Wind "ought" to help -- but won't

To the Editor, Rutland (Vt.) Herald:

The key word in your August 10 editorial, "Wind win," is "ought." You conclude that the PSB approval of the Sheffield wind project is a "positive step that ought to improve Vermont's energy future." The fact is, unfortunately, that it won't.

Although you admit that the wind turbines would not be generating at full capacity all the time, you let stand the figure of the project's 40-megawatt installed capacity as meaningful. In fact, the facility would rarely, if ever, generate at full capacity. Its average annual output is more likely to be a fifth of that, as it is for the existing Searsburg facility and the average through the U.S. and the world: 8 megawatts. Even the developer projects an average output of only 13 megawatts.

Because of the cubic relation of output to wind speed, however, any wind energy facility generates at or above its average rate only a third of the time. And those times are at the whim of the wind, not necessarily corresponding to actual need on the grid.

Consequently, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority plans for wind energy to provide useful energy at the rate of a third of its average output. This is in line with estimates from similar studies in Europe. The Sheffield project would thus represent a contribution of only about 3 to 4 megawatts for Vermont's energy planning.

Yet this potentially small source requires blasting for foundations and roads, tons of cement for each turbine, acres of forest clearing, and the erection of 419-feet-high towers with 162-feet-long turning blades and strobing safety lights over miles of ridge line where any other development would never even be considered, much less praised by the likes of Bill McKibben and VPIRG. This is a win for industry and the robber barons that run our country again, not for the environment. And not for our energy future, either.

[Published in the Rutland Herald, Aug. 14]

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

Michael Ignatieff still doesn't get it

To the Editor, New York Times Magazine:

Michael Ignatieff ("Getting Iraq Wrong," August 5) absolves his own ideology-driven mistake of supporting the Iraq war by asserting that ideology also -- not facts or reasoned analysis, or simple morality -- was behind opposition to the invasion. He caricatures anti-war voices as Bush or America haters, implying that he at least was driven by love of Bush and America.

He is still as wrong as he was then. There was one simple reason for opposing this war. It was a war of choice, not of necessity. One does not start wars. One does not invade other countries. It is the difference between self-defense and murder.

As Bush goes down in history as our most disastrous president, as our country lies in economic and social ruin in counterpoint to Iraq's physical ruin and bloodshed, Ignatieff lamely acknowledges that "a politician's mistakes are first paid by others" (and a pundit gets paid twice, first for beating the drum and then for trying to explain his mistake). But the invasion of Iraq was not a mistake. It was a deliberate aggressive act. Working in the halls of Harvard is not an excuse for pretending that war does not mean death and mayhem.

Alas, Ignatieff still longs for a "daring" leader. Has he learned nothing? What we need are daring citizens, who have not lost the habit of thinking for themselves.

Screw the environment and communities for wind industry

Here's a couple more examples of industrial wind developers convincing lawmakers that the law is not necessary for them (which only proves that it is especially necessary -- why does the wind industry find it so hard to pass environmental muster?!).

In Massachusetts, governor Deval Patrick wants to restrict citizens' right to appeal wetlands decisions. This is in response to the successful challenge by Green Berkshires of the permit for a wind energy facility on the Hoosac Range.

In Sweden, the industry minister wants permitting laws changed to ignore local objections. The government has already relaxed environmental regulations for industrial wind facilities.

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

The Casualties of Green Scare: The Feds' War on the Animal Rights Movement

By Kelly Overton

Late last year President Bush signed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) into law days after six young Americans began serving federal prison sentences on charges they caused economic damage to Huntington Animal Sciences, an animal-testing corporation. Sadly, jailing activists is the American way.

The imprisonment of the group, known as SHAC 7, is nothing more than history repeating itself. Those who first called for an end to slavery were imprisoned. Those who believed women should vote went to jail. Civil rights activists, supporters of gay and lesbian rights, and now animal rights activists have all been jailed. The only thing sadder than the imprisonment of animal rights activists is that they are fighting for a losing cause; for we now live in a society that slaps the wrist of a person who harms the neighbor's dog yet subsidizes the systematic annual killing of billions of other animals for food, clothing, research and sport.

The recent allegations of both illegal wire-tapping and politically motivated firings of U.S. Attorneys by the Bush administration should set off an alarm regarding the legality of the green scare, the administration's monitoring and imprisonment of environmental and animal welfare activists. And AETA isn't the only new tool corporations have to eliminate pesky activism.

The NYSE's recent decision to trade Life Sciences Research (an animal testing corporation) on the ARCA exchange -- an electronic platform that provides market makers anonymity -- signals that financial markets have also joined the war against social activism. With help from the Bush administration and the NYSE, we may be nearing a day when all of our country's flora, fauna, and public land will exist as little more than raw materials for corporate profit.

The reason nonhuman animals lack protection is simply due to the economic repercussions that would accompany such protection(s). Compassionately caring for animals is expensive and by demanding corporations treat food and research animals humanely activists are asking nothing less than a fundamental reworking of the world economy.

Sadly, any further success activists achieve at home will only expedite sending corporations that mistreat animals offshore where animal welfare regulations and activism can be made non-factors.

We no longer live in a society, we live in an economy, where right and wrong is determined not by fairness, but by profitability -- and where the law no longer dictates corporate behavior, but corporate behavior dictates the law.

AETA, Three Strikes laws and toothless environmental regulations protect profits -- not people (or animals). A society would care if animal protection activists (including the SHAC 7) were right about corporate mistreatment of animals -- but in an economy only the financial cost of activism matters.

The truth is that nonhuman animals don't need rights or legal standing. Such rights have done little to improve the lives of the majority of the world's people. For it is not just nonhuman animals that are losing their habitats and their ability to live with dignity -- the majority of the planet's humans now live truly desperate lives.

Today it is not legal but economic standing that protects a life -- and it is not a lack of rights (human, civil or animal) but a lack of empathy that is the problem, a problem that promises lives of misery and despair for an overwhelming majority of the earth's creatures. Instead of fighting to establish rights for animals, maybe activists should work to instill compassion in humans.

As a society we need to imagine others' horrors as our own. What if the sex worker was our child? The homeless woman our mother? The research dog our family pet? The unjustly imprisoned activist our child?

Only when we decide the pain and humiliation of others is not worth economic gain will the need for rights, human and animal, disappear.

Kelly Overton is Executive Director of People Protecting Animals & Their Habitats -- Sign their petition to make animal rights an issue in the 2008 elections.

Liberals Standing in the Way of Change

By Sam Smith, Progressive Review

Bill O'Reilly may be closer to the truth than usual in describing the DailyKos crowd as a hate group. After all, the mundane middle of the Democratic Party defines itself to an extraordinary degree by what it dislikes far more than what policies it supports. There is a mythology among liberals that if we just get rid of Bush, Cheney, Scooter Libby, and Bill O'Reilly everything will be fine. In fact, when you follow their advice and vote as they suggest, you find yourself stuck with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.

If you spend a lot of time talking with liberals, you find their rhetoric full of anger at certain individuals. You won't hear much talk of single payer healthcare or pension return or credit card usury. Putting Scooter Libby in jail is far more important.

Liberals didn't used to be like this. There was a time when - instead of just hating Dewey, Taft and Nixon - they actually accomplished things like these:

- Regulation of banks and stock brokerage firms cheating their customers

- Protection of your bank account

- Social Security

- A minimum wage

- Legal alcohol

- Right of labor to bargain with employers

- Soil Conservation Service and other early environmental programs

- National parks and monuments such as Death Valley, Blue Ridge, Everglades, Boulder Dam, Bull Run, Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, Mount Rushmore, Jackson Hole, Grand Teton, Cape Cod, Fire Island, and San Juan Islands just to name a few.

- Tennessee Valley Authority

- Rural electrification

- College educations for innumerable veterans

- Housing loans for innumerable veterans

- FHA housing loans

- The bulk of hospital beds in the country

- Unemployment insurance

- Small Business Administration

- National Endowment for the Arts

- Medicare

- Peace Corps

Part of the problem is that liberals have become more of a demographic than a movement, and a pretty upscale one at that. Thus the groups that Democrats used to worry about have been left on their own or to be victimized by conservatives who offer them salvation in lieu of a decent job.

It isn't that the non-elite is more religious these days, it's just that liberals used to have something to profide in the here and now to compete with the vagaries of the conservative hereafter.

The DailyKos crowd is having their annual meeting and getting fond attention from a media that clearly likes their willingness not to rock the boat and to treat politics as a semiotic rather than substantive enterprise.

For the record, however, it should be noted that many of those celebrated at this event:

- Voted for the Iraq war

- Supported the egregious No Child Left Behind law

- Have backed to the hilt the cruel and unconstitutional war on drugs, forerunner of the cruel and unconstitutional war on terror.

- Supported the Clintons who dismantled social democracy and turned the Democrats into GOP Lite.

- Backed NAFTA, the WTO and other assaults on the domestic economy.

- Have refused to support single payer healthcare.

- Have been remarkably complacent as Bush dismantled the Constitution.

In short, it's the sorriest bunch of liberals in over 70 years, which is why the corporate media is so tolerant and the conservatives can continue merrily on their way, often with the help of Democratic votes

Opposing Bush and his capos is a necessity but it is not a policy. Until liberals are willing to support something more than a minimum wage that doesn't even bring us back to where we were in 1956, they're really just one more thing standing in the way of change.

Which side are you on?

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

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

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

And 16 wind energy facilities.

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

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

Corporatized America

What corporate America wanted was nothing less than the Third Worlding of the US, a collapse of both present reality and future expectations. The closer the life and wages of our citizens could come to those of less developed nations, the happier the huge stateless multinationals would be. Then, as they said in the boardrooms and at the White House, the global playing field would be leveled.

And so the greatest surrender of sovereignty in US history is chalked up as an inevitable result of a better world. This abandonment was not initially controversial, nor even readily apparent, because Americans simply were not told that it had occurred. They did not know that their country -- which defeated in turn the British, the Mexicans, the Confederacy, the Spanish, the Germans (twice), the Japanese, and outlived the Soviet Union, had surrendered without a whimper to a junta of trade technocrats armed with nothing more menacing than cell phones and Palm Pilots.

Once having capitulated on economic matters, Americans would be taught to accept a similar diminution of social programs, civil liberties, democracy, and even some of the most basic governmental services. Free of being the agent of our collective will, government could then concentrate on the real business of a corporatist state, such as reinforcing the military, subsidizing selected industry, and strengthening police control over what would inevitably be an increasingly alienated and fractured electorate. We would be taught to deny ourselves progress and to blame others for our loss. --Sam Smith

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." --Benito Mussolini (maybe)

The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporate, social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the nation, organised in their respective associations, circulate within the State. --Benito Mussolini, The Doctrine of Fascism, 1935

Government confirms wind turbine noise regulations inadequate

The families of Kevin and Dwayne Bailey, father and son, of Elmira, Prince Edward Island, have been forced to abandon their homes because of the intolerable noise from new wind turbines about a kilometer (about 1100 yards) away. From a visit by Paul and Ruth Downing:

When we first drove into their yard, our initial impression was that their one kilometer setback distance should be fine. However, their problems began within weeks after the turbines started operating. When they were downwind from the turbines, and the air was moving just enough to turn them (12-15 knots from the northeast), the noise was loud. It was a repetitive modulated drone of sound. Dwayne and Kevin both claimed it sometimes was loud enough to rattle the windows of their homes. The sound was even worse in the field behind their homes. Distances from 1 to 1.5 kilometers were the areas of the most annoying sounds. This spring the winds created constant misery.

Dwayne developed headaches, popping and ringing ears, and could not sleep. He tried new glasses, prescription sleep aids and earplugs, to no avail.

Dwayne’s two year old was sleeping well prior to the wind farm, but began waking up, 5-6 times a night.

Kevin Bailey stated, “When you are outside working and absorbed in what you are doing, you are OK. If inside, resting or reading, it’s a problem. Forget about sleeping at night. The repetitions would go away, you think that it is gone, and it comes back again.” Kevin tried sound dampening by draping the front walls inside his house, and sleeping in the back, but this did not work.

Kevin had problems with his electrical appliances. The fridge, water heater and power meter all vibrated. He purchased a new fridge, and it was just as bad. When the fridge was moved to the new house, the vibrations were gone. ...

Kevin noted, “All we ever had here was peace and quiet, and poverty. Now we only have poverty.” ...

We toured the wind farm site. Initially the winds were 12-14 knots. Downwind at 500 meters there was a loud rhythmic whooshing sound coming from each of the turbines that could be easily identified with their rotation. At least three or four turbines could be heard at once. The sounds were out of sync and confused. At 300 meters each turbine was very noisy from any direction. There is absolutely no way you could live next to a turbine at this distance. We stood at the base. There were many sounds. Electrical high pitched humming, the deep whoosh of the sails or rotors as they sweep past every 5 seconds, a steady swish of the rotor tips, which are cutting through the air at 240 kilometers per hour. When the wind changed, the rotors made a sound like a jet engine taking off, until they were in position again. ...

We went 1 km downwind and the loud rhythmic sounds could be heard from various turbines at different speeds, again, all out of sync with each other. A curiosity for a few minutes, but you could never live with this noise.

But never mind all that, because the PEI government hired a firm to measure the noise level at Dwayne's house and found that the noise from the turbines meets Canadian guidelines. Clearly, those guidelines are meaningless, because the evidence is that the noise is indeed intrusive and harmful.

The family of Nova Scotian Daniel d'Entremont, of Pubnico Point, similarly had to abandon their home. And they were similarly assured by government consultants that there was actually no problem.

But of course, there is a problem. But governments at every level are working to deny it to protect an industry whose dark side is beginning to catch up with it. A government that is no longer interested in protecting its people has more than lost its way. It no longer has a right to govern.

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

What's wrong with an RPS

Dear Congressman Peter Welch (Vt.) --

Your concern about climate change is not served by your sponsorship of H.R. 969 to establish a national RPS.

Since most of the lobbying in favor of this bill is by the industry group American Wind Energy Association, we can assume that most of the 20% renewables would be from wind. Wind on the grid is problematic, because of its high variability and significant unpredictability. It can not provide capacity, so it can not replace other plants. And its ramping and startup burden on those plants causes them to burn more fuel, which cancels to a great extent their being used less (if they are not simply switched to "spinning standby" -- burning fuel but not generating electricity).

Thus, a utility may provide 20% of its electricity from wind, but without anywhere near a corresponding reduction in fossil fuel burning.

Unlike the Safe Climate Act of 2007, H.R. 969 will not reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is unlikely even to reduce their growth significantly.

Please reconsider your sponsorship of H.R. 969 and vote AGAINST it.

[Track the bill at govtrack.us.]

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

Worldwatch makes erroneous carbon savings claims for wind

A July 25 press release from the Worldwatch Institute claims that "2006 Wind installations offset more than 40 million tons of CO₂":

Calculations are based on U.S. data: average capacity factor for new wind power capacity (34%, from American Wind Energy Association); average capacity factor for coal-fired power plants (72%, from North American Electric Reliability Council - NAERC); average CO₂ emissions from U.S. coal-fired power plants (0.95 kg/kWh, from U.S. Energy Information Administration); and average coal-fired power plant capacity (318 megawatts, from NAERC).

There are two big flaws in Worldwatch's calculation.

First, a more objective source than the industry itself for the average capacity factor for wind energy facilities in the U.S. is the U.S. Energy Information Administration. According to their Annual Energy Outlook 2007, the capacity factor for wind was 21% in 2005. The AWEA's figures of 34% is promotional spiel and not based on actual data.

Second, there are other sources of electricity on the grid besides coal, including relatively cleaner-burning natural gas and carbon-free nuclear and hydro. At the least, the relative contributions of these sources must be considered. The renewable energy certifier Green-E, has recently proposed to value renewable energy output in terms of actual greenhouse gas emissions from the equivalent output by the rest of the grid.

By Green-E's calculations, the total greenhouse gas (not just CO₂) emissions for different grid regions range from about 1,000 lbs/MWh generated to almost 2,200 lbs/MWh, or 0.47 kg/kWh for new (since 2000) facilities in the Southwest to 0.99 kg/kWh for all non-baseload facilities in the Midwest. The average among all regions in the U.S. for wind's theoretical equivalence according to Green-E is 0.66 kg/kWh.

Then there is the complication of how a highly variable and significantly unpredictable source such as wind actually affects the grid. Obviously, it can't replace any building of new capacity, because the grid still needs to be able to supply power when the wind isn't blowing. Its ability to reduce emissions from those other sources, particularly fossil fuel–fired sources, is also problematic for several reasons.

First, extra ramping and startups cause more fuel to be burned, with more emissions, cutting into whatever savings might have been achieved by using them less. Second, plants that can't ramp quickly may be switched to "spinning standby", in which they don't generate electricity but continue to burn fuel and create steam to be ready to switch back to generation when the wind dies. And third, all sources on the grid are not equally involved in the balancing of wind's variability. Hydro is the first choice to be ramped down, with no carbon savings, and natural gas plants are the second, with much less carbon savings than if coal were reduced.

In addition, the high cost per installed megawatt of wind reflects the energy required in its manufacture, transport, and construction. It may take several years before the theoretical carbon savings from a facility's output allows it to break even.

But now look again at what Worldwatch, with its very flawed formula, claims for wind: "Already, the 43 million tons of carbon dioxide displaced by the new wind plants installed last year equaled more than 5 percent of the year’s growth in global emissions. If the wind market quadruples over the next nine years -- a highly plausible scenario -- wind power could be reducing global emissions growth by 20 percent in 2015."

Global carbon emissions will continue to grow substantially, but not quite so much as they might without 300,000 MW (requiring 23,000 square miles) of new industrial wind energy facilities. That's pathetic even before considering the flaws in their calculation.

With the likes of Worldwatch watching out for it, the world indeed needs to watch out.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

How forest friendly is Karnataka's Wind Energy?

Ameen writes from Tumkur City, India (click the title of this post):

Among the areas where wind turbines have been erected in Karnataka are the hills and highlands of eastern parts of Chitradurga district and in western parts of Tumkur district. We saw these windmills first hand this month and I am sad to say that these windmills have had a very immediate negative impact in the forests where they have been setup.

1. Each such wind mill has a concrete base of at least 30 feet by 30 feet.
   
2. Each one of these has an individual road.
   
3. Hundreds of trees have been removed to accomodate these giant "fans".
   
4. The transportation of giant equipment requires huge trucks and causes enormous disturbance to the local flora and fauna.

This way almost every hill top of the 273 Sq. km. Mari Kanive state forest and other reserve forests along Tumkur-Chitradurga border has just been devastated. The building of these roads has also opened up the forests for tree looters and the situation according to a local forest watcher is "just out of control in Mari Kanive forests". These wind mills are atop the hills that extend for hundreds of kilometres north, up to Gadag district.

Due to their destructive nature, there already have been protests against the setting up of wind farms in the Western Ghats of Karnataka, namely Bababudan Giris (adjoining Bhadra Tiger Reserve) and Kudremukh National Park.

As a nature lover I have opposed hydro dams as being detrimental to forests. But, by witnessing the damage done by wind farms in Karnataka's forests, I doubt if wind energy in our country is really that green.

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

Corporatism

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism -- ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."

--Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
"Message to Congress on Curbing Monopolies",
April 29, 1938

Q & A: Wind Energy

The president of National Wind Watch sent us these answers to questions recently posed by a student in Texas.

1.  Most of the prevailing literature on wind energy has been relatively positive, can you comment as to why your organization has chosen to take an oppositional approach?

Answer:  Most of the prevailing literature on wind energy is wishful thinking. If you read it objectively, you begin to notice that all claims of success (other than sales figures) are not backed up by actual data. This is combined with a tendency to dismiss adverse impacts as insignificant or unlikely. Faced with the evidence of adverse impacts, many advocates of wind energy simply deny them. After a while, one realizes that the arguments for large-scale wind energy are for the most part intellectually dishonest and unable to withstand scrutiny.

Since there is little (if any) evidence of good from wind energy, it is our duty to oppose the fruitless and extensive industrialization of rural and wild places by the wind industry.

2.  As of late, Texas has taken the lead in wind energy production. Reports have highlighted the beneficial impact -- both economically and environmentally -- of this relatively recent wind energy "boom". The vast expanse of Texas lands seem ideal for wind farms. So, where is the problem?

Answer:  Where is the proof of these claimed economic and environmental benefits?

Economically, there may be local effects of rents paid to landowners and pay-offs to communities, but that is all paid for by federal and state taxpayers and local ratepayers, who must still pay for keeping up the rest of the grid as much as before along with the added burden of backing up the wind turbines and overbuilding transmission lines to accomodate their occasional surges and shunt their unpredictable supply somewhere it might be needed or until it dissipates as heat.

The environmental benefit is presumably in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which is assumed (though again without proof) to outweigh local negative impacts on wildlife and landscape. But the savings of greenhouse gas emissions that are claimed are theoretical only and ignore many aspects of the grid that complicate such a possible effect -- namely, an intermittent, variable, unpredictable source such as wind has to itself be balanced to maintain a steady voltage on the line. This adds inefficiencies to the use of fuel by other sources (from more frequent starting or ramping) or may require other sources to "stand by" -- burning fuel to keep the steam ready to generate electricity when the wind drops. In addition, hydropower is the most ideal source to balance wind, or wind's variations are simply allowed to modulate the line voltage within acceptable tolerances -- either case obviously does not affect the burning of fossil fuels.

Even in pro-wind theory, wind energy will never have a significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions. In isolated systems, even the AWEA claims only that wind will slightly slow the growth of emissions, not reduce them. Globally, wind would barely keep up with expanding electricity needs to maintain its less than 0.5% contribution, according to the International Energy Agency's modeling to 2030 ("Renewables in Global Energy Supply", January 2007). Considering that electricity is but one source of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, even the most hopeful theoretical benefit fades toward nothing. In reality, it's likely even less.

Until a significant global environmental benefit can be proven, we must act on the assumption that the local environmental effects can not be justified.

3.  Recently, the Texas General Land Office received funding and permission to start testing and research for offshore wind energy production and technology. What are your views on offshore wind farming?

Answer:  While siting them far offshore mitigates the impact on human neighbors, impacts on seascape and wildlife remain (besides interfering with birds, the turbines' low-frequency noise is likely to disturb fish and sea mammals), as do the very low possible benefits. Offshore construction is more difficult and expensive, and wear and tear on the turbines is much greater -- promising to make offshore wind even more of a boondoggle than onshore.

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

Wind turbine syndrome

To the editor, Hays (Kan.) Daily News:

Sam Zwengler apparently only sees (and hears) what he wants to hear ("Still looking for syndrome evidence," letter, July 14).

He cites a recent article in Nature, implying it as a peer-reviewed study of the impacts of living near wind energy facilities. In fact, it is only a news-section piece about the Spanish developer Acciona. Despite Zwengler's assertion, the article says nothing about residents living near the machines.

If he accepts that puff piece as scientific evidence that no ill effects exist, it is no wonder that he can only deny the increasingly frequent reports of serious health effects caused by wind turbine noise.

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

Half a percent of conservation, or 60,000 square miles of industrial wind turbines?

"Renewables in Global Energy Supply", International Energy Agency (IEA), January 2007:

Further expansion of wind power will promote significant reductions in greenhouse gases. (pp. 25-26)

The Alternative Policy Scenario presented in this year's World Energy Outlook ... shows how the global energy market could evolve if countries around the world were to adopt a set of policies and measures that they are now considering and might be expected to implement over the projection period. (p. 12)

In 2004, according to the IEA, wind generated 0.47% of the world's electricity, namely, 82 terawatt-hours* (TWh, or 1 million megawatt-hours) out of 17,450 TWh (a figure that is found in another IEA publication, "Key World Energy Statistics", 2006). They project that wind generation will grow about 18-fold by 2030, to 1,440 TWh (p. 12).

But how much will total electricity generation also increase by 2030? On page 13, they state that the share of all renewables will increase from 18% in 2004 to more than 25% of all electricity in 2030, and that the absolute amount will increase from 3,179 TWh in 2004 to 7,775 TWh in 2030. As 3,179 is 18% of 17,450, 7,775 is 25% of 31,100.

Wind's share of electricity generation, therefore, will rise from 0.47% in 2004 to only 4.6% in 2030.

Considering the destruction of landscape and communities, of wildlife and human health, by sprawling wind energy facilities, the responsible choice is obviously to increase conservation by that slight amount and say NO to big wind.

*According to the AWEA, 7,976 MW of wind capacity was added worldwide in 2004, for a total at the end of the year of 47,317 MW. The average for the year from the capacity at the end of 2003 (39,341 MW) to that at the end of 2004, therefore, is 42,329 MW. An output of 82 million MWh (average rate of 9,361 MW) represents 22% of that capacity. At a 22% capacity factor, 1,440 TWh would require an installed capacity of 750,000 MW. Requiring at least 50 acres per installed megawatt, that would be a total of 60,000 square miles. (Not to mention the millions of tons of materials, miles of roads and transmission lines, cement, etc.)

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

Bush et al. crimes are institutional, not going away

From "The Grand Inquisitors", by David Cole, New York Review of Books, July 19, 2007:

Schwarz and Huq's Unchecked and Unbalanced provides a more structural critique of executive excess in the post–September 11 era. Presidential aggrandizement, they remind us, was not invented by George W. Bush. In 1975 and 1976, Congress's Church Committee, on which Schwarz served as legal counsel, revealed extensive abuses of executive power during the cold war, including widespread illegal spying on Americans. Schwarz and Huq suggest that the problem is not just that people like Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, and Gonzales have been in power, but that institutional flaws make it all too easy for such officials to get away with unconstitutional initiatives in times of crisis. The Church Committee diagnosed four such flaws that encouraged the cold war abuses: ambiguous laws and instructions; implicit orders from high officials to violate the law; secrecy; and feeble congressional oversight. Schwarz and Huq demonstrate that despite many post-Watergate reforms, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the same institutional factors are central to understanding the Bush administration's recent torture, rendition, and warrantless wiretapping policies.

In short, where [Joe] Conason [It Can Happen Here] stresses the actions of power-hungry politicians and enabling lawyers, Schwarz and Huq emphasize the importance of structural features in the organization of our federal government. Both diagnoses capture a significant part of the story. In some sense, we have had the worst of all possible combinations: Ashcroft and Gonzales, not to mention Bush and Cheney, came to power just when they could do the most damage. They arrived in office with strong ideological commitments to unchecked power, and they exercised authority at a time when the concept of restraint was most vulnerable. If Conason's focus on particular politicians and officials is right, we might expect the problems to subside with a new administration. But if, as I believe, Schwarz and Huq's structural criticism is equally if not more correct, the problems will continue, albeit perhaps less acutely, well after President Bush leaves office.

human rights, anarchism

Europe drying up for wind energy developers

'Wind energy in the U.S. "is like Europe was years ago," says Xavier Viteri, head of Iberdrola's renewable-energy business. "There's a lot of room for development there ...."' (Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2007, page A1)

That raises the question, Why isn't Europe like Europe was? Clearly, the momentum has slowed. Even "showcase" Denmark hasn't added new wind capacity since 2004. Doubts have arisen about the utility of wind energy on the grid. Adverse impacts (to wildlife, landscape, and human health) can no longer be denied. Instead of repeating Europe's mistakes, the U.S. and Canada ought to consider the limits of wind energy that European countries have already discovered.

There's a good reason Iberdrola and other European wind developers are moving their efforts to North America. Europe doesn't want them any more. Let's learn from that experience instead of repeating the same boondoggle.

wind power, wind energy

Health benefits of moderate drinking

"An extensive body of data shows concordant J-shaped associations between alcohol intake and a variety of adverse health outcomes, including coronary heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, congestive heart failure, stroke, dementia, Raynaud’s phenomenon, and all-cause mortality." O’Keefe JH, Bybee KA, Lavie CJ, "Alcohol and cardiovascular health: the razor-sharp double-edged sword", Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 2007;50(11) [in press].

Here are some graphs showing the "J-shaped curve", i.e., a drink or two every day reduces the risk of the outcome in question, but more than a few drinks returns one to the same level of risk as with abstention and then increases the risk.

These graphs examine only the effect of the alcohol consumed, not other benefits such as those documented for red wine.

One "drink" contains 10-15 grams of alcohol (ethanol): approximately 12 oz. of beer, 4-5 oz. of wine, 1.5 oz. 80-proof liquor, or 1 oz. 100-proof liquor.

The relationship of daily alcohol consumption to the relative risk of all-cause mortality in men and women. DiCastelnuovo A, Castanzo S, Bagnardi V, Donati MB, Iacoviello L, de Gaetano G, "Alcohol dosing and total mortality in men and women", Archives of Internal Medicine 2006;166:2437–45.



Relationship between daily alcohol and ischemic stroke. This was fully adjusted for the usual stroke factors. OR = odds ratio. Sacco RL, Elkind M, Boden-Albala B, et al., "The protective effect of moderate alcohol consumption on ischemic stroke", JAMA: the Journal of the American Medical Association 1999;281:53–60.



Alcohol intake and incidence of new type 2 diabetes. Koppes LL, Dekker JM, Hendriks HF, Bouter LM, Heine RJ, "Moderate alcohol consumption lowers the risk of type 2 diabetes: a meta-analysis of prospective observational studies", Diabetes Care 2005;28:719–25.

Also:  Bell S, Daskalopoulou M, Rapsomaniki E, et al., "Association between clinically recorded alcohol consumption and initial presentation of 12 cardiovascular diseases: population based cohort study using linked health records", The BMJ 2017;356 (Published 22 March 2017). doi: 10.1136/bmj.j909

Ridge Protectors Country Auction, July 12

AMAZINGLY HIGH QUALITY ANTIQUES AND OTHER ITEMS KEEP COMING IN FOR THE AUCTION IN SHEFFIELD THIS COMING THURSDAY AT 5:00!

REMEMBER YOU CAN HAVE SUPPER IN ONE OF OUR FOUR TENTS, LISTEN TO FIDDLING MUSIC, BUY FROM THE TREASURE TENT AND BID ON SILENT AUCTION ITEMS AS WELL!!

Hundreds of wonderful advertising ephemera, 1890s to 1900s; 1760 engraving of England/Wales framed & matted; 3 prs. important early andirons, 18th & early 19th cent, ornate brass & iron; Audubon folio of 26 prints, 1950s; hanging knife sharpening stone in tiger maple case. c. 1840; primitive lift-top desk/till, orig. green paint, c. 1850; Reed & Barton and Webster &Wilcox ornate silver plate trays; Rosenthal demitasse chocolate set for 6; 1870 Waterbury brass bucket 8" h x 12" diam., hand wrought bail; Bohemian lustre electrified mantle lamp, castle and deer pattern, orig. cut glass drops; Cape Cod lighter; 19th cent. sled in blue paint with flower; 2 Heidi Schoop peasant/Dutch girl planter/vases; early primitive rope bed, Mercersburg, PA; cultured pearls, with appraisals, 16" strand and 14K gold ring; Flexible Flyer sled, c. 1940; folio containing prints by Winslow Homer, Michelangelo, da Vinci, Delacroix; cut glass cruet, sawtooth & zipper design; cut overlay purple & clear bottle; advertising box, Colman's mustard, Paris Exposition 1878; vintage ephemera including ornate Valentines, postcards, paper dolls, and children's books; Harrison Fisher book "Beauties" 1913; oil on canvas, boy holding puppies 26" x 14.5"; ornate Victorian walnut tapestry chair; grain-painted frame with watercolor of baby; landscape, oil on canvas 16" x 20" by Walker; Dutch home scene print in good gilt frame; claw-foot bathtub; crystal frame and starburst centerpiece; 2 Art Deco mesh evening bags; wooden library ladder, ornate early spool bed, and much much more.

other items coming in:

2 matching trestle end tables, yellow birch, VT made, arts & crafts style
2 primitive strawberry crates
3 paintings of the same mystery woman, signed E. Mardeff, 1916, oil on canvas
Colored lithograph print young boy holding dog
Ogee veneer frame 26" x 17"
Guilt edged frame with wooden matte 25" x 18"
Oriental watercolor, figural garden scene with original teakwood frame
Contemporary oil on board, Fridtjof Schroder, "Beauty and the Beast"
Animal landscape, oil on board, signed William Mearns, 23" x 17"
Zeiss Ikon Contaflex 35 mm camera, light meter, flash, lenses, original manuals
Pictorial book of New York, 1905, Whittemann
Pictorial book of Western Pacific Railway
Group of vintage magazines c. 1890-1900 The Delineator, Babyland, others
Group of vintage children's book, Raphael Tuck and others
Period pastel, peasant girl and dog, c. 1895 24" x 18"
Silver plate, William Rogers, round serving plate
Period magazines, Collier's and Life
Still life, oil on board, c. 1940 9" x 7"
Detailed vintage porcelain figural planter
Venetian gold glass cornucopia
3 piece group colored blown glass, small, highly decorative, floral
Sawyer print, Willoughby Lake, VT
Pressed glass footed compote 8" diam
Portable Singer sewing machine, c. 1940 with original table
3 nesting tables, c. 1900 Duncan Phyfe Style
Collapsible wooden sewing table
2 large leather suitcases, c. 1930s
Brass spittoon
Big crock with lid for pickles or sauerkraut
Dining room and foyer matching chandeliers
Hand-crafted big, hope chest by Mike Michaud and Sean Foley
Lamp by Highbeams
Antique Dollhouse (made out of old wooden "sharp cheese" boxes)
Antique spool bed
School desk with lift top, inkwell and attached swiveling chair
Dark mission-style arm chair with cane backs restored
2 mission style rocking chairs
Old piano stool, upholstered
Small red painted Sheridan chair
3 canebottom chairs, one fully restored
2 mule-ear ladderback chairs with cane seats
White painted splint seat (splat? seat?) low chair
Antique Kilim runner in browns, tans and a little blue. 38" x 109"
Victorian leather settee for a gentleman's library

P.S. More sterling silver has come in, an inlaid chess table, Irish porcelain, a practically new horse cart, brass candelabra, Victorian needlepoint lady's arm chair, wonderful rustic porch chairs made by Gerry and Paul Bednarz, rustic wooden out building (maybe 15 feet x 10 feet?), Lenox china, a 1900 clothes wringer on a wooden stand in working order, handmade baskets by Linda Kozak, cedar hope chest by Sean Foley and Mike Michaud, plus at least 30 more items donated I apologize for leaving out.

Vermont

Reduce your carbon footprint by replacing meat

Today's New York Times "Style" section takes a dubious look at "ecoconsumption". ("Green consumerism" is an oxymoron.) It includes a sidebar of more substantive suggestions from The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook for reducing one's carbon footprint. Number 1:

Whenever possible, replace meat with soy or other vegetable protein in your diet. It takes eight times as much energy to produce a pound of meat as it does a pound of tofu.

environment, environmentalism

War is for making money

"I think most wars are to make money, and this one's no different. There are a lot of companies over there making a ton of money, and the only ones suffering are the soldiers and the Iraqi people."

--Stuart Ashley

The Vandals that support industrial wind energy

This is of a piece with the industry they support. (Click on the title of this post.)

Also see:
Pro-wind violence on Skye
Industrial exploitation in Mexico and China
Forest dwellers of India losing their land to wind energy development (like the Zapotecas in Oaxaca, the Maori in New Zealand, the Aborigines in Australia, and rural communities everywhere)

This is a predatory effort of industrial possession of the last peaceful places, all under a "green" cloak, the engines of the juggernaut fanned by hysterical "environmentalists" clamoring for the symbolic triumph of giant erections waving from every hilltop while ignoring their impotence and the real destruction below.

It is a senselessly violent gesture in the name of -- and very much against -- the environment and people.

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

Cape Wind insignificant player in energy future

To the Editor, New Yorks Times Book Review:

The subtitle of Wendy Williams and Robert Whitcomb's book about Cape Wind claims that it is a "battle for our energy future." But wind will never be a significant -- let alone major -- player, for the simple fact that the wind is inconstant and can't be called up on demand.

In his June 17 review of their book, Robert Sullivan repeats the misleading impression that Cape Wind's 468 megawatts of capacity would also be its contribution. In fact, its average production would be only a fifth to a third of that, much of the time when it is not needed (at night) and often idle when demand is at its peak, as on hot summer days.

In other words, the grid would still have to depend on the same sources as it did before, with very little impact on conventional fuel use. In fact, the company behind Cape Wind is also trying to build a new quick-response diesel-fired plant, which would be sorely needed to balance the variable and intermittent production of its wind turbines. An offshore wind energy facility proposed in Delaware would be tied to a new natural gas plant for similar reasons. Thus wind drives a need for more fossil fuel use, not less.

Citing wind's rare peaks, as Sullivan does, only underscores its inconstancy. Wind development in Denmark has virtually halted since 2004, because even there its benefits appear to be elusive.

Yet the impacts are substantial and increasingly documented. Cape Wind would fill 24 square miles of shoal -- an important ecosystem -- with 440-feet-high moving machines. Each set of "slowly" rotating blades (made of petroleum-based composites) would be sweeping a vertical air space of 2.4 acres at tip speeds up to 200 mph. There is no question that such a machine would creates noise and vibration (despite the hundreds of gallons of oil in each housing). Inevitable impacts are obvious -- not just aesthetically, but especially on bird and sea life.

Sullivan says that criticism "has been mitigated by increasingly efficient turbines and more bird-sensitive placement." That is industry spin. Wind turbines have simply got bigger, not more efficient. Their space requirements and blade area per megawatt remain essentially constant. Last month, the first-year report of bird and bat deaths at the sprawling "Maple Ridge" facility on the Tug Hill plateau in Lewis County, N.Y., was released. Even that company-backed study estimated that 2,200 to 4,094 birds and bats were killed in 5 months by 120 turbines. That would extrapolate to 8,580 to 15,967 birds and bats killed by the currently operating 195 turbines over a whole year. Efficient indeed.

The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound regrettably opens itself to the NIMBY charge by trying to promote other locations. But many of its members and others fighting Cape Wind recognize that the substantial negative impacts of wind energy facilities anywhere cannot be justified by the very small benefit they may provide.

NIMBY more typically describes the developers and facilitators of these facilities. They are not the ones whose peace and quiet is destroyed. They are not the ones who can no longer sleep in their own homes or enjoy their back yards, who develop migraines, dizziness, and worse from the strobing shadows and noise. A team in Portugal is currently studying evidence of vibroacoustic disease in people who live near wind turbines.

Cape Wind is unique in threatening an enclave of the rich rather than the usual rural poor or otherwise disenfranchised (such as indigenous peoples of Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, India). But the reasons for opposing it are the same. This battle is being fought in thousands of communities around the world, for very good reasons. Giant wind turbines are a symptom of our energy problems, not a solution.

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

Destroy the environment in the name of saving it

The planning committee of the Carmarthenshire County Council (Wales) voted strongly in favor of a 16-turbine wind energy facility on Mynydd y Betws near Ammanford. According to their June 20 press release, "The scheme is for the erection of 16 wind turbine generators, an anemometer mast, electrical substation and control building, electrical connections, access roads, temporary construction compound and borrow pits. ... 16 turbines to be sited across Mynydd y Betws in a broadly double, east-west row, over a distance of four kilometres."

They approved the scheme even as they admitted it conflicted with Council planning policies concerning landscape, the environment, amenity, and open space.

Head of planning Eifion Bowen explained later: "Whilst recognising its significant impact on the landscape, the committee recognised its obligation to meet Welsh Assembly targets for renewable energy generation and the reduction in carbon emissions."

And if carbon emissions do not go down ... ? Who will restore what was destroyed?

Visit Betws Mountain Preservation Guide.

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

Wind industry lies about bird kills

"125 birds and 326 bats killed by 195 turbines in 2006" (Renewable Access News and AWEA spokesman Thomas O. Gray)

As if their true colors weren't already revealed in their opposition to federal review to protect wildlife, this shameless misreporting of the first-year study of bird and bat deaths at the "Maple Ridge" facility on Tug Hill in Lewis County, N.Y., shows them off brilliantly.

Pages 41 and 42 of the report clearly present the adjusted totals (accounting for scavenger removal, search efficiency, and proportion of towers searched) for 120 (not 195) turbines during the 5-month (not 12-month) study as 372 to 1,151 birds and 1,824 to 2,943 bats.

Ten tower sites were searched every day, 10 sites were searched every 3 days, and 30 sites were searched every 7 days. "Incidental" (unscheduled) finds were ignored.

Finally, the researchers (agents of Curry & Kerlinger, the industry's favorite bird surveyors) clearly used a methodology meant to provide the lowest plausible figures; the scientifically established Winkelman and Everaert formulas are not mentioned and would likely have revealed much higher numbers.

Even the Curry & Kerlinger numbers extrapolated to 195 turbines over an entire year mean that the Tug Hill facility is killing at least 1,451 to 4,489 birds and 7,114 to 11,478 bats annually.

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

Working towards acceptance of wind

A concerned citizen writes:

To be quick and to the point, harnessing free wind makes way more sense than buying oil, burning it and polluting the planet.

What can someone do as an individual to help push wind power along? People resist it due to aesthetics I think but I want to know more and work towards acceptance of wind.

The response:

The first thing you should consider is that only a small fraction of the electricity in the U.S. is generated by burning oil. And most of that is sludge left over from gasoline refining.

But such oil-burning plants would probably be used more if substantial wind energy were added to the grid, because they can respond quickly enough to balance the fluctuations of wind-generated electricity. In fact, the company behind Cape Wind is trying to build such a plant along with the wind turbines in Nantucket Sound.

The other fossil fuel whose use would grow with wind energy is natural gas, which plants also can respond quickly (and much more efficiently than oil-fired plants). In Delaware, the proposed off-shore wind energy facility would be tied with a new natural gas plant.

Of course, new plants apparently have to be built anyway as the population or the economy or consumer and industry demand continues to grow, and if wind can sometimes fill in for them, then that may reduce the use of them somewhat. But that is hardly a move away from fossil fuels. Even the American Wind Energy Association can say only that wind will slightly reduce the growth of new fossil-fuel-fired plants.

The above is only the beginning of a slew of problems with large-scale wind on the grid. Aesthetics may be the most immediate problem for most people (since wind requires wide open spaces or long undeveloped mountain ridges -- the very places that we need to fight to keep unindustrialized), but the list of adverse impacts is long.

Whereas the list of benefits is regrettably short.

Here is a challenge, before you dismiss these arguments. I myself once assumed wind energy was good, but I am a science editor and began to notice that there was no clear evidence of its reducing the use of other fuels. The "penetration" figure (percentage of total generation produced by wind) that is usually provided is meaningless, because there are so many other factors operating in the power balance of the grid (spinning standby, line loss, ramping inefficiencies, variation tolerance, and so on).

The crucial data are:

fuel consumption per demand after wind energy installation
vs.
fuel consumption per demand before
Try to find such data showing a real difference. In four years of involvement with this issue, I have yet to find even a hint of such evidence, particularly in a large grid -- not even from Denmark.

The fact is, the more people learn about wind energy (from sources other than the industry sales material), the less accepting they are.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont

Renewable Portfolio Standard: good for the environment or just for industry?

The U.S. Senate, like many state legislatures, is considering a "renewable portfolio standard", or RPS, as part of new energy law.

What is the goal of the RPS?

Is it to encourage the development of renewable energy sources (at least for electricity)? It does that, of course.

Is it meant to lower carbon and other emissions from fossil fuels? That is what its proponents say.

Yet there is no requirement for such a result.

Although the purported goal is reduced emissions, an RPS dictates only new building. Some of the mandated new sources may indeed effect reduced emissions from other sources, but that is not at all guaranteed. For example, wind energy on the grid has never been shown to cause a significant reduction in fossil fuel use.

And since wind energy is the only current renewable source that can be built to substantial capacity, an RPS is essentially a directive for huge amounts of new wind energy, with an implied free pass from proper environmental and community review.

If a utility builds giant wind energy facilities whose output equals, say, 15% of its average load, but it still maintains and builds "conventional" facilities as much as otherwise -- and in fact burns as much fossil fuels as before -- then what has the RPS achieved?

It has only ensured a greater movement of the people's money into the accounts of big energy developers. They, and the politicians they support, can claim to be "green" as they laugh all the way to the bank.

But the RPS has not reduced carbon or other emissions.

If that public good is in fact the goal, then that should be what the law requires: a carbon reduction standard.

Let the realities of energy production and conservation determine how that standard is achieved, not the spiels of industry lobbyists.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont

"The Greenwashing Of America"

From an essay by Philip Mattera, published June 6 at Tompaine.com (click the title of this post):

Today the term “greenwash” is rarely uttered, and differences in positions between corporate giants and mainstream environmental groups are increasingly difficult to discern. Everywhere one looks, enviros and executives have locked arms and are marching together to save the planet. Is this a cause for celebration or dismay?

Answering this question begins with the recognition that companies do not all enter the environmental fold in the same way. Here are some of their different paths:

• Defeat. Some companies did not embrace green principles on their own—they were forced to do so after being successfully targeted by aggressive environmental campaigns. Home Depot abandoned the sale of lumber harvested in old-growth forests several years ago after being pummeled by groups such as Rainforest Action Network. Responding to similar campaign pressure, Boise Cascade also agreed to stop sourcing from endangered forests and J.P. Morgan Chase agreed to take environmental impacts into account in its international lending activities. Dell started taking computer recycling seriously only after it was pressed to do so by groups such as the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.

• Diversion. It is apparent that Wal-Mart is using its newfound green consciousness as a means of diverting public attention away from its dismal record in other areas, especially the treatment of workers. In doing so, it hopes to peel environmentalists away from the broad anti-Wal-Mart movement. BP’s emphasis on the environment was no doubt made more urgent by the need to repair an image damaged by allegations that a 2005 refinery fire in Texas that killed 15 people was the fault of management. To varying degrees, many other companies that have jumped on the green bandwagon have sins they want to public to forget.

• Opportunism. There is so much hype these days about protecting the environment that many companies are going green simply to earn more green. There are some market moves, such as Toyota’s push on hybrids, that also appear to have some environmental legitimacy. Yet there are also instances of sheer opportunism, such as the effort by Nuclear Energy Institute to depict nukes as an environmentally desirable alternative to fossil fuels. Not to mention surreal cases such as the decision by Britain’s BAE Systems to develop environmentally friendly munitions, including low-toxin rockets and lead-free bullets.

environment, environmentalism

In love with wind energy money

To the editor, On Earth, the magazine of the Natural Resources Defense Council:

According to Joseph D'Agnese's Summer 2007 cover story and the accompanying box, people are in love with large-scale wind energy only because they are getting money. But what does such taxpayer largesse do for the rest of us? Does wind energy on the grid provide energy that actually reduces the burning of fossil fuels or splitting of atoms to a meaningful degree? An answer to that question was notably missing from D'Agnese's love note. Even in the showcase example of Denmark, one is unable to find a significant effect on the use of other fuels from saturating the countryside with wind turbines.

It is no wonder that "lucrative subsidies are drying up in Europe". European governments want renewable energy, but with wind they have learned that they still have to build and rely on conventional plants as much as ever. Wind is fickle. Either the grid operates as if it isn't there, absorbing its fluctuations in a large enough system (as Denmark apparently does with its large international connections), or it must provide costly back-up to balance it.

Since the U.S. is comparatively late to the game, we ought to learn from Europe's example, not blindly follow it, however much such unquestioning enthusiasm might delight the developers now seeking holdings here.

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

Excuse me while I kiss the sky goodbye

Bob Lucas of Ohio has written a rousing song about wind energy development. Click on the title of this post for the page at National Wind Watch from which it can be downloaded.

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

Current events

From Ironic Times:

The TV station whose license was not renewed by Hugo Chavez, causing protests around the world: A ) has won international journalism awards for its even-handed coverage of politics in Venezuela. B ) is widely respected for in-depth reporting of current events affecting citizens of the Lost City of Atlantis. C ) preempted regular programs for two days prior to the coup attempt against the democratically elected government in 2002 in order to broadcast wall-to-wall calls for Chavez to be removed, refused to show thousands of his supporters who poured into the streets to demand his return, and sent its owner to pledge support for the coup-installed dictator who had eliminated the Supreme Court, the National Assembly and the Constitution. Hint: that guy Chavez sure can bear a grudge. The U.S. government is exerting enormous pressure on the Iraqi parliament to pass a law regarding the disposition of the nation’s oil riches which would: A ) fairly distribute the wealth between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds living in different regions. B ) even-handedly apportion the windfall among competing interests located on Mars, Pluto and Venus. C ) Give 81% of Iraqi oil to multi-national oil companies. Hint: our invasion was originally code-named Operation Iraqi Liberation.

CORRECTION

We erred in ascribing the term "enhanced interrogation" to the Bush Administration. In fact the term was originally used to describe interrogation methods used against insurgents and other civilians by the Nazis in 1942, and later judged to be war crimes. The techniques, and the arguments to justify their use, however, were the same as those used by the Bush Administration. We apologize for any confusion caused by our mistake.

In the company of wind turbines

A correspondent wrote to us recently:

A neighbor of mine visited Fenner [N.Y.] and stopped to talk to a couple of people
as he was driving around.

One was a farmer who was standing at the side of the road talking with
someone. The farmer has a working farm with several [wind turbines on it]. He said
his only complaint was that for the last three years he has been paid only
half of what he was owed by the company. Our neighbor wanted to ask more
questions, but the person the farmer was talking to was becoming agitated.

And yesterday's news contained this related item from Scotland (brought to our attention by National Wind Watch):

Anger over wind farm cash delay

Hundreds of thousands of pounds promised to communities as a recompense for living in the shadow of Sutherland's only operational wind farm have yet to be paid, it emerged this week.

The £25 million Beinn Tharsuinn wind farm, straddling the Sutherland/Easter Ross border, came on stream two years ago, but local people have yet to see a penny of the community benefit pledged. ...

wind power, wind energy

The Green Masquerade

[excerpts -- click on title for complete interview at Counterpunch]

Alan Maass: Among a number of politicians, including Democrats, the concerns about global warming seem to have become an excuse for talk about resurrecting nuclear power.

Jeffrey St. Clair: That comes out of the Gore shop. Anyone who has the slightest familiarity with Gore's political biography will know that he's his father's son, and his father was one of the prime movers behind the Tennessee Valley Authority, behind nuclear power in Appalachia, and the Oak Ridge nuclear lab. Gore Junior was their congressional protector as a congressman and as a senator.

If you go back to Gore's book, Earth in the Balance, behind the scenes of that book is a cooling tower. That's Gore's solution to the global warming crisis -- a world that is clotted with nuclear power plants. If you look at his advisers on global warming while he was vice president, that was their message, too.

Those had been lean times for the nuclear power industry. I think that the Clinton administration could have sealed the nuclear power industry's fate in the U.S. if it had wanted to. But of course, it didn't. They sort of kept them on life support, with a lot of research funding and renewing all the protections.

So is there a renewed faith in nuclear power from the Democrats? Yes. And they now have a justification for it. If you scare yourself into believing that we're going to be having a runaway greenhouse effect, and the only way to stop it is to take immediate action in reducing the burning of fossil fuels, then you're going to be confronted with the argument that a proliferation of nuclear power plants is the fastest way to do that.

Alan Maass: Can you talk about the attitude of the environmental movement toward this corporate greenwashing?

Jeffrey St. Clair: The environmental movement made its deal with the devil at least a decade ago, when they essentially became neoliberal lobby shops. The idea was that if we can't defeat capitalism, if we can't change capitalism, then let's just give in and see if we can use some of the mechanics of the free market in order to tweak the damage done to the environment.

These kinds of seeds were sown in green groups in the early 1980s, but really reached an apogee in Clinton Times.

I don't even think the term greenwashing even applies any more. That was the industry response to the great environmental tragedies of the 1970s, and '80s -- Love Canal, Three Mile Island, Bhopal, the Exxon Valdez. But they don't have to do that any more, because essentially, corporations like BP and environmental groups like the World Wildlife Fund and the Environmental Defense Fund share the same basic mindset.

You can't distinguish between, for example, Ikea, one of the world's great predators of rain forests, and the World Wildlife Fund, which is in a joint venture with Ikea -- so Ikea gets a little panda stamp on the lumber cut from primary forests in Indonesia. So greenwashing seems to me to be very passé.

Environmental politics are largely controlled by the foundations -- they control what's discussed and what the major issues are. The foundations are shackled at the hip to the Democratic Party, and the dominant ones are all children of big oil companies. Pew, the Rockefeller Family Fund, W. Alton Jones -- their endowments were the fortunes of big oil.

I was talking to an environmentalist who said that if you want a grant from any of those foundations, you have to have global warming in your agenda.

Now, let's say you're working on fighting chemical companies in Cancer Alley. How do you work global warming into your agenda? Or if you're fighting factory trawlers, which are creating dead zones off the Pacific coast, how do you work global warming into that? But if you can't, then the money dries up.

What it creates is a kind of inchoate state of environmental politics, because I don't think you can build a mass political movement around global warming.

environment, environmentalism, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism, ecoanarchism

Go vegan to help climate, says [U.K.] Government

By Charles Clover, Environment Editor, Telegraph:

It would help tackle the problem of climate change if people ate less meat, according to a Government agency.

A leaked email to a vegetarian campaign group from an Environment Agency official expresses sympathy with the environmental benefits of a vegan diet, which bans dairy products and fish.

The agency also says the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is considering recommending eating less meat as one of the "key environmental behaviour changes" needed to save the planet. ...

The agency's official was responding to an email from the vegan group Viva, which argues that it is more efficient to use land to grow crops for direct consumption by humans rather than feeding them to dairy cows or livestock raised for meat.

The campaign group entered a comment on the Environment Agency's website saying: "Adopting a vegan diet reduces one person's impact on the environment even more than giving up their car or forgoing several plane trips a year! Why aren't you promoting this message as part of your [World Environment Day] campaign?"

An agency official replied: "Whilst potential benefit of a vegan diet in terms of climate impact could be very significant, encouraging the public to take a lifestyle decision as substantial as becoming vegan would be a request few are likely to take up.

"You will be interested to hear that the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is working on a set of key environmental behaviour changes to mitigate climate change. Consumption of animal protein has been highlighted within that work. As a result the issue may start to figure in climate change communications in the future. It will be a case of introducing this gently as there is a risk of alienating the public majority.

"Future Environment Agency communications are unlikely to ever suggest adopting a fully vegan lifestyle, but certainly encouraging people to examine their consumption of animal protein could be a key message."

environment, environmentalism, animal rights, vegetarianism

Wind: corporate "environmentalism" at its worst

To Don Fitz, editor of Synthesis/Regeneration: A Magazine of Green Social Thought and writer of "Consume Like There's No Tomorrow":

The corporate enviro embrace of industrial-scale wind energy is not an exception but fits perfectly in your critique.

As the first section of the essay "A Problem With Wind" concludes, 'wind farms constitute an increase in energy supply, not a replacement. They do not reduce the costs -- environmental, economic, and political -- of other means of energy production. If wind towers do not reduce conventional power use, then their manufacture, transport, and construction only increases the use of dirty energy. The presence of "free and green" wind power may even give people license to use more energy.'

Wind is an intermittent, highly variable, and unpredictable source, so it either requires the building of new quick-response conventionally powered plants for back-up (such as the natural gas plant that would be built to support Delaware's planned off-shore wind facility and the diesel plant that Cape Wind's parent company would build to support that facility) or elaborate and manufacturing-intense storage systems, whose added inefficiencies would seriously cut into wind's already low output.

Since Enron set up the modern wind industry in the 1990s, its only success has been a massive transfer of public funds into private bank accounts.

Wind energy also requires huge amounts of space (60 acres per megawatt, according to the American Wind Energy Association) or clearing and road building on forested mountaintops.

With very rare exceptions, it also represents NIMBY predatory capitalism at its worst. In the U.S. and similar countries, the usual targets for sprawling industrial wind facilities are poor rural communities. Wind has become part of the current strife in Oaxaca, as the governor and president assist the Spanish energy giant Iberdrola in taking the lands of ejidatarios without consent and with very poor compensation. Their interest in erecting hundreds of giant wind turbines in the western hemisphere's most important migratory bird flyway is not to provide energy (which will be all but lost by the time it gets to where it might be needed) but to generate carbon "credits" for Spain.

Not only should big wind not be a focus at the expense of conservation, it should be rejected as a destructive boondoggle.

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

Consume Like There's No Tomorrow

by Don Fitz
April 22, 2007

Would someone please tell the Sierra Club Exec Board that the idea of an "environmentally friendly car" makes as much sense as a "non-violent death penalty?" While the vast majority of those concerned with global warming consider reduction of unneeded production to be at the core of a sane policy, the Sierra Club has endorsed a plan that includes virtually no role for conservation.

In January 2007, the American Solar Energy Society (ASES) released the 180-page document Tackling Climate Change in the U.S. Typical of big enviro analyses, it assumes a corporate-dominated growth economy. Its novelty is its highly technical studies which claim to compute how much CO₂ emissions can be offset by energy efficiency (EE) and renewable energy.

Teaming up with ASES to present the study to Congress, the Sierra Club enthusiastically wrote that "energy efficiency and renewables alone can achieve a 60-80% reduction in global warming emissions by 2050." Adding the key word "alone" in the first paragraph of its release indicated that the Sierra Club wanted to be sure that politicians and corporate donors understood that it has no intention of criticizing the large quantity of unnecessary junk created by corporate America.

What ain't there

Solar power, wind power and EE play vital roles in reducing CO₂. The rub is the role of conservation, or reduction of total production. For "deep greens," the most basic goal is social change that would foster the reduction of energy. For "shallow greens," conservation is, at best, something to give lip service to while tunnel visioning on eco-gadgets.

More blatant than the typical corporate enviromental analysis, the ASES/Sierra report trivializes conservation as "doing without" or "deprivation." It presents a vast array of technological playthings, some of which are quite good and some of which are less than environmental. What is most revealing is what it does not include. It discusses transportation without using the word "bicycle" or "walking."

It looks at efficient building design with no discussion of using empty buildings or designing buildings to last longer than 50 years. The report that Carl Pope boasts is "now the official Sierra Club global warming strategy" has an extended discussion of home heating and cooling without mentioning the word "tree." George Monbiot's recently published Heat concludes that manufacturing a ton of cement creates a ton of CO₂, a fact not emphasized by proponents of EE buildings.

In the analysis of EE, the phrase "organic agriculture" never appears and there is no mention of the massive use of petrochemicals or factory farms and there is zero concern with the fact that the average American food item travels 1300 miles from farm to plate. The strange approach to EE does not question the cancerous growth of household appliances, planned obsolescence, or corporate creation of artificial desires for unneeded products.

The authors have no comment on enormous waste in medical care or huge insurance buildings which drain energy while creating nothing of value. The chapters on transportation, such as plug-in hybrid electric cars, ignore the fact that air traffic in the United Kingdom will double by 2030, at which time it will have more effect on global warming than automobiles. The call for a 10-fold increase in biomass says nothing about effects of monocultures, deforestation, genetic engineering or pesticide usage.

Those approaches left out of the big enviro plan for EE share something: they are common sense low tech or no tech solutions which involve reducing the quantity of production and energy use with no decrease in the quality of life. They have something else in common: they do not involve the swelling of corporate profits via increased manufacture.

When is energy efficiency not efficient?

Almost as much as solar and wind power, EE is becoming the unquestioned mantra of solutions to global warming. Refrigerators that use 75% less energy are a plus. Even better would be the German-designed Passivhaus, which is so well insulated that it has zero heating and cooling systems.

Energy efficiency is good. But projections about what it can offer sometimes border on hallucinations. This is the case with the ASES/Sierra claim that EE can offset global warming by 57%.

The first limitation on EE is the old maxim that the more parts there are to a system, the more parts there are to break. The ASES/Sierra report reads like an encyclopedia of techno-fix gadgets for buildings, cars and holes in the earth. Each item involves increased industrial interdependence. As resources come to be in short supply from exhaustion or wars or hoarding, the future is likely to see a decline in the ability to patch up interconnected systems. Becoming more dependent on them more begs for industrial breakdown.

Another factor that works against EE is the law of diminishing returns. Joseph Tainter explained that societies begin to collapse when resources are drained to meet the needs of increasing complexity. Similarly, the biggest impact of discoveries come when they are first introduced. That's when there is the greatest energy returned on energy invested. Additional refinements tend to cost more and yield less. Oil was cheap and easy to obtain when it oozed to the surface. As time goes on, oil becomes more expensive to pump, the available quantity decreases and the quality worsens. The biggest impact of drugs came with antibiotics. Now we are bombarded with ads for new drugs that cost more to research but have fewer advantages over the previous generation of drugs.

Technocrats tend to have faith in unlimited potential for EE. The truth is that we have probably seen most of the largest efficiency impacts and future changes will mainly be refinements that offer less and less improvement.

The most important difficulty for EE is the market economy, which corporate environmentalists love so much and understand so little. Corporations do not compete to make less money. They compete to increase their profits. Market forces compel each corporation to expand production as rapidly as possible. When more efficient heating is available, corporations selling it will encourage customers to turn up their thermostats and run around in their underwear in the middle of winter.

People live commuting distances from work. The automobile has lengthened that distance. Fuel-efficient cars will do nothing to affect that distance or the expanding miles of road, the loss of habitat that accompanies road construction, space for parking or energy used in manufacturing cars.

It is not hard to visualize yuppies feeling so smug about their EE apartment in New York that they buy an EE home in Phoenix, an EE condo in Chicago, a hybrid car for each city, and a helicopter modified to run on biofuels for shuttling between cities. Energy efficiency is not efficient when some individual items are more efficient but the overall quantity of items increases so much that the total mass of energy used goes up instead of down. Like it or not, that is the irredeemable compulsion of market economics.

This is not to say that EE plays no role in preventing the planet from frying. It is to say that EE must be accompanied with an intense program of conservation, economic redesign and governmental regulation. Without these, EE in a market economy is not merely worthless, but will likely result in expanded production and increased global warming.

Invasion of the techno-babblers

Anyone who has ever fought an incinerator, cement kiln or coal plant knows that you've lost the struggle if you ever let industry suck you into an argument about which pollution control device should be tacked on after toxins have been created. The only genuine solution is the easy one -- to prevent the creation of the poisons in the first place.

If someone tries to sell an incinerator or an EE system that's too complicated to understand, that could indicate it's a bad idea. Making things simple is typically the route of greatest efficiency.

A narrow focus on technology seeks to replace a gee-gaw with a doo-dad, and when that doesn't work come up with a gizmo. Techno-babble sputters forth from the belief that social problems can be solved in a quest for the ultimate gadget. Oblivious to social reasons for global warming, the ASES/Sierra report claims that whatever greenhouse gas problems remain after EE can be solved with six renewable technologies: "concentrating solar power, photovoltaics, wind power, biomass, biofuels and geothermal power." The last three [or four -- Ed.] of these are techno-babble.

"Biomass" is largely an effort to turn whatever wildlands remain on this planet to energy crop monocultures. Not surprisingly, the word "ecology" does not appear in the biomass chapter. What is surprising is the subsection on "Urban residues" which discusses the use of municipal solid waste as feedstock for heat conversion to electricity. This is a polite way of saying that environmentalists should endorse spewing incinerator poisons into city air and abandon the notion of not generating waste.

"Geothermal power" does not have such offensive associations. But less than 0.1% of geothermal energy is within three kilometers of the surface, which makes it currently recoverable. Suggesting that yet-to-be-perfected techniques of recovery might allow geothermal to provide 20% of US energy is pure speculation. It cannot be part of a serious energy strategy.

One of the more shameful chapters of the report concerns "Biofuels." It has nothing against corn ethanol. It only rejects using corn grain to produce ethanol on the basis that the 10 million gallons of ethanol which could be manufactured from U.S. corn would represent only 5% of this country's gasoline demand. It pays no attention to issues brought up the same month in a Scientific American article that (1) refining ethanol uses more energy than it produces and (2) ethanol requires "robbing food crops to make fuel." The lack of concern with either ethanol efficiency or world hunger renders the Sierra Club-endorsed report as less ecologically minded than Scientific American, the prototype of techno-hype publications.

The chapter clings to the hope that ethanol could be produced if, instead of using corn grain, "residues from corn and wheat crops" made up the feedstock. There are several problems with this "cellulose" strategy. First, as with geothermal, making ethanol from cornstalks is so highly speculative that it has no place in long-term projections. If it could be done, it would be from genetically engineering corn to make it more amenable to separating sugars from lignin. There has already been plenty of genetic contamination of foodstocks. Additional genetic engineering is exactly what agriculture does not need.

The biggest problem with cellulosic ethanol is that it assumes that soil should be nothing more than a sterile medium for growing crops and that "residue" has no part in replenishing soil. Just as the Forest Service under Bill Clinton brought us "salvage logging" based on the belief that decaying wood has no significance for forest ecosystems, Hillary Clinton might usher in the concept that decaying cornstalks have no contribution to soil ecosystems.

Those who fixate on biofuels don't seem to grasp that keeping natural fertilizers out of the soil means relying more on petrochemical fertilizers. With a straight face they are proposing to reduce oil use in cars by increasing use of oil-based fertilizers.

Hard questions/tough reality

Perpetual motion machines, biomass and biofuels will not halt species extinction caused by climate change. Again, efficiency and solar and wind power [? -- Ed.] are critical components of a sustainable society. But focusing on them diverts attention from the real issues that need to be addressed -- how to dramatically reduce energy production while improving the quality of life. This is the basis for the hard questions that corporate environmentalists avoid.

For example, the U.S. needs to reduce the number of cars on the road by at least 95% and make sure the few that are manufactured are hybrids. How can the U.S. economy be reorganized so that auto workers and refinery workers have jobs comparable to jobs that they now have?

Many poor countries depend on destructive industries such as oil. How can the world economy be reorganized so they increase their standard of living while altering what they produce?

It is well known that greenhouse gas reduction requires population reduction, which can best be accomplished by reducing the gap between rich and poor and achieving equality for women. How do we reverse the right-wing pattern of increasing disparity?

The global economy is increasing production of high-energy goods such as roads, cars, airplanes, fast food, meat and endless mountains of consumer crap. How do we change this to production of low-energy goods that people actually need, such as locally grown organic food, preventive health care and clothes and homes that endure?

The creation of artificial wants for new objects is exploding like genetically engineered diseases in a bio-defense lab. How do we convince big enviro that it is not "sacrifice" or "deprivation" to focus on manufacturing items that people actually need and will last?

We all want to believe that our checks to the Sierra Club or the Nature Conservancy do some good in the long run and that they are just a little slow to do the right thing. The tough reality is that big enviro is doing bad things that lead in the wrong direction.

The most basic task for stopping global warming is having a moral, ethical and spiritual revolution based on the belief that excessive crap is bad. Reduction of unnecessary production is the antithesis of what corporations are all about. However destructive it is for the planet, corporations must seek to convince people to consume more and more.

Enter big enviro telling people that excessive consumption is not bad at all because it gives the consumer the ability to affect change with purchasing power. The erudite techno-magician waves his wand, uttering "Don't look at the mounds of discarded junk that go into landfills. Look over here at the fabulous eco-gadgets of our corporate friends."

Big enviro may be doing more to preserve the ethos of self-devouring consumerism than big corporations could ever do. What a surprise to learn that the Sierra Club has a history of obtaining funds from Chemical Bank, ARCO and British Petroleum. Big enviro just may deliver to big oil what it most needs -- faith that a market economy can protect the planet.

Karl Marx once said something to the effect that if there were only two capitalists left, they would compete to see which would sell the rope to hang the other one. A modern version might be that if the planet was so roasted that only two big enviro groups remained, they would compete to see which could get a grant from big oil to show that what was left of the world could be saved by consumer choices.

Don Fitz is editor of Synthesis/Regeneration: A Magazine of Green Social Thought, which is sent to members of The Greens/Green Party USA. He can be reached at fitzdon@aol.com.

Sources

Heinberg, R. The party's over. New Society Publishers, 2003.

Kutscher, C.F. (Ed.) Tackling Climate Change in the U.S.: Potential Carbon Emissions Reduction from Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy by 2030. American Solar Energy Society, 2007. www.ases.org/climatechange.

Monbiot, G. Heat: How to stop the planet from burning. South End Press, 2007.

Sierra Club, Renewable energy experts unveil report. Sierra club press release, January 31, 2007. Contact Josh Dorner, josh.dorner@sierraclub.org.

Tainter, J. The collapse of complex societies. Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Tokar, B., Earth for Sale. South End Press, 1997.

Wald, M.L. Is ethanol for the long haul? Scientific American. January 2007.

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