Its written by Suzanna Jones, described as “an off-the-grid farmer living in Walden.” She does not object to local power – but disagrees with McKibben about the trend towards industrial scale renewables. It is, she says, part of the mainstreaming of the environmental movement.
“In his 2008 book “Deep Economy,” Bill McKibben concludes that economic growth is the source of the ecological crises we face today. He explains that when the economy grows larger than necessary to meet our basic needs – when it grows for the sake of growth, automatically striving for “more” – its social and environmental costs greatly outweigh any benefits it may provide.
Unfortunately, McKibben seems to have forgotten what he so passionately argued just five years ago. Today he is an advocate of industrial wind turbines on our ridgelines: He wants to industrialize our last wild spaces to feed the very economy he fingered as the source of our environmental problems.
His key assumption is that industrial wind power displaces the use of coal and oil, and therefore helps limit climate change. But since 2000, wind facilities with a total capacity equivalent to 350 coal-fired power plants have been installed worldwide, and today there are more – not fewer – coal-fired power plants operating.
(In Vermont, the sale of renewable energy credits to out-of-state utilities enables them to avoid mandates to reduce their fossil fuel dependency, meaning that there is no net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.)
At best, industrial wind simply adds more energy to the global supply. And what for? More! More energy than the grid can carry, more idiotic water parks, more snowmaking, more electronic gadgets, more money for corporations.
Why should we spend millions of dollars to destroy wildlife habitat, kill bats and eagles, pollute our headwaters, fill valuable wetlands, polarize our communities, make people sick, mine rare-earth metals – just to ensure that we can consume as much or more next year than we did this year?
The costs of industrial wind far outweigh the benefits – unless you are a wind developer. Federal production tax credits and other subsidies have fostered a gold rush mentality among wind developers, who have been abetted by political and environmental leaders who want to appear “green” without challenging the underlying causes of our crises.
Meanwhile, average Vermonters find themselves without any ability to protect their communities or the ecosystems of which they are a part. The goal of an industrial wind moratorium is to stop the gold rush so we can have an honest discussion on these issues.
Why does this frighten proponents of big wind? Because once carefully examined, industrial wind will be exposed for the scam that it is.
McKibben’s current attitude toward the environment has been adopted by politicians, corporations, and the big environmental organizations. Environmentalism has been successfully mainstreamed, at the cost of its soul.
This co-opted version isn’t about protecting the land base from the ever-expanding empire of humans. It’s about sustaining the comfort levels we feel entitled to without exhausting the resources required. It is entirely human-centered and hollow, and it serves corporate capitalism well.
In “Deep Economy,” McKibben points out that the additional “stuff” provided by an ever-growing economy doesn’t leave people happier; instead, the source of authentic happiness is a healthy connection to nature and community. As Vermonters have already discovered, industrial wind destroys both.
What industrial wind represents should be obvious to everyone: This is business as usual disguised as concern for the Earth. Far from genuine “environmentalism,” it is the same profit- and growth-driven destruction that is at the root of every ecological crisis we face.
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3 Responses
The math is quite simple… More people means more food to be produced, more poop to flush, more water to be treated, more electricity that needs to be generated, which means more power plants that have to be built. So forth and so on. I’m sure you’ve heard it before.
What is the solution, if any?
too many people… too many of the wrong! people is more like it. Don’t ask me who are the right! kind of people. We all know, don’t we?
By their fruits ye shall know them, and all that….
They raise fruits… and much more. They live on the Earth! I don’t know where those other people think they are!
You and just about everybody else are missing it. The root cause of all of the environmental issues is population. It’s that simple. There are too many people. The population is growing exponentially. Want to get scared? Google populaion growth. Everybody has a “I’m gonna get mine attitude” (The same people that won’t walk 10 feet to return a buggy to the rack at the grocery store)