Click here for References
All over the country, and possibly the world, people are told (without much accompanying substantiation) that major expansion of wind energy is required to reverse global warming and save the planet. We are taught that industrial wind turbines and the corporations behind them are relatively benign and hold a unique golden key to our collective salvation. But is this the truth?
Like most with minimal prior exposure to skyscraper-sized, corporate-owned industrial wind turbines, I hadn’t given them much thought before we were threatened with their blanketing of our small, rural, largely residential town. As “wind turbines” became less imagined and increasingly real, and I learned more about their true effects and the forces behind them, my ignorance and hazily positive notions of saving the earth and pleasant Dutch landscapes were shattered. As well as the soul that loved and wanted to protect nature and other people, the environmentalist in me began to oppose them for essentially the same reasons I opposed fracking in upstate New York and elsewhere.
Industrial wind turbines are not as low-emissions as some would like us to believe. To be viable, wind turbines’ highly sporadic input to the grid must be complemented and evened out with the paired, simultaneous burning of fossil fuels. Oil and gas companies have invested in promoting and diversified into developing industrial wind power at least in part for this reason. Further, in practice, wind power routinely displaces hydro- and nuclear power rather than fossil fuels (if it in fact displaces anything at all), effectively adding to CO2 emissions. The extensive new infrastructure required for the expansion of wind power also entails the heavy and pervasive use of sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), a synthetic greenhouse gas that is 23,500 times more warming than CO2 and does not naturally break down. Given the close ties and overlapping interests of the wind and natural gas industries, perhaps it is not surprising that the reality, effect, and trajectory of industrial wind turbines is far closer to that of fracking than to the blurry, fictionalized utopia of green hillsides and rainbows pictured in their advertising.
Industrial wind turbines are also not environmentally friendly in their macro-scale use of concrete, which anchors each tower in place by extending deep into the earth. Two tons of rare earths are used in the construction of each turbine, which must be mined and contribute heavily to environmental and health destruction in China. The turbines’ non-recyclable, highly fallible, mammoth blades are dumped in landfills. And where they are installed, industrial wind turbines destroy the local ecosystem and human and natural environments.
Larger-than-life machines, industrial wind turbines emit levels of audible noise and infrasound that are devastating to human and animal health (see: Health). Well-established scientific research and the tragic costs to life of infrasound exposure through industrial wind turbines continue to mount. But companies have an interest in downplaying or denying this irrefutable evidence, and politicians such as Andrew Cuomo are not willing to dent their useful, supposedly “green” political platforms and related convenient, empty rhetoric (Andrew Cuomo is a big recipient of natural gas money) by acknowledging and facing the facts.
Internationally, ordinary people are discovering the hard way that industrial wind turbines installed in their communities are making them sick. But when they try to reach out to big-money wind energy companies or their government representatives for help, they are often met with indifference or outright hostility. The truth is that governments and corporations are cooperating in these ventures, and both are gaining, even if people in poorer, rural locations are suffering. These people are unlikely to have a significant impact on the politicians’ largely urban voting base, most of whom will never experience living next to an industrial wind turbine.
Hundreds of billions of dollars in US government subsidies (or: taxpayer money) go to corporations with industrial wind turbine projects. Regardless of merit, or helpfulness to anyone or anything, the owners of these projects will receive regular mammoth checks. This means that big-money energy infrastructure companies whose one and only interest is profit are drawn to industrial wind development like the end of a magnet to its opposite. Symbiotic relationships emerge between special interest-funded politicians and these venture capitalists. (Terra-Gen and its parent Energy Capital Partners are such LLCs.) This unity of government and special interests can and does translate into widespread corruption at all levels, and failure by public servants of their constituents.
Article 10 is such a failure. Dismantling the rights of local communities to make decisions regarding how they will live, Article 10 allows big energy infrastructure companies to literally steamroll residents and environments for the sake of big profits and political expediency. Disturbing reports of bribery of local governments by energy companies, conflicts of interest, and indifference of representatives to the cries of affected people are widespread.
What can we do? A few things we can do are be informed, stand up for ourselves, and never give up. We can also learn from the experiences of other communities who have been through what for us is at present only threatened – industrial wind turbines at our doorsteps and looming on all our horizons. Article 10 and cold corporate exploitation might attempt to take our lives and futures out of our hands, and harm nature and those we love, but we have the power to fight back.
Click here for References