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Tilting At Windmills
GreedyCapitalist writes "Anne Applebaum writes in the Washington Post about environmentalists who are opposing renewable energy sources." From the article: "Already, activists and real estate developers have stalled projects across Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York. In Western Maryland, a proposal to build wind turbines alongside a coal mine, on a heavily logged mountaintop next to a transmission line, has just been nixed by state officials who called it too environmentally damaging. Along the coast of Nantucket, Mass. -- the only sufficiently shallow spot on the New England coast -- a coalition of anti-wind groups and summer homeowners, among them the Kennedy family, also seems set to block Cape Wind, a planned offshore wind farm. Their well-funded lobbying last month won them the attentions of Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), who, though normally an advocate of a state's right to its own resources, has made an exception for Massachusetts and helped pass an amendment designed to kill the project altogether."
Ted Kennedy a hippo-crite? No!!! Of course, many liberals are do as i say not as i do!
Give a liberal a thought, and he will repeat it all day...
Teach a liberal to think, and he'll vote republican.
Now I've always wondered, how much power does the average windmill make in its life time, as apposed to the energy used to extract the aluminium, machine/shape it into a windmill, build it then hook it up.
If i had to bet on the windmill making up all that lost energy on making it exist I'd not dare put on more than a few pennies.
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
Nothing is being forced down anyone's throat.
except for the conservative republicans entire values system.
The definitive work on the American conservative movement is Russell Kirk's "The Conservative Mind." What conservatives seek to conserve is tradition, freedom, and liberty. Conservatives may be in conflict with Libertarians because Libertarians may emphasise the freedom and liberty and free markets part while traditionalist-conservatives may emphasise the tradition aspect.
What is so special about tradition -- are conservatives "stand-pat" advocates who want no change for the better? What is special about tradition is that there are some aspects of human life that are amenable to reason and can be readily improved through reform, but there are many aspects of individual life and the greater society that are traditional -- marriage, men in combat arms, the institutions of government, religion, respect for elders -- that are not readily amenable to tidy analysis but are organic to the culture, got to be that way over time, have withstood the test of time, and reflect the collective wisdom of our forefathers.
Conservatism has matters to answer for -- the Civil Rights revolution was quite anti-conservative in that racial segregation was very much a tradition and an institution in American life. On the other hand Conservatism generally believes in a "Higher Power", and it is hard to reconcile such beliefs with having an institutional racism. As a conservative, I support some kind of government social safety net because I believe that an orderly society requires not leaving people who fall through the cracks to jungle law. On the other hand, I believe that if the poor are protected, there is no problem having a lot of rich people around, and I don't take equality of outcomes as an ultimate social goal.
What about the environment? Stewardship of our natural resources and heritage is perfectly compatible with conservatism, but many environmental groups have an anti-conservative agenda. I have heard environmentalist friends more than once talk about humankind, our population as being an environmental "cancer" that is busily polluting the earth. That kind of talk of turning the natural world back to nature and leaving humans out of the equation is especially anti-conservative.