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."

Comments

Too True

[AKAImBatman]

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."

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! :-P

Re:Too True

[grassy_knoll]

Seems you and I had the same thought... I'll add that the next paragraph from TFA is intersting as well:

Still, energy projects don't even have to be viable to spark opposition: 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. Soon the nonexistent "hydrogen economy" will doubtless be under attack as well. There's a lot of earnest, even bipartisan talk nowadays about the need for clean, emissions-free energy. But are we really ready, politically, to build any new energy sources at all?

There is a downside to everything... which is something people seem to miss. Joe Sixpack and Sarah Soccermom want a perfect solution that never needs fixing, looks cute and emits only rainbows and pine scented goodness.

There is no perfect solution. Until people accept that, and agree on what the "least bad" solution is, we'll likely be stuck with deadlock. Lets hope it doesn't take electricity rationing and $20 per gallon gasoline to drag people to that point.

Re:Too True

[ConceptJunkie]

Which is why we need to tell those 10 people to go to Hell and build some damn power plants!

Really, there is a small but significant subset of environmentalists that literally wouldn't be happy until humans are extinct. We need to ignore those people and try to inject some common sense into our environmental discussions.

Inability to compromise at all is what defines a zealot.

Re:Too True

[Rei]

I think you'll find that, by far, the vast majority of the people in these anti-wind groups have never been involved in any other "environmental" movement. There are some, yes, but not very many. For the most part, these groups are comprised of rich folk not wanting their property values to drop, people who don't give a whit about the environment but want the view to be "pretty" by their standards, and general technophobes (boy, you wouldn't believe some of the wacky things they say - calling them "moonbats" would be an insult to any future lunar aerial mammal community).

These groups take on an environmental mantle because it sounds a lot better than the other arguments they'd be making - namely, "My million dollar estate will lose 10% of its value", "Uck, something white that spins!", and "Wind farms cause women to have five periods a month and give them brain cancer." Real environmental groups (for example, the Sierra Club) love wind farms.

It's annoying to see people on sites like slashdot buy into the "oooh, all those nutty environmentalists keep contradicting themselves! They must just want to destroy society!" arguments.

I object...

[3.2.3]

...to calling aestheticians environmentalists.

Re:Unfucking possible.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

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.

NIMBY, Externalities, Fairness

[bstarrfield]

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.