09 Mar rage against the wind
Last night I spoke to a group of concerned citizens in Fort Scott, Kansas. It’s one of many such communities and counties across the plains states dealing with the issue of industrial wind companies taking over the rural landscape.
To any of you unfamiliar with the variety of concerns over wind energy and how it is creating a division in many small communities I have spoken with over the past year and a half, perhaps this blog from Dane Hicks, who is publisher of The Anderson County Review in Garnett, Kansas, will give you a sense of the mood in these towns.
Many residents of these communities do not want the disruption of their lifestyle that industrial wind brings. And beyond that, there are concerns over property values, health, wildlife, electrical rate increases, and the dramatic change of scenery, to list a few.
The wind turbines always look so serene and cool if you are simply passing by. But living with them, and understanding how they negatively impact the people who have to deal with them all the time, is a different story. I think Dane’s article will give you a sense of the rage that is building in many areas of this country, surrounding the implementation of a non-dispatchable, and unreliable source of energy. The first paragraph is priceless:
“If the federal government offered billions of dollars in tax credits and other incentives to promote the stacking of Oreo cookies all the way up to the International Space Station, rich companies would line up to gobble the goodies – and taxpayers would have to supply the milk.
And that 254-mile high column of cookies would be just about as practical as the billions pumped into the U.S. wind industry.”