Windlands

Will Truman 22 Comments

Driving along the west, you see a fair number of windfarms. You can see them from rather far off. I am not a “green” enthusiasts, but I think they’re neat. Local residents disagree:

Throughout the UK — indeed, all over the world — fights against large-scale wind-energy projects are raging. The European Platform against Windfarms lists 518 signatory organizations from 23 countries. The UK alone now has about 285 anti-wind groups. Last May, some 1,500 protesters descended on the Welsh assembly, the Senedd, demanding that a massive wind project planned for central Wales be stopped.

Although environmental groups like Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace claim that wind energy is the answer when it comes to slowing the rate of growth in carbon dioxide emissions, policymakers from Ontario to Australia are responding to angry landowners who don’t want 100-meter-high wind turbines built near their homes.

On seeing the headline, I figured that the opposition was Kennedy-esque: aesthetically unpleasing and such. I am relatively unsympathetic to that argument because, well, I think they look awesome. The picture of the wind turbines visible from that guy’s backyard? Awesome.

My views on this matter are atypical, I suppose. Near my house, they built a condo skyscraper several years ago. It’s conspicuously visible from our backyard. The neighborhood hates it. They were opposing the building of more before the real estate collapse killed all future projects (the builders of the condo in question are taking a bath – I wouldn’t be surprised if they just cut their losses and tore it down soon).

Anyhow, whether you like the sight of a skyscraper or wind turbine is a matter of taste and – in my view – a relatively superificial concern. Their complaints about the noise and lights, on the other hand, are a bigger deal. This is especially true in areas where the lack of light pollution and noise pollution are one of the few things that they have going for them. There are a lot of downsides to living in ruralia, but even someone like myself who puts Works of Men in front of Works of God, I can appreciate seeing the stars and night. And everybody appreciates some peace and quiet.

Whether they should take it in the chin for The Greater Good is for people in greater positions of authority than me to decide. People have a high tolerance for unpleasantness when it is perceived to be good for the economy. Louisiana objected vociferously when offshore drilling was quashed. Wyoming’s air quality may be worse than Los Angeles’s, and fracking may be contaminating their water supply, but it’s the outsiders who are raising the alarm bells and Wyomingans (except the Dairy Towners from California) who want to keep moving forward.

So why not with Windfarms? Maybe it’s not profitable enough for them to get their cut? If you paid them off, would it still be economically feasible?

PS No Monday Trivia today.

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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22 Comments

  1. I like the way windfarms look, too. There’s one I can see clearly from my own backyard and through which I drive about once monthly.

    • We’re in too much of a valley for them to work here, unfortunately. Well, fortunately, because we like to be nestled in mountains, but you know what I mean.

      I see them whenever I drive out to Alexandria, which is about once a week since I’ve started chauffeuring my wife.

  2. Windmill and power line technology seem purpose-built for ugliness. Maybe if they were more artistic and less bleakly utilitarian, people might accept them with more grace.

  3. If there is one thing the public is united behind, it’s their collective ability to get a bug up their ass about something in their neighborhood that wasn’t there yesterday.

    Even if that thing looks a lot better than the thing that was there, yesterday.

    • Or sometimes losing something that was there yesterday. The town was all up-in-arms about tearing down an old building to make room for parking that everyone agreed was needed. The folks had taken a liking to the loads and loads of graffiti on it. (I was sympathetic with them on this.) (But I do like the parking.)

      • Dude, my neighborhood association is all about historical preservation. Losing something that was there yesterday isn’t an option.

  4. I am consistently astounded at people’s conviction that they have the right to control property that they do not own.

    • … but my property values!
      Do you believe that we have a right to regulate our own life expectancy, in a matter that need not include “move to higher ground”? 😉 NIMBY ain’t just about “looks”, it’s a matter of life and death.

      • You do not have the ‘right’ to regulate your life expectancy, whatever that might mean – you have the right to be free from harm inflicted by others without your consent, pollution and the like that I assume you mean falls into those principles which is what I assume you’re trying to get at.

        I’ve yet to see an argument on wind farms that doesn’t rest entirely on aesthetic preferences for what occurs on what is no one’s property. The Post story makes some vague and unsubstantiated claims about other concerns on health that I’d like to see a lot more about before telling people they can’t build a wind farm.

        • I find the noise argument, and to an extent the light argument, more compelling than the “I don’t like how it looks” argument.

          • I would suggest the proper response is to enact reasonable noise ordinances, not that people have the right to block developments because they have concerns about possible noise.
            The problem there is that people want to live in rural areas to get away from the ills of urban areas but don’t want to give up the goods of urban areas – like nuisance regulations that keep their neighbors from doing things that annoy them.

    • Hey, I don’t like going out with my friends and coming back smelling like smoke. Is that *MY* fault???

    • “I am consistently astounded at people’s conviction that they have the right to control property that they do not own.”

      Welcome to anywhere that doesn’t use the allodial title method of property ownership. The government can always control what you do on your property–and it can take it away from you if it wants to.

  5. Locals that object to powerful corporations too strongly have a short life expectancy.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beech_Ridge_Wind_Farm

    I ‘unno, they tend to look right purty around here.

    Your comparison:
    http://www.dailyyonder.com/speak-your-piece-mountaintops-cut-first-then-mountaineers-voices

    Me, I like the windmills a lot better! They don’t send me to the hospital, for one thing…

    Who would have thought mercury regs woulda caught the old man coal, that grandfathered through the clean air act?

  6. Windfarms look neat.

    They don’t generate nearly as much power as anything else, particularly something that used as much land and cost as much to build.

    But they look neat. They look like something that should work. The resources they use are tied up in a pretty white pole with wings on it instead of a big ugly concrete block. And the land they use is just useless wasted space that nobody would have done anything with anyway, except maybe farmers, and farmers don’t count because they’re rednecks.

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