Comments on the Vermont campaign for a carbon tax

The Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG) and friends in business and the legislature have proposed a tax on fossil fuels used in heating and transportation, starting at $5 per metric ton (“tonne”) of CO₂ and rising to $50 in 10 years (or $150 in 15 years).

Ninety percent of the revenue would be returned as tax cuts to businesses and households, which would rather nullify the incentive. The concern for reducing the burden on lower-income people is a sham, because getting a tax cut or even rebate in May won’t help to pay for gas or heating oil back in January.

The VPIRG press release trots out hurricane Irene as a warning of future extreme weather due to climate change. That is flat out bullshit. Hurricanes are a normal feature of the weather, and Irene was not even extreme — New Yorkers scoffed at its dissipation. Irene's damage was so great simply because it stalled over the Green Mountains. Climate change — as one part of our general environmental depredation — is a serious issue that is not well served by baseless fear mongering.

Finally, what about the second major greenhouse gas, methane? Besides every one of Vermont’s cows exhaling about 1 tonne of CO₂ per year, each of them also emits methane by belching and farting (not counting that contained in their manure) with a greenhouse gas equivalence of about 7 tonnes of CO₂ per year. With some 150,000 cows in Vermont, that's some serious emissions (1,200,000 tonnes of CO₂ and equivalent: $60 million at the proposed $50/tonne). And ignoring it is a serious omission in any plan claiming to address climate change.

If taxing cows as well as fossil fuel is not an option, how about giving some of the 10% of the revenues earmarked for energy improvements to subsidizing alternatives to animal agriculture. Much like the state makes it cheaper to buy CFLs and LEDs, why not also make it cheaper to buy vegan meat and dairy substitutes?

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

Vermont legislators want to dump renewable energy

Newly introduced Vermont House bill 104 revises last year's renewable energy bill (which requires new in-state electricity generation to be renewable). H.104 essentially scratches out "renewable" to require specifically "wind."

Dick Cheney couldn't have written a more blatant example of crony favoritism. When it was brought to your editor's attention, he first thought it was a spoof. But there it is on the state legislative web site: AN ACT RELATING TO INCREASING THE USE OF WIND POWER TO MEET PART OF THE STATE’S ELECTRICITY DEMAND.

With a major push currently underway for real alternatives like methane from landfills and cow manure and run-of-river hydro, along with growing awareness of the low benefit yet substantial negative impacts of industrial wind, the industry must be feeling unloved. (And they'd be right.)

That so many legislators -- including 2 Progressives -- have jumped on to sponsor this wind industry protection bill is pathetic indeed. Not one of them, needless to say, represents a town targeted by wind developers. Not one of them lives in the northeast counties which are particularly targeted.

This bill is unlikely to go anywhere, and perhaps we can hope that such a desperate act is a sign that big wind is at last finished in Vermont.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont, anarchism

Why is choice desirable for health care, but not for K–12 education?

Here are some comments in reply to a comment posted at a campaign press release published at Vermont Digger concerning school choice in Vermont.

If public schools are the foundation of a civil society, then shouldn’t private schools be banned? Or is freedom of choice – another foundation of civil society – to be available only for the rich? Furthermore, it is disingenuous in the extreme to equate most private schools, particularly in Vermont and neighboring communities, with for-profit schools preying on a very real need in failing urban school systems. Traditionally, private schools are not run for profit, and school choice in Vermont makes many of them as “free and open to all” as public schools. In fact, school choice makes public schools more open to all as well. Not just for the sake of civil society, but more importantly for the sake of every child’s unique and immediate education needs and interests, such opportunity needs to be expanded, not curtailed.

Finally, the commenter’s comparison with health care couldn’t be further off. Again, most hospitals and clinics are not for-profit. And school choice is analogous to single-payer, which is both more progressive and more efficient than for-profit insurance, which limits choice and drives up costs.

Who's misguided about wind power?

To the editor, Brattleboro (Vt.) Reformer:

The editorial of July 21 ("What's the fuss over wind?") asks, "What is more of a danger? A spinning turbine blade, or nuclear waste by the Connecticut River? What is more damaging to Vermont? A wind farm on a ridgeline, or the trees on that ridgeline dying off from acid rain and pollution generated by coal-fired power plants?"

At this stage in the debate, the irresponsibility of those questions is inexcusable.

Even the promoters of wind power on the grid can no longer get away with pretending it will displace energy from coal or nuclear power plants. (Vermont doesn't even use electricity from coal plants!) Those plants provide base load power. As a highly variable and intermittent source of energy, wind turbines would only provide occasional peak load power, occasionally when actually needed.

If we erected all 350 megawatts of giant turbines that have already been proposed in Vermont, or twice that amount, which many advocates would like to see (without, as classic NIMBYs, actually having to see or hear them near their own homes), we'd still suffer from the same amount of nuclear waste and acid rain.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont

Save Our Ridgelines!

Announcing the website of Vermonters with Vision, an affiliation of groups and individuals "dedicated to education and advocacy regarding the impact of industrial wind power on the economics, natural resources, and health of Vermont."

We oppose the construction of industrial wind power turbines on Vermont's ridgelines.

1. The energy benefits are minimal.
2. The addition of noise, light, and visual pollution is unacceptable.
3. The negative impact to the land and to wildlife is significant.
4. The harm to Vermont's rural character far outweighs vaguely promised pay-offs to affected towns and individuals.

Notes:

1. Even the developers claim that the giant machines will produce only around 30% of their capacity over a year. The Searsburg machines are down to about 21%. Because of the cubic relation between wind speed and output, they produce above their average rate only a third of the time. The Searsburg facility produces nothing, not even a trickle, more than a third of the time. Even when generating power, the output is variable, so it cannot reliably replace other sources on the grid and only causes "spinning reserve" plants to switch between generation and standby, in which status they still burn fuel. Windy areas are sacrificed to development not to provide energy but to generate "green credits" for lucrative sale elsewhere. See "The Low Benefit of Industrial Wind" for more information.

2. They are 330-410 feet tall to the top of the blade area (which sweeps 1-1.5 acres), must be lit day and night, and when the wind is blowing spin and turn noisily. They are not discreet presences but call attention to themselves, particularly on a mountaintop. See "Wind Power Facts" for more information.

3. Besides acres of clearance and blasting of foundations for thousands of tons of rebar and concrete, they require new or upgraded roads and high-capacity transmission lines. Such construction will affect water flow and quality and cause erosion and flooding, as has been documented in Meyersdale, Pennsylvania. Besides reducing and fragmenting forest habitat, the vibration of the machines drives away wildlife, as noted on Backbone Mountain, West Virginia. The turning blades are deadly to bats and birds.

4. Financial benefits, i.e., pay-offs, to others are completely up to the developer, who -- incredibly for a lessee -- writes the contract. Property owners are severely limited in what they can do with their land, even to the extent of who they allow on it. They become caretakers for the wind company. Land that might have been open would be closed to public use. As a project is later sold to national or international investors, payments are likely to be curtailed and taxes contested. The potential legal burden on towns is huge. Construction jobs, the more specialized of which will be filled by workers from elsewhere, are short term. Permanent jobs amount to 1-2 people per 20 MW capacity, again typically filled from elsewhere. Any business that depends on recreation and tourism traffic is likely to suffer, as will neighboring property values. Long after new technology makes giant wind turbines obsolete, or after they are abandoned because of diminishing returns (as in Altamont Pass, Calif., Princeton, Mass., and South Point, Hawaii), property owners and towns will be stuck with the mess.

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

"Wind Powers American Dream"

Now-freelance journalist Judy Miller is already working again, using her special access abilities to report the real truth, i.e., the truth those in power need us to believe. Fresh from her work to promote the disastrous invasion of Iraq, she now turns to the domestic challenge of pushing unpopular industrial wind facilities onto communities across the country, as this excerpted story from tomorrow's Washington Argus shows.

Wind Powers American Dream

by Judith Miller

Washington, DC -- I have just spent two weeks embedded with the president of the American Wind Energy Association and cannot convey strongly enough the urgent need for massive wind power development in this country.

Randall Switscher took me with him to see site after site that was either totally lacking industrial development or mostly wasted with low-grade agriculture.

"These people desperately need our help," Randy told me. "We need to bring them into the 21st century, get some investment going there."

Randy's model is the transformation of Nigeria by the presence of foreign oil companies who built schools, hospitals, banks, and communication infrastructure. Nigeria now rivals Sweden in measures of equality and health, he says.

During a retreat in the lovely unspoiled mountains of Vermont, I met Keith Dewley, a college-educated architect. He told me how grateful he is to Mr. Switscher for providing a beacon of hope to Vermonters. It is now normal for a Vermont child to hope to go to college, and that is directly a result of the activity of wind developers from outside, he told me.

Keith's interest verges on the artisitic. "What I learned in college was that aesthetics are about social constructs, about what we expect from our lives. Are we defined by hayfields strewn with rotting manure and mountains left to grow wild without any consideration of financial development needs? When I look up, I want to see the future!"

There are, of course, some holdouts who fear the changes Randy represents. Others selfishly want to preserve a system they have benefited from, however backward. Randy admits that the campaign to win their hearts and minds will be long and hard.

"We may not ever convince some of them," he says. "But we're going in there anyway, because that's our duty as world citizens. Sooner or later they'll have to get used to it. Our mission is bigger than any one of us."

Keith Dewley's daughter Hilary, a proud sophomore at the University of Vermont, echoed the enthusiasm of her elders. "The ancient Egyptians built pyramids as monuments to their beliefs. That's what wind turbines are -- just knowing they're there we can feel better going about our business."

Progress wouldn't be possible without a strong government commitment. I am currently embedded with an analyst in Goldman Sachs and will be writing soon about why massive profits are necessary to guarantee the success of wind power development.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, Vermont, Judith Miller

Can you say NIMBY?

A story in today's Burlington Free Press ("Winds of controversy blow in Shelburne," by Matt Crawford) describes the wealthy Vermont community of Shelburne's opposition to a small wind turbine that Jon Fishman wants to put up at his home.

'At the heart of the Shelburne discussion is how a 116-foot-high wind tower that resident Jon Fishman wants to build on his secluded Quaker Smith Point property will fit in with the surrounding lakeshore scenery.

'Fishman, the drummer of the defunct rock band Phish, wants to build a 10-kilowatt turbine to provide electricity to his home. He says one big reason he splurged on the 18-acre lot on the Lake Champlain shore is because it's perfectly suited for renewable energy like wind and solar power.

'Shelburne town officials and neighbors have raised flags of concern about Fishman's vision for a turbine.'

One of the troubled citizens is Bruce Lisman, who is building a house about a mile away. Lisman is a director of Vermont's largest utility, Central Vermont Public Service, whose subsidiary Catamount Energy is involved in large wind projects throughout the U.S. and in Europe, including the 27-turbine 48,600-kilowatt project proposed for Glebe Mountain in Londonderry, Vermont.

Residents around Glebe Mountain oppose the installation of the 387-foot-high turbines, each 131-foot blade chopping one and a quarter acres of air, along with the lights and noise, clearing of forest, new roads, concrete foundations, transformers, and power lines required. By the time the developers actually apply for a permit, they will possibly have upgraded their plan to even larger models. The opponents of thus industrializing our ridgelines are derided as NIMBYs, concerned only with keeping their views pristine. Their concern for the wild mountain habitat is mocked as shortsighted because global warming and acid rain do even more damage (though even the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admits that wind power has little to contribute towards mitigating those problems). Supporters of the project even call the giant industrial assemblies beautiful and question the aesthetic development of its opponents (see, e.g., the earlier post "Wind turbines = Nazi flag"; also see earlier post about the NIMBY charge).

Now Bruce Lisman "is uncomfortable about what a wind turbine on the shores of Lake Champlain would look like" -- a single home-sized turbine with 11-foot blades. Like George Bush's argument that we have to send people to Iraq to be killed so we don't get killed here, Lisman's magical thinking seems to be that we need to build giant power plants on far-away (from him) ridges so he doesn't have to see even one puny turbine anywhere near his back yard.

Ha.

Sacred cow exploiters

Michael Colby exposes some of the hypocrisy of Vermont progressives by recalling his fight against recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) almost 15 years ago as head of the nonprofit organization Food & Water. This is on the occasion of Cabot Creamery's recent announcement that they will no longer allow its use for their milk supply.

Click here for the first article. Click here for the second.

It took 15 years for Cabot to finally hear the customer demand? No -- it took a simple request from Wal-Mart, which now accounts for one-quarter of Cabot's sales.

Colby's campaign began with Land O'Lakes, as Cabot was claiming a "wait-and-see" policy. But then an employee leaked an internal memo acknowledging that some of their suppliers were already using rBGH. So Colby brought the campaign home. And the politicians, press, and corporate nonprofits came to Cabot's defense.

Then-governor Howard Dean condemned Food & Water as a "terrorist group". Then–state senator Elizabeth Ready essentially told them to leave the state. Cabot's spokesperson, Roberta McDonald, compared Food & Water to the Unabomber and suggested that public safety would be better served by locking up its leaders.

Now Wal-Mart demands the same thing, and Cabot meekly says "OK". That's great news, of course, but it doesn't say good things about our democracy when only another behemoth can say no to Monsanto and the concerns of individual citizens are derided, mocked, and condemned -- not just by the self-interested corporations but also by those who nominally represent the people against the powerful.

((( )))
Part 2 recounts Food & Water's effort more than 10 years ago to get Ben & Jerry's to go organic, or at least to refuse milk from cows fed on grain treated with the likely carcinogen atrazine. In this case, there has been no Wal-Mart to convince them, and Ben & Jerry's, that paragon of hip capitalism, still shuns organic production for their milk supply. Food & Water met with them to explain how such a move could transform Vermont dairy farming and drastically improve the environment of this rural state, consistent with the company's own progressive activism.

In response, Ben Cohen offered Colby a job in their public relations department, and then any paraphernalia he wanted, such as the oxymoronic hippie ties. And just as Cohen said that going organic was off the table, Vermont's progressives considered Ben & Jerry's to be off limits for criticism. Food & Water lost some of their donors -- for trying to protect our food and water!

When Colby was invited to speak at an anti-nuclear rally in Brattleboro, he was told not to mention Ben & Jerry's, who funded the event -- and Ben and Jerry themselves were going to speak (and not to be challenged). After promising not to so that he could get on stage, Colby jumped right into the issue by opening a pint of Ben & Jerry's Chubby Hubby and intoning "Doing bad and feeling good about it" between spoonfuls. His microphone was quickly cut off. But the fire was lit, and people flocked around to learn more, ignoring the next speaker.

And Ben & Jerry's still makes no effort to make their actual product better for the planet, absolving their own contributions to dirty agriculture by supporting progressive causes that might not cause any trouble for their own bottom line.

((( )))
Enron, also, bought off environmentalists. Many of them came to its defense with kind words about their progressive energy programs as the company was revealed to be a scam from top to bottom. Unfortunately, industrial wind power continues apace, with coal giant Florida Power & Light, nuclear giant General Electric, oil giant British Petroleum, and budding natural gas mogul T. Boone Pickens, among many others of their ilk, leading the way. And the corporate environmentalists readily follow.

Progressives everywhere resort to cutting the microphone rather than hear any word against Big Wind. "Oh, it could be so much worse," they say. Except it will be so much worse, because progressives and environmentalists are letting so much pass as they "work with" developers hungry to open up our remaining undeveloped rural and wild areas. They are supporting more development, not less, more consumption, not less.

They sport hippie ties in a twisted evocation (for it is also a cautionary reminder) of what they once might have been. They are smug in their self-censorship, their self-repression, their "success", their hypocrisy. They are scared, because they don't know who they are anymore.

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

Negroponte comes to Vermont

Yesterday, Director of Total Information Awareness John Negroponte spoke at his son's high school graduation from the supposedly prestigious St. Johnsbury Academy in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. Needless to say, this offended many people, including many who protested at the ceremony (and several who were arrested) (though the local peace & justice center decided not to disturb anyone about it). Many remember the man as a central figure -- while "proconsul" to Honduras in the early 1980s -- to the U.S.'s illegal support of the "Contras" to fight a brutal war against the socialist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The Academy's headcase, er, headmaster, said that it never occurred to him that the invitation would have political overtones: just another dad at his son's graduation. The best letter so far in the local (Negroponte-backing) rag has been the following.

In August of 1990, it was my great pleasure and privilege to drive a used 4-wheel-drive Toyota pickup truck to a farmer's co-op in San Juan de Limay, Nicaragua, the sister co-op of Hardwick's Buffalo Mountain Co-op and the Vermont Northern Growers Co-op in East Hardwick. We purchased the pick-up and packed it with seeds, clothes and tools that had been purchased after a year of fund-raising by our co-ops. The truck and supplies were a much-needed boost to our sister co-op, which had been suffering along with much of the rest of the Nicaraguan economy due to the illegal, covert and immoral war raged on the Nicaraguan people by our government.

This war was directed largely by John Negroponte, then-U.S. ambassador to Honduras. The small village of San Juan de Limay lies just south of the Honduran border, and was subject to multiple attacks from the United States-funded Contras. The farmer members of our sister co-op farmed about 350 acres of land -- raised a few cows, some chickens, beans and corn, barely eking out a living on rocky hillsides with either too much or too little rain, depending on the season.

One of the first people I was introduced to when I arrived, was the 7-year-old daughter of the co-op baseball team's former pitcher. He had been killed by Contras a year and a half earlier while serving on a community defense brigade in the nearby mountains. I'm sorry to say that I don't remember that little girl's name. I do remember her beautiful brown eyes and the sadness I saw in them every now and then, and I remember her father's name; Hector Orlando Gomez. The co-op members were doing the best they could to provide for her, her younger brother and sister and their mother, who helped with weeding and harvesting when she was able to. They lived in a small house with a dirt floor, clay walls and a tile on stick roof. In spite of that dirt floor, their clothes, which their mother washed in the river next to the village, were always immaculate.

I was told that the children's mother was struggling to keep her kids in school altho it was a hardship to buy the school books and paper and pay the small fee for tuition. Judging by the determination that I saw in her eyes, I imagine, I hope, that her daughter was able to complete her schooling and graduate along with the other kids in her class fortunate enough to still have a father. I do know that if she did, her father was not there to smile proudly and applaud loudly when she rose to receive her diploma -- he was not there to be able to give a speech about the lessons to be learned from his life as a hard-working and struggling farmer who still took the time to play baseball with his neighbors. He was not there to wipe away the tears from his wife's eyes of both pride in her daughter and sadness that he was not there to celebrate her success.

We are asked why we wish to interfere with or obstruct this Negroponte family moment between father and son -- his opportunity to bless the graduating class with his gathered truths. The truth I believe is that John Negroponte, and his fellows have been wantonly destroying families for decades -- in Nicaragua, in Iraq, they are responsible for some of the most dishonest and inhumane warfare against members of our human family in recent generations. His is a legacy of death, destruction, short-sighted corporate profiteering, and a burgeoning hatred for our American government. We cannot remain silent while his accomplishments are foolishly and obscenely lauded. It is our duty to bear witness to and denounce the crimes committed in our names. It is our duty to demand a foreign policy and world order with love, families and common decency at its core, not just for the privileged few, but for the many, the humble, the powerful all of us.

Hector Orlando Gomez, a loving father and husband, a good farmer and an even better pitcher -- Presente!

Robin Cappuccino
West Wheelock

Vermont, anarchism

Green Mountain College president is a mite paranoid

[Scroll down for updates to this post.]

From: President Paul J. Fonteyn
To: GMC Campus Community
Date: October 31, 2012
Re: Update on Bill and Lou

As you know, Green Mountain College has become the focus of widespread attention regarding our decision to slaughter our ten-year old team of oxen. I stand by the decision our community arrived at through a process that insured that all members had the opportunity to express their opinions.

I also compliment faculty, staff and students who, whether they personally agreed with the final decision or not, have demonstrated extraordinary civility in their interactions with each other, and with external individuals and organizations. Some of these external groups are attempting to use Bill and Lou as mascots for their own animal rights agendas. I am appalled by the abusive nature of some of the communications you have been receiving--if you are concerned about personal threats please notify the Office of Student Affairs.

Initially we decided to slaughter the oxen by the end of this month. However, we will not be able to meet this timetable because regional slaughterhouses have been inundated with hostile and threatening emails and phone calls from extremist groups bent on interfering with the processing. These businesses are mostly small, family-operated Vermont enterprises that provide local meat for local consumers. This is a busy time of year for them, and many have expressed fears that their operations might be shut down by protesters if they accept the oxen.

We have decided to continue to care for the oxen until a date with a reputable slaughterhouse can be obtained. In the meantime, Lou and Bill will not be sent to a sanctuary but will continue to stay with us in familiar surroundings. Eventually the animals will be processed as planned.

Green Mountain College has many allies who support the kind of sustainable agriculture in Vermont which GMC represents. Below is a statement made by Vermont Secretary of Agriculture, Food, and Markets, Chuck Ross.

As always, I'm available for discussion with any member of the GMC community who has questions or concerns.

Statements from the faculty have echoed the president's claim that the entire GMC community participated in making the decision to slaughter the oxen Bill and Lou, and that although Lou was injured months ago, the decision to kill him and his partner Bill, too, instead of retire them, was not made until students returned in the Fall. In fact, an Oct. 12 statement from the college says, "This was a decision many months in the making, with members of our community carefully weighing alternatives." It seems that the decision was already made, apparently by farm manager Kenneth Mulder and provost Bill Throop primarily, and that the only community-wide discussion was about that already made decision:

Ethics of Sending Draft Animals to Slaughter Discussion

When: Thursday, October 04, 2012
Time: 1 - 2:30 p.m.
Where: East Room

At the end of this month, Bill and Lou, the long-standing team of oxen for Green Mountain College’s Cerridwen Farm will leave the farm to be processed for meat.

Bill and Lou have worked as draft animals on the farm for over ten years. They have provided the motive power for a research and education program in draft animal farming that includes hay harvesting, vegetable production, animal driving and training, and electricity production. Last summer, Bill and Lou were featured in several workshops at the New England Organic Farmers’ Association summer conference.

This past year, Lou sustained a recurring injury to his left rear hock that has made it difficult for him to work. After attempting several remedies and giving him a prolonged rest without any improvement, it was the professional opinion of the farm staff and consulting veterinarians that he was no longer fit to work. Farm staff searched for a replacement animal to pair with Bill, but single oxen are difficult to find and it is uncertain that Bill would accept a new teammate in any case. After much deliberation, it was decided to purchase a new team and retire Bill and Lou.

“This has been a difficult decision all around,” stated farm manager Kenneth Mulder. “It is the traditional understanding with working cattle that when they reach the end of their working careers they are still productive as meat animals. But that does not make it easy.”

Bill and Lou cost approximately $300 per month to keep and will provide enough hamburger and beef to the college dining hall to last for a couple months. It is the general feeling of the farm crew and the farm management that the most ecologically and financially sustainable decision was to send them for processing.

On October 4th from 1 to 2:30 in the East Room, there will be an open class session on the ethics of sending draft animals to slaughter. Interested parties are encouraged to attend.

Update, Nov. 11:  The fact that the decision was already made was stated by student Alison Putnam in the Boston Globe: "Putnam is a member of the farm crew, consisting of students and staff, which she said made the initial decision. The administration supported the farm crew’s decision, Putnam said."

The president is paranoid (and perhaps psychopathic) in making Green Mountain College the victim, when the criticism from "outside" is about GMC's needless cruelty to its working animals — hardly the work of "extremist groups", who are "threatening" the "processing" only with publicity. It should be noted that it was GMC alumni who, when they were told of their college's plans for Bill and Lou, called animal rights groups, particularly Green Mountain Animal Defenders, who then sought a sanctuary to offer retirement. VINE Sanctuary, the only one in Vermont, was one of those that responded.

As for the "ethics of sending draft animals to slaughter discussion", that is not an exercise in ethics at all, but rather in excuse making for a decision already made.

Update, Nov. 12:  Fonteyn further illustrates his ever more evidently psychopathic paranoia in his Nov. 11 announcement that Lou had been killed early that morning:

As reported in my October 31 email to the community, our original timetable was disrupted by outside organizations seeking to appropriate the images of the oxen for their extremist agendas, including the abolition of animal agriculture. Without shame, these groups harassed and threatened local slaughterhouses, making it impossible for them to accept our animals, and therefore for us to carry out our decision expeditiously. Despite our attempts to use the most humane and local options available, one of the only Animal Welfare Approved slaughterhouses in the area was forced to cancel our appointment as a result of these hostile threats. Some individuals associated with these efforts have even discussed giving drugs to our animals, which would render the meat unacceptable for human consumption.

... Bill will not be sent to a sanctuary but will stay on Cerridwen Farm and will be cared for in a manner that follows sustainable, humane livestock practices, as is the case with all of our animals. We take responsibility for our animals on the farm--it is an obligation we will not ask others to bear.

I know at times the attention has been harsh and unfair, but it has also provided a platform to present some of the best aspects of Green Mountain College: our intellectual courage to squarely examine moral dilemmas, our values of sustainability, and our commitment to discourse over doctrine. I am proud of how GMC students have engaged with colleagues and with people outside our community in mature, thoughtful, and civil ways. ... [emphases added]

1. It was GMC alumni, not "outsiders", who raised the alarm. In any case, a college is not an ivory tower. GMC's focus, sustainability, is not normally considered in terms of "us-versus-them" survivalism, but indeed is concerned the larger community.

2. It is not extremist, but normal practice, to retire rather than slaughter work animals.

3. The only "harassment" of slaughterhouses was in the number of calls from around the world asking them to not accept these oxen. The only threats were of bad publicity. Although many of those concerned are vegan and indeed would like to see the end of animal agriculture, many are not. Moreover, vegans are not delusional that animal agriculture is going to end any time soon and therefore advocated only for Bill and Lou, not, e.g., to abolish GMC's home-grown beef project. Yet it is not "extremist" to seek the abolition of animal agriculture. Along the interest that GMC purports to pursue, the U.N. has warned that animal agriculture is a major contributor of greenhouse gases and a misappropriation of resources. It is neither sustainable nor humane.

4. The response to GMC's determination to slaughter Bill and Lou despite offers of sanctuary has been deservedly harsh and not unfair. Despite Fonteyn's closing words, he and other administrators and faculty have been exposed as intellectually lazy cowards, committed not to honest discourse but indeed to self-serving — inflexible and therefore inhumane — doctrine.

5. Many of the students have proved to be infantile, idiotic, and insulting, so Fonteyn's pride is clearly only in their firm backing of him. Because he, too, is clearly infantile, idiotic, and insulting. His language is the lashing out of an abuser found out.

Update, Jan. 16, 2013:  Apparently still hoping to kill Bill, "farm" director Philip Ackerman-Leist, assistant "farm" manager Baylee Rose Drown, and student Meiko Lunetta pled before the Vt. House Committee on Agriculture on Tuesday for "protection" from the outrage provoked by their needless (and heedless) cruelty in refusing offers of sanctuary for their hardworked and beloved oxen to instead sell them for dog food.

As comments below the story indicate, the logic is: a) GMC is trying to get away from factory farming; and b) Bill and Lou are/were not on a factory farm; so c) it is/was necessary to kill Bill and Lou. The corollary is that anyone with a different conclusion from (c) is therefore against (a). And because (a) is inarguably good, anyone asking for compassion toward Bill and Lou is inarguably bad. It's madness, really.

human rights, animal rights, vegetarianism, Vermont

Georgia Mountain wind project has applied for permit

The Georgia Mountain wind project has applied for a permit:

April 23, 2009 - Docket 7508 - Prehearing Conference - 1:30 P.M.

Before the Vermont Public Service Board, Hearing Room - 3rd Floor, Chittenden Bank Building, 112 State Street, Montpelier, VT

Petition of Georgia Mountain Community Wind, LLC, for a Certificate of Public Good, pursuant to 30 V.S.A. Section 248, authorizing the construction and operation of a 5-wind turbine electric generation facility, with associated electric and interconnection facilities, on Georgia Mountain in the Towns of Milton and Georgia, Vermont, to be known as the "Georgia Mountain Community Wind Project"

Of note, the project does not exactly specify what it entails. The petition describes 3-5 wind turbines of 1.5-3 MW capacity each. In his prefiled testimony, John Zimmerman gives the total rating as 7.5-12 MW.

As to the rest of the documents filed (click here), they too are a laugh, a charade of self-rationalization, misrepresentation, and evasion. For example, the noise impact study asserts a typical rural sound level that is above what it actually describes for a couple of sites tested. It asserts that only an increase of more than 10 dBA would be considered to be intrusive, when it is generally accepted that an increase of 5 dBA raises concerns. It cites the World Health Organization guidelines for community noise, ignoring the statements that "Noise with low-frequency components require lower guideline values" and "Lower noise levels may be disturbing depending on the nature of the noise source". It thus ignores (except for a throwaway line that it isn't a problem) the significant low-frequency component and the unique rhythmic and unpredictable nature of wind turbine noise. It goes without saying that the "noise impact study" completely ignored actual studies of wind turbine noise impacts, such as Nina Pierpont's "Wind Turbine Syndrome".

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

Wind energy to offset emissions from cows

Cows belch and fart methane, a gas with 25 times the greenhouse effect as carbon dioxide. It was calculated elsewhere that in Vermont, installing 1 megawatt of wind power would have the equivalent effect on greenhouse gas emissions as removing 0.4 of a cow from the state, that the effect of the 145 MW of approved new wind projects on four ridgelines would be like removing 58 cows.

So how much wind power would have to be erected to offset the greenhouse gas emissions of all 150,000 of Vermont's cows?

375,000 MW. 125,000 turbines the size of the 21 planned for Lowell Mountain.

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

UPC's continuing misinformation

Your editor contributed to a report on Wednesday by Pat Bradley of New York Public Radio station WAMC. She was covering the third version of UPC's plan to erect 16 420-ft 2.5-MW wind turbines on mountain ridges overlooking historic and peaceful rural communities in remote northeast Vermont. Their moving of 2 turbines across a town line seemed to have been timed to overshadow a more dramatic development in one of those affected communities. The town of Barton voted 120-0 (yes: zero) Tuesday night to oppose the project.

In the demand for sacrifice from these communities, for utterly changing their character for very much the worse, one asks "what are we weighing here? It's very clear that wind energy is just not going to make any significant contribution to replacing fossil fuels or reducing greenhouse gas emissions."

Matt Kearns, hired flack for UPC (backed by private equity firms Madison Dearborn Partners of Chicago and D.E. Shaw of New York), calls that statement "one of the disingenuous arguments regarding wind power. One of the issues that we hear is that wind power will not provide an offset to other forms of energy generation or that somehow this won't produce a benefit in terms of the use of some other fuels. Y'know, any green electrons that you add to the grid it means that there's less need to bring on other units that are fossil fuel based."

Then where are the numbers showing a reduction of fossil fuel use due to wind power on the grid? The disingenuous argument is Kearns's, because it claims a result for which it has no data. The evidence (see, e.g., the graph from the International Energy Association of Denmark's fuel use for electricity generation from 1971 to 2003 at National Wind Watch) is clear that large-scale wind has negligible, if any, effect on other sources. This is probably because, although their electricity generation may be displaced, they either must continue burning fuel (less efficiently, i.e., less cleanly) on standby or burn more fuel (again, less efficiently) in more frequent ramping up and down or switching on and off.

Besides, in Vermont almost no electricity comes from fossil fuels.

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

This Is Green Energy?

Blasting and clearing of the Lowell Mountain Ridge in Vermont for wind turbine erections by Green Mountain Power (Gaz Metro) and Kingdom Community Wind.


Also read (here) about Senator Bernie Sanders' angry defense of corporate destruction of Vermont's ridgeline ecosystems to "save the world".

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

Save Bill and Lou!

Friday
12:00–3:00 pm
Poultney, Vermont
Corner of College and Main Street in front of Brennan Circle on sidewalk
Dress comfortably and warm.

Signs: Bring your own favorite or signs will be available

Contact: Jennifer Wolf: jennifer.wolf78/gmail.com, http://www.nhanimalrights.org/

This protest is for Bill and Lou, 2 oxen who have worked for 10 years at Green Mountain College, which now wants to kill and eat them. VINE sanctuary [blog] in Springfield, Vermont has offered to take Bill and Lou, but the college insists that eating them is the best thing to do.

Whatever your motivation is, ALL are welcome who support Bill and Lou not being sent to slaughter!

The whole world is watching!


View Larger Map


View Larger Map
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/455989837780838/

List of petitions:

http://www.change.org/petitions/bill-throop-kenneth-mulder-release-bill-and-lou-to-vine-sanctuary

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/136/143/095/save-bill-and-lou-from-slaughter/

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/save-lou-and-bill.html

Media links:

http://www.peta.org/action/action-alerts/URGENT--Save-Bill-and-Lou-from-Slaughter--.aspx

James McWilliams:
http://james-mcwilliams.com/?p=2401
http://james-mcwilliams.com/?p=2408
http://james-mcwilliams.com/?p=2416
http://james-mcwilliams.com/?p=2420
http://james-mcwilliams.com/?p=2470
http://james-mcwilliams.com/?p=2485

http://gmad.info/articles_detail.php?ID=61

http://www.examiner.com/article/the-slaughter-of-two-oxen-teaches-students-status-quo-not-compassion

http://www.vpr.net/news_detail/96295/in-vermont-outcry-over-oxen/

http://www.nhpr.org/post/despite-protest-college-plans-slaughter-serve-farms-beloved-oxen

http://bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/10/25/fire-mountain/f8mIXuOFwg201TopTbeXiK/story.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-friedrich/green-mountain-colleges-f_b_1967361.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/23/green-mountain-college-oxen-slaughter_n_2007076.html

http://www.dailycamera.com/guest-opinions/ci_21812426/bill-and-lou-who-lives-who-dies-and

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20121009/NEWS07/310090013/Green-Mountain-College-considers-turning-long-serving-campus-oxen-to-hamburger

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20121025/NEWS02/310250022/Opponents-of-plan-to-slaughter-Green-Mountain-College-s-oxen-to-hold-protest

http://www.voanews.com/content/college-plan-to-kill-oxen-draws-global-protest/1532411.html

animal rights, vegetarianism

Rump Steak

Advocacy group Rural Vermont is promoting its 2013 “Annual Celebration”:

“Philip Ackerman-Leist,” director of Green Mountain College’s Farm & Food Project ... will be the guest speaker. Ackerman-Leist will share his first-person account of the recent international controversy involving Green Mountain College’s pair of working oxen “Bill” and “Lou.” This moving and disturbing story illustrates the profound lack of understanding and connection between contemporary American society and the source of our food. ... Special guest Philip Phillip [sic] will offer his ideas on how we can work together to bridge this divide.

Rural Vermont is a fairly politically progressive organization unfortunately bound by a devotion to and reflexive defense of the exploitation of animals. Ackerman-Leist similarly is too gorged on the flesh of (and the profits from) his grass-fed heritage-breed cows to consider that he might be the one with a profound lack of understanding. What possible ideas could he offer to bridge the divide between those who think a team of oxen deserved retirement after 10 years of work and those who can only think about such animals as food?

It was precisely people who are connected with the sources of their food who were able to draw a line at killing Bill and Lou. Ackerman-Leist, who petulantly had Lou killed despite (or rather because of) the controversy, is like the slaughterhouse worker who recently posted a video of himself shooting a horse. There is nothing in his actions or words that suggests working together to bridge a divide. In fact, the bridge is already there, but he refuses to acknowledge it, stubbornly seething at the shoreline, still shouting impotent defiance after those who have left him behind.

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

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

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

Coming up in the Vermont legislature: impeachment and IRV

Impeach Bush and Cheney, already! In a surprise move, the Vermont Senate voted early Friday morning to request that U.S. Representative Peter Welch begin impeachment proceedings against the would-be emperor and his cardinal. It should be noted that there was almost no debate. It was raised. It was passed. So much for the claim from House Speaker Gaye "Simple" Symington that there's not enough time for it.

The same resolution is planned to be raised in the House by David Zuckerman, who graciously let Peter Welch run uncontested for last year. Welch ran a strongly anti-war campaign but has since voted in support of the Iraq occupation. Acting to remove the people who illegally invaded Iraq and are responsible for the death and maiming of tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis might redeem that pathetic vote.

So, Vermonters! Write or call your house members! The list of their addresses, telephone numbers, and e-mail addresses is at www.leg.state.vt.us/legdir/districts.cfm?Body=H.

And in the Senate, a bill to institute instant runoff voting (IRV) for U.S. House and Senate races will be voted on next week. So write or call your senators to vote for that, too: www.leg.state.vt.us/legdir/districts.cfm?Body=S. Read about IRV and other election reforms that would move us more towards democracy at www.kirbymountain.com/rosenlake/electionreform.html.

In other legislative business, auto racers want to be exempt from the ban on the MTBE additive for gasoline. And the Progressive Party thinks it might be valid consideration. In other words, although they recognize how dangerous a pollutant MTBE is, they would shoot a huge hole in the ban on it:

"The question for Progressives is weighing the environmental concerns versus penalizing an activity who's fans are mostly working families."

It was "mostly working families" who once enjoyed occasionally lynching individuals of other working families who happened to be of African or Jewish descent (or "flatlander," maybe). And it's "mostly working families" who are poisoned by industrial chemicals that are allowed for the pleasure of a few money-making entities. How patronizing and bogus this question is! As if working families can't have environmental concerns, too. As if the activity in question is threatened by the ban on MTBE!

Vermont