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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."
The problem plaguing new energy developments is no longer NIMBYism, the "Not-In-My-Back-Yard" movement. The problem now, as one wind-power executive puts it, is BANANAism: "Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything."
:-P
If it wasn't so true, it would be hilarious. Instead, we're currently faced with a no-win scenario. Don't want Power Plant technology X in your back yard? Fine, we'll move it to the middle of the desert. You don't like that because there's a fault there that *might* cause a teeny Earthquake 500 years from now? Fine, we'll move it to the swamp land. What's that? We'd be destroying the natural habitat of mosquitoes? Why do you want to keep mosquitoes around? FINE! Then we'll move it to the ocean where we can... what? You don't want it there, EITHER? Why the hell not? Because it might damage a coral reef? What if we build an artifical one? That will change the ocean currents?
NNNGNGGNNGGGG!! HUMANS #$!@@!# CHANGE #@$!#!@! THINGS !@#!#!!!! IT'S !@#!@# WHAT @!#@!# WE @#$!@#$ DO!
Call us when you don't have power and really, really want some. Good-bye!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
..and it's the paper one that holds the final say.
These are anti-capitolists!! They HATE the human race. In fact, they would rather wish all human beings die. They see us as a virus, and not a natural part of Earths evolution.
Fuck em!!! Time they are made irrelevant by the worlds population. Just fucking burry them.
Life is not for the lazy.
...to calling aestheticians environmentalists.
This is impossible - everyone knows that it is the republicans and big business that are against the environment and that all liberals and environmental groups are for it...
Well, see, the trick is, the people listed in this article aren't liberals or environmental groups. They're democrats. Fox news wants you to think democrats are liberals. They're not.
Why's that Don? Are you going to help us build a 35-mile bridge from Hyannis to Nantucket instead?
Fine. If they want to opt-out of the other solutions, then cut the power lines to the houses along the coast and let them figure out a solution to the problem that they will find satisfactory.
Massachusetts may be liberal, but it's also money. That goes triple for Cape Cod. The problem you're encountering here is people who are liberal in the sense that they don't care what the poor do in their bedrooms, but they sure as hell don't want their precious view spoiled.
This may come as a shock, but the left does not have a monopoly on overly wealthy hypocritical asshats who will be the death of us all.
--Ryvar
Republicans advocate states rights up to the point your state goes medical marijuana, pro gay marriage, physican-assisted suicide or anything else they don't like.
liberals and environmental groups are for it...
liberal != environmentalist
A good environemntalist is a conservative - they conserve their energy use by being conservative with their power needs.
Life is never black & white.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I agree. These people aren't environmentalists. They're too wrapped up in their property values to sacrifice for the greater good by allowing pollution free power that might be visible from their backyard.
Calling these people environmentalists is an smear attack against actual environmentalists.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Folks are in denial of the seriousness of the energy crisis, and the realities of energy production. They assume that some miracle, somehow, will provide them with the energy to drive out and live in in their beautiful second homes, free of any aesthetic and environmental problems. They want to be close to some idyllic nature, free of stress. And the reason they can be in denial is that energy production - through the magic of long distance ac/dc wires - shifts production burdens to some poor sap somewhere else.
Consider the opposition to wind: why build a wind farm near some lovely guest home on the Cape when you can build a coal plant in West Virginia? The poor folks (and WV is a very poor state), will take the coal plant and see their homes turn grey, their mountains cut to shreds, their lungs turn black. And Cape Cod will be sunny, pretty, free from harm, at the cost of someone else's life.
I realize this sounds extreme, but look at the coal / oil / hydrocarbon executives who lobby Congress for tax breaks for gas and coal production, freedom from pollution controls, etc. and then spend the weekends in Bozeman, Montana. They don't see the effects of the damage they're doing, as, well - they get to live in an idyllic mountain valley.
Until we can develop fusion, energy production will be ugly. Sad, but true. Windmills are not at all perfect, but are hell of a lot better, IMHO, than some coal plant choking the lungs of those folks who cannot afford a second home in luxury land. I wish those who always say NIMBY! would accept some responsibility for their own choices, and recognize the need to share the burden of energy production.
This is an economic case of externalities being allocated to those with the least political power, the least influence, the least chance of fighting back. Putting the plant on the cheapest land may be accounting wise efficient, but may be bad policy. We either have the windmills, or the coal plant, or the nuke, but somewhere power must be generated.
/* Dang, I can't type that well. */
There is a bank of windmills visible from the PA Turnpike, somewhere in the western half of the state. I would suggest that such areas - those adjacent to major traffic arteries - would be excellent locations for wind-based power generation. Quite often the land surrounding the turnpikes and interstates isn't exactly prime residential land, so the NIMBYism might be kept to a minimum.
From The Fine Article: They are right to note that wind will not soon replace coal or gas, that wind isn't always as effective as supporters claim
I find this viewpoint frustrating: "it won't solve all of our problems at once so it is not worth pursuing". We might actually need a combination of solutions to the energy problem - imagine that.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
This is just another example of a larger trend. Enviornmentalists and Enviornmental groups sabatoging enviornmental progress by insisting on perfection. By refusing to comprimise or to throw their weight behind the less damaging projects/praise those who implement them enviornmentalists sabatoge their own cause.
I mean consider this from the perspective of a company, or even country thinking of implementing some measures to minimize the enviornmental harm of their actions. If they know that they will still get bad press from the enviornmental lobby for the damage/harm they are still doing rather than praise for improving their act they have little incentive to improve. In fact making small steps which will be met with criticisms that they don't go far enough can actually make for worse publicity than doing nothing at all.
This is part of a greater refusal on the part of enviornmentalists to prioritize and to admit that enviornmental values, while important, need to trade off with human values. For instance by refusing to even consider (maybe it won't turn out to be worth it but it should be considered) nuclear power enviornmentalists guarantee that we will continue to use coal fired power plants and risk global warming. Sure it might be possible in theory to acheive this goal by all using our own solar panels and other solutions in practice this has a great deal of problems and people are resistant to this level of change. Only by favoring comprimise and slight improvement where politically possible can we get real progress.
Worse, by refusing to prioritize the enviornmental movement makes sure many people don't take them seriously. Go look at the pages of major enviornmental groups or read their newsletters. You see articles about the extinction of some fuzzy forest creature written in the same alarmist tone and message of impending disastor as the warnings about global warming. No wonder people don't take global warming as seriously as they should when implicitly the enviornmental groups put it at the same level as the sort of species extinction that has been occuring for years with limited impact.
If we want to get anything done the enviornmentalists groups need to buckle down and make some hard choices. They need to stop appearing to favor the enviornment over people and instead tell people why saving the enviornment is in people's best interest. Also they need to clearly prioritize and tell us that globabl warming is far more serious than threats to habitate and wildlife and praise projects that help prevent global warming EVEN IF THEY DESTROY HABITAT OR HARM SOME ANIMALS.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Quote: "Well in general wind farms suck. They actually take enough energy out of the air to make a difference to the environment."
In exactly what way? Given the absurd nature of your statement, I think a little more proof than your unfounded assertion is required. How does removing this energy from the environment make a meaningful different?
From the article "Already, there are activists gearing up to fight the nascent biofuel industry, on the grounds that fields of switch grass or cornstalks needed to produce ethanol will replace rainforests and bucolic country landscapes." This sounds like a script from an 80's sci-fi movie where a comp is trying to reason: biofuel farms bad.... biofarms bad... bio bad... people are bio... ... people bad
People really need to differentiate between environmentalists (ie, people who have a sincere concern about the air we breath, the water we drink, the land we cultivate, and everything inbetween) and NIMBY rich people who don't want an eyesore in their costly scenic view.
Sure, NIMBY rich people might claim that what they want is to save the environment, but really, all they want is to maintain their property values.
I've seen no end of moronic arguments about this stuff. Some of the "better examples":
I hate this crap. They're terrified of their property values dropping, so they are desperately trying to fight it any way they can, digging up any idea they can come up with for why this is stupid. Wind power works great in a lot of european countries, without any nasty "ecological impacts".
Maybe they'd like a nuclear power plant on Nantucket instead? How about a coal-fired electric plant? Maybe they'd like their electric bill to quadruple to pay for solar panels that won't last more than 15 years?
Please help metamoderate.
But the pipeline would stop animals from being able to walk to the other side, and destroy their natural roaming patterns! Plus, we could SEE the pipeline.
People will complain about anything, I promise.
Also, the pipeline idea's not bad, but not particularly economical. Long pipelines are expensive and break a lot, and for the amount of power generated, wouldn't work out very well. Windmills are cheaper and easier to maintain.
Really, what we need to do is build nuclear powerplants, but people get all freaked out because "OH NOES! NUCULAR!" Just because the Soviets couldn't build a proper power plant (the last set of Soviet MIGs were made of ALUMINUM and PLYWOOD, what do you expect?!) doesn't mean it's a bad idea. Three Mile Island was perfectly contained and is still in operation, despite almost every failsafe going wrong at once. If you build the plant properly, they work great. There's something like 20 in operation currently around the world (mostly in Europe) and they work great.
Remember kids, tin foil doesn't work, so use LeadHat.
Yeah, I hate when I can see windmills! That cloud of smoke rising from the coal power plant is much more attractive.
Democraps are the same as Republipricks, they are bought and sold on a regular basis by anyone with enough money. None of them have any morals at all and will do anything that boosts their income, the ability to lie, cheat, and steal is a requirement for political office. Party affiliation is not important, they are all the same within 2 years of election.
Vote against all incumbants. Elect someone who has actually held a real job and done productive work. Someone that knows what it is to struggle to pay a mortgage or just survive at todays wage scale. I make more than my parents did 40 years ago, but it only buys 1/3 of what they could.
Ted Kennedy, the poster boy of what's wrong with Washington: Never has held a real job - has lived on the taxpayers dime for over 40 years. Born rich, never earned a penny of it himself (of course if money laundering laws were retroactive to prohibition he could be broke since Joe made more than half the family fortune as a rum runner). Supposed champion of the poor - the only poor people he has ever known are his underpaid servants.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Aluminum doesn't get used just once. Running a windmill doesn't cause the Aluminum to degrade back to Bauxite. When you build something out of Aluminum, a large percentage of your raw material is recycled. When the windmill wears out and is torn down, the metal will be worth a lot and will be reclaimed. Recycling Aluminum is highly profitable, and large chunks of aluminum always efficiently salvaged.
Ummm, calm it there, tiger. I think you're confusing demographics. If anything, environmentalist types come from educated, intellectual backgrounds, who, statistically, get married later in life, have less children, and are more likely to use birth control. The reality is that it's middle-america... mid-western catholic or fundy protestant types, or the low-income, uneducated, and uninformed that have the largest number of rugrats. A lot of the people I know are environmentalists, and I tend to consider myself one, and if they have any children at all, it's usually just one or two.
The very demographic you're refering to is one of the only ones who actually understands what a vasectomy is. I think you're more refering to the suberban soccer-mom demographic, which though may be full of educated professionals, is quite far from environmentalism. In fact, they're almost soully responsible for the rise in popularity of SUVs and are the ultimate consumers/poluters. Go to church on Sunday, hear about how everyone else is going to hell but you, drag 6 kids in a Ford Explorer to hockey practice and marching band, go to the NASCAR racetrack on Saturday, watch Fox News, and vote for Bush, think you're doing the world a favor, and then piss on everyone else. I think that's the demographic you're refering to.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
for being such an obvious karma whore telling all the little Slashdotters exactly what they want to hear.
Here let me try:
Evolution is proven fact. +5 Insightful.
There are no bad elements in the environmental movement. +5 Interesting.
Windows doesn't scale. +5 Informative.
Walmart is poopy. +5 Funny.
Yep, it's easy to play the mindless majority here.
The question we face as a nation and as a world is, are we going to allow the few to dictate to the many? Are we going to allow people to suffer, in some areas of the world opposition does lead to suffering or furthering of it, because of a few?
Too many times those opposing any development live no where near it. They travel to the sites to protest or wage dissent from afar.
What it comes down to is that there are groups that feel as if they are above us. They think it is their place to tell others what is good for them and that these "others" must do without because it is for "the best".
Power is a valuable resource. With it we can bring the standards of living up for those it is provided too. With renewable resources we can accomplish this with very little impact on future generations except for perhaps a better environment. Keeping development of alternative and renewable resources only furthers the negative impact currently "dirty" methods cause.
What is ever so appalling is that many of these elites are politically connected, well off, and imposing on those who cannot afford alternatives to live a lesser life. They would rather sacrifice the comfort of others just so they can feel righteous in their position. Sure some are truly out to help the environment but they are misguided as nothing will ever meet their standards. As soon as their standard is met they will update it or another group will step in with more stringent requirements.
We have to face one thing, whether or not we do something to free our dependance on dirty sources of power and dependance on others for power, other countries will move forward. They will do what is necessary to improve their lives while we forever come up with excuses to sit back and do nothing.
Civilizations do not advance by sitting still. They do not advance by listening to every naysayer who pops out of the woodwork. But they do decline when they do sit still and become hamstrung by the naysayers into doing nothing. It is no different on the political front in the world as it is in the environmental front. Both will go from bad to worse if we reason ourself into a corner.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
A good environemntalist is a conservative - they conserve their energy use by being conservative with their power needs.
Political conservatism has nothing to do with conservation of resources.
The core tenet of political conservatism is small government and personal freedom. That means _less_ government regulation on everything, _including_ environmental issues.
That's nice in "theory", like how communism is all about bettering the lives of all people, not just a few.
In practice, conservative does not equate to small government and more personal freedom. With "conservatives" in charge of the government for last 6 years, the government has grown larger and (even more frightening) personal freedom has taken severe cutbacks.
Generally, conservatives want other people to live by "their" values - i.e. they don't want to pay taxes (but still want all the benefits and more from the government), they want theocracy, they want to watch and control everything you say (you shouldn't mind if you have nothing to hide), and absolute corporate freedom (not the same thing as "personal freedom").
This message brought to you buy Real Life 101.
In the desert, you'd probably be better off going solar.
The Nantucket fight is not typical and had cogent arguments on both sides.
I agree that most the time it comes down to property values; having seen how people react where I live to low income housing, white castle, or when the black family moved in down the street -- property values can bring out the worst in people. More amazing is how they try to cling to any reason except the actual one.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
A good environemntalist is a conservative - they conserve their energy use by being conservative with their power needs.
Indeed. Low taxes requires low government consumption. Low energy bills in your home requires low energy usage.
The guy who calculates that each use of a single pair of $400 shoes plus 2 new sets of soles ($50 a shot) is 21 cents per day over a decade vesus 40 cents per day for a pair of $100 shoes that last a year -- thus buys the single pair of shoes.
Reduce and Reuse are both far more important than Recycling but it takes an awfully frugle person to make significant headway on them.
Live well beneth your means and you will be an exceptional environmentalist and have a ton of cash in the bank.
Rod Taylor
Ted Kennedy and his buddies are the reason. They want everyone else to live by their rules. They are truly elite, and they don't care how the rest of us have to suffer, just so they don't have to live with windmills in their backyard.
Rich liberals don't care about you and me. They don't care about taxes. They like to vote like they care, but they don't. They made their money. They inherited their money. They don't pay taxes because they don't earn anything, so there's nothing to tax. For the most part, they're immune to every crazy law they create.
How many times have you seen Ted Kennedy driving a Prius? How about any of these knuckleheads that claim they can't stand oil? They all are chauffered around in private limousines, private jets. They have little or no idea how the rest of the world lives. They want to be able to say that they did something, that they showed some concern for the environment, so they voted some tax credit for renewable energy... then profited from it in some way.
Why doesn't the media start carrying this story about Teddy Kennedy and his hatred for Windmills in his backyard? Where's Dan Rather, Katie Couric and the rest of the treehugging liberal newsmedia?