What if wind were useful?
Toolbox
Published: October 1, 2009
Let's just say that I am wrong: that wind turbines will produce far more than only 30 percent of what they are rated for. That wind turbines which are actually in the act of producing power, aren't noisy. That all those folks complaining about health problems are lying. And that hundreds of goats near an industrial wind complex in Taiwan didn't die as a result of the newly placed wind turbines (like the minister of agriculture said they did). That shadow flicker isn't driving people nuts right in their own homes. And let's say that everyone actually wants to buy a home in a wind turbine town. And that home values don't really drop 30 percent in places like Ira with wind turbines. That, in fact, coal-fired plants will shut down as a result of wind power. That when E.ON Netz (the German grid operator who's been dealing with wind for quite a while) says in their 2005 annual report on page 4, "Wind energy is only able to replace traditional power stations to a limited extent. Consequently, traditional power stations with capacities equal to 90 percent of the installed wind power capacity must be permanently online in order to guarantee power supply at all times," they are lying or wrong. While we're at it, let's say that on the hottest and coldest days of the year the turbine blades will in fact be spinning away at full capacity. (That hasn't happened yet, mind you.) Let's say it is untrue that wind turbines are paid for 30 percent by government grants and that once the project is done, the developer makes three times as much money from subsidies, selling carbon credits, and who knows what else, as they do from producing power. All totally untrue. Guess what, I'd still be against it.
Because I am already doing my part. We heat entirely with wood, we eat all year from our organic garden, kill our own meat, turn off the lights, and use the darn clothes line. Our fellow Vermonters do the same, says the Department of Energy. The state of Vermont has the lowest total energy consumption in the nation. In 2005 out of all the carbon produced in the New England states in the process of making electricity. Vermont contributed only one-fifth of 1 percent of the total carbon output. Thanks to nuclear, hydro. and CowPower. Enough of my tax dollars are being wasted on cash for clunkers and other black holes. So I don't feel the need to be one of the first towns to go for this. I am going to sit back, write my letters, talk to my neighbors and see how this rip-off plays out in other places before I allow our Green Mountains to be destroyed. In closing, I respectfully ask that my fellow Vermonter do the same.
JUSTIN TURCO
Ira
24