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

Re:Too True

[InThane]

Which leads me to wonder - would your first act in office be to commit suicide?

Re:Too True

[letxa2000]

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,

What's wrong with that? I'll mostly ignore your unnecessary digs and stereotyping against rich people and property values, but whether I'm rich or poor, do I really want to have the beautiful countryside (or hillside, or whatever) visually contaminated by dozens or hundreds of large windmills? Absolutely not! There is more to the environment than just CO2 in the atmosphere. There's also leaving some parts of the wilderness to be in their roughly original form for future enjoyment of both man and beast.

I hate driving through beautiful Southern California (yes, I love the desert) and seeing a huge solar facility just northwest of Four Corners, or that huge wind farm by Palm Springs. You're just out there enjoying nature and the entire view is filled with man-made nonsense that is supposedly envrionmentally "friendly." So instead of generating some invisible CO2 which plants need to generate oxygen, we instead use "clean" alternatives that destroy thousands of acres from a visual, natural, and ecosystem standpoint. Which is really worse on the environment?

In my opinion, we should build some mega-nuclear power plants in the middle of Nevada, hundreds of miles away from any city larger than about 200 people. Use that to generate all the electricity the country needs, 100% clean, no dependency on foreign energy, and we could use it to generate the hydrogen for fuel cells for our cars. We could almost entirely withdrawl from the Middle East and wouldn't even blink if/when the cost of petroleum exceeds $200/barrel. We could be 100% energy independent and 100% clean in a friggin' decade without any need to wait around for "alternative energy" that isn't ready for prime time yet. We have the technology now. We just need to decide to use it.

Re:Too True

[susano_otter]

generalizing and making off-color quips is divisive and insulting. I don't do either. Neither should you. Please stop.