Saturday, August 16, 2008

Wind Power Still Stymied In Wisconsin

People say they want cleaner-air alternatives to coal-fired power plants, but getting wind power siting rules established to everyone's satisfaction contines to be a struggle, explains the Daily Reporter.

Posted by James Rowen at 2:03 PM

1 comment:

Joshua Skolnick said...

The anti-wind power NIMBYism is ridiculous on its face, focusing on a relatively benign power generation technology. Granted, we should keep wind farms out of pristine natural areas or historic districts in towns. I would be willing to have these built even within view of my house (there are already 2 water towers there), and it would give me the satisfaction of seeing power come from somwhere other than Bush/Cheney's fossil fuel buddies or OPEC, and keeping greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.

Where are these people protesting siting of water towers, high voltage transmission lines, cell phone towers (both of which have blinking lights on them to warn away aircraft), shopping centers with phalanxes of sodium vapor lamps that are on all night wasting power, expanded I-94s, etc. All of these types of projects are allowed in close proximity to residential and commercial development, and all make noise, disrupt the view shed, or generate pollution. In my view, the selective enforcement against wind turbines smacks of funding by advocates of the fossil and nuclear industries, and the whipping up of opposition to wind power without pointing out the obvious contradictions in the anti-wind power advocates viewpoint to me smacks of defense of the fossil fuel uber alles energy status quo. Secretly, behind the scenes, I would not be surprised to see McCain's big oil and big coal supporters quietly working to support anti-wind advocates to ensure wind energy is strangled in it's crib, while at the same time, McCain is hypocritically using wind turbines in the background of his campaign commercials to show how "green" he is.

One more challenge I have to these anti-wind groups - do they have data from, say Denmark, where large scale wind power has been used for many years, that proves some of the fantastical allegations that it is such a destructive technology and that the sounds and visual problems are so deleterious as the person quoted int the DailyReporter alleges?

August 18, 2008 at 2:30 PM

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