrism and the Technocratic Paradigm

Pope Francis writes (Laudato si’):

II. THE GLOBALIZATION OF THE TECHNOCRATIC PARADIGM

106. The basic problem goes even deeper: it is the way that humanity has taken up technology and its development according to an undifferentiated and one-dimensional paradigm. This paradigm exalts the concept of a subject who, using logical and rational procedures, progressively approaches and gains control over an external object. This subject makes every effort to establish the scientific and experimental method, which in itself is already a technique of possession, mastery and transformation. It is as if the subject were to find itself in the presence of something formless, completely open to manipulation. Men and women have constantly intervened in nature, but for a long time this meant being in tune with and respecting the possibilities offered by the things themselves. It was a matter of receiving what nature itself allowed, as if from its own hand. Now, by contrast, we are the ones to lay our hands on things, attempting to extract everything possible from them while frequently ignoring or forgetting the reality in front of us. Human beings and material objects no longer extend a friendly hand to one another; the relationship has become confrontational. This has made it easy to accept the idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology. It is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit. It is the false notion that “an infinite quantity of energy and resources are available, that it is possible to renew them quickly, and that the negative effects of the exploitation of the natural order can be easily absorbed”.

107. It can be said that many problems of today’s world stem from the tendency, at times unconscious, to make the method and aims of science and technology an epistemological paradigm which shapes the lives of individuals and the workings of society. The effects of imposing this model on reality as a whole, human and social, are seen in the deterioration of the environment, but this is just one sign of a reductionism which affects every aspect of human and social life. We have to accept that technological products are not neutral, for they create a framework which ends up conditioning lifestyles and shaping social possibilities along the lines dictated by the interests of certain powerful groups. Decisions which may seem purely instrumental are in reality decisions about the kind of society we want to build.

108. The idea of promoting a different cultural paradigm and employing technology as a mere instrument is nowadays inconceivable. The technological paradigm has become so dominant that it would be difficult to do without its resources and even more difficult to utilize them without being dominated by their internal logic. It has become countercultural to choose a lifestyle whose goals are even partly independent of technology, of its costs and its power to globalize and make us all the same. Technology tends to absorb everything into its ironclad logic, and those who are surrounded with technology “know full well that it moves forward in the final analysis neither for profit nor for the well-being of the human race”, that “in the most radical sense of the term power is its motive – a lordship over all”. As a result, “man seizes hold of the naked elements of both nature and human nature”. Our capacity to make decisions, a more genuine freedom and the space for each one’s alternative creativity are diminished.

109. The technocratic paradigm also tends to dominate economic and political life. The economy accepts every advance in technology with a view to profit, without concern for its potentially negative impact on human beings. Finance overwhelms the real economy. The lessons of the global financial crisis have not been assimilated, and we are learning all too slowly the lessons of environmental deterioration. Some circles maintain that current economics and technology will solve all environmental problems, and argue, in popular and non-technical terms, that the problems of global hunger and poverty will be resolved simply by market growth. They are less concerned with certain economic theories which today scarcely anybody dares defend, than with their actual operation in the functioning of the economy. They may not affirm such theories with words, but nonetheless support them with their deeds by showing no interest in more balanced levels of production, a better distribution of wealth, concern for the environment and the rights of future generations. Their behaviour shows that for them maximizing profits is enough. Yet by itself the market cannot guarantee integral human development and social inclusion. At the same time, we have “a sort of ‘superdevelopment’ of a wasteful and consumerist kind which forms an unacceptable contrast with the ongoing situations of dehumanizing deprivation”, while we are all too slow in developing economic institutions and social initiatives which can give the poor regular access to basic resources. We fail to see the deepest roots of our present failures, which have to do with the direction, goals, meaning and social implications of technological and economic growth.

110. The specialization which belongs to technology makes it difficult to see the larger picture. The fragmentation of knowledge proves helpful for concrete applications, and yet it often leads to a loss of appreciation for the whole, for the relationships between things, and for the broader horizon, which then becomes irrelevant. This very fact makes it hard to find adequate ways of solving the more complex problems of today’s world, particularly those regarding the environment and the poor; these problems cannot be dealt with from a single perspective or from a single set of interests. A science which would offer solutions to the great issues would necessarily have to take into account the data generated by other fields of knowledge, including philosophy and social ethics; but this is a difficult habit to acquire today. Nor are there genuine ethical horizons to which one can appeal. Life gradually becomes a surrender to situations conditioned by technology, itself viewed as the principal key to the meaning of existence. In the concrete situation confronting us, there are a number of symptoms which point to what is wrong, such as environmental degradation, anxiety, a loss of the purpose of life and of community living. Once more we see that “realities are more important than ideas”.

111. Ecological culture cannot be reduced to a series of urgent and partial responses to the immediate problems of pollution, environmental decay and the depletion of natural resources. There needs to be a distinctive way of looking at things, a way of thinking, policies, an educational programme, a lifestyle and a spirituality which together generate resistance to the assault of the technocratic paradigm. Otherwise, even the best ecological initiatives can find themselves caught up in the same globalized logic. To seek only a technical remedy to each environmental problem which comes up is to separate what is in reality interconnected and to mask the true and deepest problems of the global system.

112. Yet we can once more broaden our vision. We have the freedom needed to limit and direct technology; we can put it at the service of another type of progress, one which is healthier, more human, more social, more integral. Liberation from the dominant technocratic paradigm does in fact happen sometimes, for example, when cooperatives of small producers adopt less polluting means of production, and opt for a non-consumerist model of life, recreation and community. Or when technology is directed primarily to resolving people’s concrete problems, truly helping them live with more dignity and less suffering. Or indeed when the desire to create and contemplate beauty manages to overcome reductionism through a kind of salvation which occurs in beauty and in those who behold it. An authentic humanity, calling for a new synthesis, seems to dwell in the midst of our technological culture, almost unnoticed, like a mist seeping gently beneath a closed door. Will the promise last, in spite of everything, with all that is authentic rising up in stubborn resistance?

113. There is also the fact that people no longer seem to believe in a happy future; they no longer lies elsewhere. This is not to reject the possibilities which technology continues to offer us. But humanity has changed profoundly, and the accumulation of constant novelties exalts a superficiality which pulls us in one direction. It becomes difficult to pause and recover depth in life. If architecture reflects the spirit of an age, our megastructures and drab apartment blocks express the spirit of globalized technology, where a constant flood of new products coexists with a tedious monotony. Let us refuse to resign ourselves to this, and continue to wonder about the purpose and meaning of everything. Otherwise we would simply legitimate the present situation and need new forms of escapism to help us endure the emptiness.

114. All of this shows the urgent need for us to move forward in a bold cultural revolution. Science and technology are not neutral; from the beginning to the end of a process, various intentions and possibilities are in play and can take on distinct shapes. Nobody is suggesting a return to the Stone Age, but we do need to slow down and look at reality in a different way, to appropriate the positive and sustainable progress which has been made, but also to recover the values and the great goals swept away by our unrestrained delusions of grandeur.

III. THE CRISIS AND EFFECTS OF MODERN ANTHROPOCENTRISM

115. Modern anthropocentrism has paradoxically ended up prizing technical thought over reality, since “the technological mind sees nature as an insensate order, as a cold body of facts, as a mere ‘given’, as an object of utility, as raw material to be hammered into useful shape; it views the cosmos similarly as a mere ‘space’ into which objects can be thrown with complete indifference”. The intrinsic dignity of the world is thus compromised. When human beings fail to find their true place in this world, they misunderstand themselves and end up acting against themselves: “Not only has God given the earth to man, who must use it with respect for the original good purpose for which it was given, but, man too is God’s gift to man. He must therefore respect the natural and moral structure with which he has been endowed”.

116. Modernity has been marked by an excessive anthropocentrism which today, under another guise, continues to stand in the way of shared understanding and of any effort to strengthen social bonds. The time has come to pay renewed attention to reality and the limits it imposes; this in turn is the condition for a more sound and fruitful development of individuals and society. An inadequate presentation of Christian anthropology gave rise to a wrong understanding of the relationship between human beings and the world. Often, what was handed on was a Promethean vision of mastery over the world, which gave the impression that the protection of nature was something that only the faint-hearted cared about. Instead, our “dominion” over the universe should be understood more properly in the sense of responsible stewardship.

117. Neglecting to monitor the harm done to nature and the environmental impact of our decisions is only the most striking sign of a disregard for the message contained in the structures of nature itself. When we fail to acknowledge as part of reality the worth of a poor person, a human embryo, have blind trust in a better tomorrow based on the present state of the world and our technical abilities. There is a growing awareness that scientific and technological progress cannot be equated with the progress of humanity and history, a growing sense that the way to a better future a person with disabilities – to offer just a few examples – it becomes difficult to hear the cry of nature itself; everything is connected. Once the human being declares independence from reality and behaves with absolute dominion, the very foundations of our life begin to crumble, for “instead of carrying out his role as a cooperator with God in the work of creation, man sets himself up in place of God and thus ends up provoking a rebellion on the part of nature”.

118. This situation has led to a constant schizophrenia, wherein a technocracy which sees no intrinsic value in lesser beings coexists with the other extreme, which sees no special value in human beings. But one cannot prescind from humanity. There can be no renewal of our relationship with nature without a renewal of humanity itself. There can be no ecology without an adequate anthropology. When the human person is considered as simply one being among others, the product of chance or physical determinism, then “our overall sense of responsibility wanes”. A misguided anthropocentrism need not necessarily yield to “biocentrism”, for that would entail adding yet another imbalance, failing to solve present problems and adding new ones. Human beings cannot be expected to feel responsibility for the world unless, at the same time, their unique capacities of knowledge, will, freedom and responsibility are recognized and valued.

119. Nor must the critique of a misguided anthropocentrism underestimate the importance of interpersonal relations. If the present ecological crisis is one small sign of the ethical, cultural and spiritual crisis of modernity, we cannot presume to heal our relationship with nature and the environment without healing all fundamental human relationships. Christian thought sees human beings as possessing a particular dignity above other creatures; it thus inculcates esteem for each person and respect for others. Our openness to others, each of whom is a “thou” capable of knowing, loving and entering into dialogue, remains the source of our nobility as human persons. A correct relationship with the created world demands that we not weaken this social dimension of openness to others, much less the transcendent dimension of our openness to the “Thou” of God. Our relationship with the environment can never be isolated from our relationship with others and with God. Otherwise, it would be nothing more than romantic individualism dressed up in ecological garb, locking us into a stifling immanence.

120. Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties? “If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of the new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away”.

121. We need to develop a new synthesis capable of overcoming the false arguments of recent centuries. ...

[available in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, and Portuguese]

July 15, 2008

Not So Fast With Wind Power

An editorial:

Climate change, dwindling resources, and the geopolitics and ecology of fossil fuels and nuclear power figure prominently in today's worries. As part of any solution, most people unhesitatingly include large-scale wind energy. Wind power companies promise to break our dependence on other fuels and to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants. Teaming up with the American Wind Energy Association, the U.S. Department of Energy has promoted providing 20 percent of our electricity from wind by the year 2030.

With handsome subsidies and regulatory support, the U.S. thus faces a push to erect hundreds of thousands of giant wind turbines in the coming years. Does wind energy live up to such enthusiasm? Does it reward such generosity? A look beyond the hype reveals that wind's actual record does not come close to its claims. In addition, big wind has its own substantial adverse impacts on the environment and people's lives.

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In Denmark, where wind turbines already produce electricity equal to 20 percent of what the country uses, no conventional power plant has been shut down as a result, and it is hard to find evidence that they are using other fuels any less. In fact, according to the International Energy Agency, natural gas use in Denmark increased more than wind as the latter's turbines went in, and coal has been on the rise in recent years.

Wind turbines produce only 15 to 30 percent of their capacity annually and reach that average rate only one-third of the time. They are essentially idle another third of the time. Because wind is so intermittent and variable, much of its theoretical benefit appears to be cancelled out because the rest of the grid still has to provide electricity as needed in addition to the extra burden of balancing the unpredictable wind-generated supply. Or the spurts of energy from wind are simply tolerated as slight rises in voltage and eventually dissipated over a large grid as heat. Wind is only a symbolic add-on that replaces nothing.

[] [] []

The real results of giant wind turbine facilities have been the opening up of rural and wild places to industrial development and the destruction of communities powerless to stop them. Today's wind turbines are well over 400 feet high, with a rotor span of almost 100 yards, cutting a vertical air space of up to 2 acres. The blades are connected to a bus-sized housing (the "nacelle") for the gears and generator (along with hundreds of gallons of oil) at the top of the tower. The whole assembly weighs 250-350 tons, requiring wide straight heavy-duty roads to transport the parts and cranes for installation and continued maintenance. A large underground foundation, often requiring blasting of bedrock, of hundreds of tons of steel-reinforced concrete, most of which would be left after decommissioning, is necessary to hold it all up. Each tower requires acres of clearance and cannot be close to other turbines, to avoid turbulence. New high-voltage transmission lines and pylons are needed to handle the potential surges and to carry the promised power to distant population centers (or to let it dissipate as heat).

The destructive impact of such construction on, for example, a wild mountain top is obvious: erosion, alteration of wetlands and watersheds, and destruction of wild habitat and plant life.

Other negative impacts follow from this physical reality. At their tips, the rotor blades are slicing through the air at 150 to 200 mph. Substantial numbers of bats (mostly, it seems, by high air pressure rather than collision) and birds (eagles and other raptors being of particular concern) are killed. For two recent examples, at least 2,000 bats were killed by turbines on Backbone Mountain in West Virginia in just 2 months during their 2003 fall migration. And the 195-turbine facility on the Tug Hill plateau in Lewis County, N.Y., will kill at least 8,500-16,000 birds and bats annually, according to data from its first year of operation.

Other animals are adversely affected as well. The breeding and nesting of prairie birds are especially disturbed by disruption of their habitat. Construction on mountain ridges reduces important forest interior habitat far beyond the extent of the clearings themselves. In 2005, several abandoned and dead seal pups were found off Great Yarmouth, England -- investigating biologists concluded that noise from offshore wind turbines disrupted feeding and nurturing. The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society recently warned of the threat to cetaceans of low-frequency noise from off-shore wind turbines. In many places, people notice a drastic reduction of wildlife after the turbines go in.

Human neighbors, too, are victimized by the noise of the giant machines. Developers commonly get neighbors to sign gag orders in return for a small "forbearance" payment. Leasing landowners are also required to keep quiet. Thus knowing the problems that will arise, the developers set things up to allow denial of them.

Yet everywhere that people live near industrial wind turbines, they are shocked at the noise. It is unnatural and rhythmic, intrusive and unpredictable. People say they can never get used to it. It's typically worse at night, when not only is the normal noise level much lower but sound also carries much farther. Stress and lack of sleep -- and often more serious health problems, such as migraines, dizziness, and disorientation -- are common. Researchers in Portugal have found that conditions for developing vibroacoustic disease exist in homes near wind turbines. A set of symptoms called "wind turbine syndrome" has been extensively documented by Dr. Nina Pierpont in the U.S. Airplane safety lights at night and strobing shadows when the sun is low add to the turbines' invasive presence.

[] [] []

If there were clear benefits from industrial-scale wind energy, the extra burden on our already diminished landscape, on wildlife, and on people's right to enjoy their homes would have to be weighed. Careful siting and nuisance regulations would have to be established and enforced to minimize the impacts. We sorely need such guidelines.

But as Denmark and other countries have already shown us, benefits from wind on the grid remain elusive. There is no meaningful benefit to weigh against the substantial negative impacts on communities, individual lives, and the environment. The destructive boondoggle of industrial wind should be roundly rejected wherever its promoters try to gain a foothold.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

August 6, 2009

Obama and Neoliberalism

Michael Lind writes at Salon:

... By neoliberalism I mean the ideology that replaced New Deal liberalism as the dominant force in the Democratic Party between the Carter and Clinton presidencies. In the Clinton years, this was called the "Third Way." The term was misleading, because New Deal liberalism between 1932 and 1968 and its equivalents in social democratic Europe were considered the original "third way" between democratic socialism and libertarian capitalism, whose failure had caused the Depression. According to New Deal liberals, the United States was not a "capitalist society" or a "market democracy" but rather a democratic republic with a "mixed economy," in which the state provided both social insurance and infrastructure like electric grids, hydropower and highways, while the private sector engaged in mass production.

When it came to the private sector, the New Dealers, with some exceptions, approved of Big Business, Big Unions and Big Government, which formed the system of checks and balances that John Kenneth Galbraith called "countervailing power." But most New Dealers dreaded and distrusted bankers. They thought that finance should be strictly regulated and subordinated to the real economy of factories and home ownership. They were economic internationalists because they wanted to open foreign markets to U.S. factory products, not because they hoped that the Asian masses some day would pay high overdraft fees to U.S. multinational banks.

New Dealers approved of social insurance systems like Social Security and Medicare, which were rights (entitlements) not charity and which mostly redistributed income within the middle class, from workers to nonworkers (the retired and the temporarily unemployed). But contrary to conservative propaganda, New Deal liberals disliked means-tested antipoverty programs and despised what Franklin Roosevelt called "the dole." Roosevelt and his most important protégé, Lyndon Johnson, preferred workfare to welfare. They preferred a high-wage, low-welfare society to a low-wage, high-welfare society. To maintain the high-wage system that would minimize welfare payments to able-bodied adults, New Deal liberals did not hesitate to regulate the labor market, by means of pro-union legislation, a high minimum wage, and low levels of immigration (which were raised only at the end of the New Deal period, beginning in 1965). It was only in the 1960s that Democrats became identified with redistributionist welfarism -- and then only because of the influence of the New Left, which denounced the New Deal as "corporate liberalism."

Between the 1940s and the 1970s, the New Deal system -- large-scale public investment and R&D, regulated monopolies and oligopolies, the subordination of banking to productive industry, high wages and universal social insurance -- created the world's first mass middle class. The system was far from perfect. Southern segregationist Democrats crippled many of its progressive features and the industrial unions were afflicted by complacency and corruption. But for all its flaws, the New Deal era is still remembered as the Golden Age of the American economy.

And then America went downhill.

The "stagflation" of the 1970s had multiple sources, including the oil price shock following the Arab oil embargo in 1973 and the revival of German and Japanese industrial competition (China was still recovering from the damage done by Mao). During the previous generation, libertarian conservatives like Milton Friedman had been marginalized. But in the 1970s they gained a wider audience, blaming the New Deal model and claiming that the answer to every question (before the question was even asked) was "the market."

The free-market fundamentalists found an audience among Democrats as well as Republicans. A growing number of Democratic economists and economic policymakers were attracted to the revival of free-market economics, among them Obama's chief economic advisor Larry Summers, a professed admirer of Milton Friedman. These center-right Democrats agreed with the libertarians that the New Deal approach to the economy had been too interventionist. At the same time, they thought that government had a role in providing a safety net. The result was what came to be called "neoliberalism" in the 1980s and 1990s -- a synthesis of conservative free-market economics with "progressive" welfare-state redistribution for the losers. Its institutional base was the Democratic Leadership Council, headed by Bill Clinton and Al Gore, and the affiliated Progressive Policy Institute.

Beginning in the Carter years, the Democrats later called neoliberals supported the deregulation of infrastructure industries that the New Deal had regulated, like airlines, trucking and electricity, a sector in which deregulation resulted in California blackouts and the Enron scandal. Neoliberals teamed up with conservatives to persuade Bill Clinton to go along with the Republican Congress's dismantling of New Deal-era financial regulations, a move that contributed to the cancerous growth of Wall Street and the resulting global economic collapse. As Asian mercantilist nations like Japan and then China rigged their domestic markets while enjoying free access to the U.S. market, neoliberal Democrats either turned a blind eye to the foreign mercantilist assault on American manufacturing or claimed that it marked the beneficial transition from an industrial economy to a "knowledge economy." While Congress allowed inflation to slash the minimum wage and while corporations smashed unions, neoliberals chattered about sending everybody to college so they could work in the high-wage "knowledge jobs" of the future. Finally, many (not all) neoliberals agreed with conservatives that entitlements like Social Security were too expensive, and that it was more efficient to cut benefits for the middle class in order to expand benefits for the very poor. ...

By the time Barack Obama was inaugurated, the neoliberal capture of the presidential branch of the Democratic Party was complete. ...

Instead of the updated Rooseveltonomics that America needs, Obama's team offers warmed-over Rubinomics from the 1990s. Consider the priorities of the Obama administration: the environment, healthcare and education. Why these priorities, as opposed to others, like employment, high wages and manufacturing? The answer is that these three goals co-opt the activist left while fitting neatly into a neoliberal narrative that could as easily have been told in 1999 as in 2009. The story is this: New Dealers and Keynesians are wrong to think that industrial capitalism is permanently and inherently prone to self-destruction, if left to itself. Except in hundred-year disasters, the market economy is basically sound and self-correcting. Government can, however, help the market indirectly, by providing these three public goods, which, thanks to "market failures," the private sector will not provide.

Healthcare? New Deal liberals favored a single-payer system like Social Security and Medicare. Obama, however, says that single payer is out of the question because the U.S. is not Canada. (Evidently the New Deal America of FDR and LBJ was too "Canadian.") The goal is not to provide universal healthcare, rather it is to provide universal health insurance, by means that, even if they include a shriveled "public option," don't upset the bloated American private health insurance industry.

Education? In the 1990s, the conventional wisdom of the neoliberal Democrats held that the "jobs of the future" were "knowledge jobs." America's workers would sit in offices with diplomas on the wall and design new products that would be made in third-world sweatshops. We could cede the brawn work and keep the brain work. Since then, we've learned that brain work follows brawn work overseas. R&D, finance and insurance jobs tend to follow the factories to Asia.

Education is also used by neoliberals to explain stagnant wages in the U.S. By claiming that American workers are insufficiently educated for the "knowledge economy," neoliberal Democrats divert attention from the real reasons for stagnant and declining wages -- the offshoring of manufacturing, the decline of labor unions, and, at the bottom of the labor market, a declining minimum wage and mass unskilled immigration. One study after another since the 1990s has refuted the theory that wage inequality results from skill-biased technical change. But the neoliberal cultists around Obama who write his economic speeches either don't know or don't care. Like Bill Clinton before him, Barack Obama continues to tell Americans that to get higher wages they need to go to college and improve their skills, as though there weren't a surplus of underemployed college grads already.

Environment? Here the differences between the New Deal Democrats and the Obama Democrats could not be wider. Their pro-industrial program did not prevent New Deal Democrats from being passionate about resource conservation and wilderness preservation. They did not hesitate to use regulations to shut down pollution. And their approach to energy was based on direct government R&D (the Manhattan Project) and direct public deployment (the TVA).

Contrast the straightforward [emphasis added*] New Deal approaches with the energy and environment policies of Obama and the Democratic leadership, which are at once too conservative and too radical. They are too conservative, because cap and trade relies on a system of market incentives that are not only indirect and feeble but likely to create a subprime market in carbon, enriching a few green profiteers. At the same time, they are too radical, because any serious attempt to shift the U.S. economy in a green direction by hiking the costs of non-renewable energy would accelerate the transfer of U.S. industry to Asia -- and with it not only industry-related "knowledge jobs" but also the manufacture of those overhyped icons of the "green economy," solar panels and windmills.

While we can't go back to the New Deal of the mid-20th century in its details, we need to re-create its spirit. ...

[*Medicare for all. Higher gas tax.]

March 4, 2009

If you let big wind through the door, you can't stop anything else

Obama overrides Bush rule on Endangered Species Act, by Jim Tankersley. Los Angeles Times, March 4, 2009:
President Obama on Tuesday overrode the Bush administration on a key step in applying the Endangered Species Act, restoring a requirement that federal agencies consult with experts before launching construction projects that could affect the well-being of threatened species.

Environmentalists said reinstating the requirement blocks the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Forest Service and others from “nibbling away” at crucial wildlife habitat. Business and industry groups, on the other hand, warned that Obama’s action could hamper road-building and other projects that would help jump-start the economy.

Bush’s rule change, finalized in December, allowed federal agencies to determine on their own if projects would jeopardize endangered species, instead of consulting with expert biologists, as had been required for the last three decades. ... Obama made such consultation mandatory. ...

Industry lobbyists said Obama’s decision to mandate the consultations would add “red tape” to infrastructure projects funded by the economic stimulus bill. “This directive throws the brakes on projects,” said William L. Kovacs, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s vice president of environment, technology and regulatory affairs.

Even clean energy plans, such as wind farms, could be slowed down, said Michael D. Olsen, a former Bush Interior official who now lobbies for energy interests at Bracewell and Giuliani. “It’s not just projects that folks would term non-green,” he said. “It’s the green projects too.”
A few things should be noted. First, "red tape" in this case is what the civilized call "laws". Second, if a project threatens endangered species, it is not "green".

Third, it is not surprising that groups like the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) praise this return to the rule of law. At the same time, however, they join industry lobbyists such as Bracewell & Giuliani in promoting industrial wind energy development in rural and wild places. NRDC and EDF completely ignore adverse impacts in their praise for big wind. EDF even does PR work for individual companies. Only the Sierra Club recognizes that "wind projects tend to be large industrial developments with inevitable adverse impacts". Many of its local chapters actively oppose giant wind projects. Yet they also unquestionably accept the industry pitch that "Wind power is a reliable, clean, renewable resource that can help reduce our dependence on polluting fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) and nuclear power for electricity". The wind is anything but reliable (for providing real-time power in response to the needs of the electric grid), you can hardly call 400+-ft-high generators clean -- along with their associated clearing, foundations, roads, substations, and transmission lines -- and, due to wind's high variability, intermittency, and unpredictability, it has not been shown to reduce the use of other sources.

Regarding industrial wind energy, environmental groups need to reassess what side they're on. As they welcome Obama's restoration of protection for endangered species, they should restore their own perspective: They should stop acting as agents for an industry whose green credentials have turned out to be a sham and return to fighting to protect the natural world. Industry has its defenders. Nature needs its defenders to get back on track.

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

May 25, 2012

Vermont Wind Proposals


Also see: "Large wind projects in Vermont"

And listen (and chat or call in) to Wind Wise Radio, May 27, 7:00 p.m.: Stand Against the Wind — Chris Braithwaite and other guests talk about the destruction of Lowell Mountain in northern Vermont, co-hosted by Annette Smith, executive director of Vermonters for a Clean Environment.

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

May 3, 2007

Impacts of industrial wind

The National Research Council of the National Academies of Science today released an examination of industrial wind energy in the U.S. They want $66 for it, but PDFs are available from Endangered Species and Wetland Report and the appendices along with lower-resolution PDFs (smaller downloads) of the rest of the report from Virginia Wind.

The report is important in acknowledging the serious negative impacts of industrial wind energy development and recognizing that a proper weighing of the benefits against those adverse effects must be done. On the other hand, it perpetuates the assumption that the benefits are exactly as the industry presents them to be.

The report calls for greater study of the impacts on wildlife, the environment, and people, but unfortunately it does not call for greater study of the actual rather than the theoretical effects of wind on carbon emissions from other fuels.

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

November 19, 2008

Weighing Wind Energy

Meg Mitchell, Forest Supervisor, Green Mountain National Forest, writes:

The Green Mountain National Forest released the Draft Environmental Impact Statement [DEIS] for the proposed Deerfield Wind Project in September and we will accept public comment until November 28. The DEIS helps us make a final decision on approval or disapproval of the project by analyzing the effects of an expansion of wind energy development onto National Forest lands, next to the existing wind turbines in Searsburg.

Energy development such as oil and gas exploration and extraction, pipelines, and electricity transmission lines have all been permitted on portions of National Forest lands across the country. However, wind energy development is new to us. Like other activities, this development would have costs and benefits we look at closely before permitting.

As I move toward a final decision, I consider the feedback, comments, and suggestions from all the people who are interested in this project. At recent public meetings, participants requested additional information about spill prevention, restoration and facility removal plans integrated into any action alternative. We also have more work to do on mitigation and monitoring plans for each alternative. In making my final decision I will take all of this into account, consult with other agencies, and step back and look at the larger picture.

This is very likely one of the better places for wind energy in the State (and why there are already wind towers there). But this does not mean we should proceed with this particular project now. This proposal is for is a small wind energy facility. Yet, even with careful design, there are local environmental effects that can’t be avoided. The chief concern appears to be the potential impact to bear habitat. Bears, like people, react differently to uncertainty or something new in their environment. Some prefer being conservative and staying away from development, while others are more comfortable with unknowns and can adapt. Scientists do not agree on all aspects of impacts to bears, but most agree limiting the amount of human access to the area is important.

I am also searching for other options for those concerned with preserving wildlife habitat and supporting alternative energy development. One possibility is ensuring additional quality habitat on nearby lands is managed for bears. Because these bears range over large distances, yet depend on a variety of habitat, this could be one way to offset some risks. Such lands could be privately owned or managed by a nongovernmental group, Town or agency. This could also be a tool for future alternative energy projects that have broad benefits, and localized effects.

As the Forest Supervisor, I also must consider the health of the Green Mountain National Forest and the habitat it provides. We must change our energy consumption patterns by combining energy conservation with the development of cleaner sources to protect Forests, our health and all forms of life that depend on ecosystems and the services they provide. Even without the encouragement of the Federal Energy Policy Act of 2005, I feel a responsibility to be part of the solution.

I also need to know the full opinion of the Public Service Board; they are well versed in these matters and as the final Public Service Board hearings proceed, I’ll be listening for their opinion. It’s the right way to proceed since we both share jurisdiction and responsibilities for this project. I look forward to more feedback on our DEIS. As the final information and opinions flow in, I know this is an important decision and it will weigh heavily on my mind.

More information:
Kristi Ponozzo
Public Affairs Officer
Green Mountain and Finger Lakes National Forest
802-747-6760
kmponozzo@fs.fed.us
http://www.fs.fed.us/r9/forests/greenmountain/index.htm

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