Friday, February 1, 2013

Wind Factories

“I once believed in the Sierra Club, until the CLUB ( an insular bunch of activists who aren’t looking at the entire picture but only at their own agendas) started fully supporting [windpower] …. Everything the environmentalists (including myself for 20 years) have worked so hard to protect, is now being destroyed or in jeopardy. Wind factories are industrial projects.”
- Jen Gilbert

This public letter of resignation from the Sierra Club is worth an extra moment. Her complaint is over the support of the Sierra Club for wind turbines, understandably called called "cuisinarts" by their opponents. There is more than the loss of protection for birds the writer is lamenting; she objects to the nature of the industry, its mechanics and capital structure. The turbines are not just dangerous to birds, they are an esthetic and philosophical challenge. They might replace coal fired plants which is essential to her, but these turbines, which use no carbon and produce no CO2, are an  inadequate revolution. Indeed this is a technological and capitalistic affront to her completely unrelated to energy and that is a deal-breaker, worse than her perceived warming.

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