I am writing in response to your recent article by Richard Mertens, “Wind Energy: Boom Sputters as Industry Tax Credit is Set to Expire.” This piece describes the plight of wind-industry workers and their families in the face of political uncertainty with the Production Tax Credit at risk. The implicit assumption of Mr. Mertens is that these jobs are worthy for a better environment and for a more sustainable energy future.
Please consider a very different view: that this industry is an artificial construct of cronyism; squanders resources at the expense of consumers and taxpayers; and toys with workers and their families who continually find themselves at the mercy of temporary political majorities.
Being a Christian myself, I am not sure how supporting a business that is based on mistruths and bilks taxpayers and ratepayers out of billions of their hard-earned dollars can in any way be considered “Christian.”…
While Invenergy waits for the federal Production Tax Credit (PTC) to be extended by this ‘Lame Duck’ Congress, as expressed in the 12/4/12 Batavia Daily News article: “Orangeville windfarm waits on the tax credit,” there are thousands of local tax- and rate-paying citizens who are eagerly awaiting the expiration, permanent expiration, of this $0.022/kWh subsidy. The PTC is nothing more than a tax-shelter-generator for wealthy, multinational, rent-seeking corporations like Invenergy.
How does a business plan dependent on massive taxpayer-funded handouts for profitability make it past the drawing board in the first place?!? Any of us would have filed such a plan to its rightful place—in the garbage can.
The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA)– with the help of political cronies in high places–have attempted, and failed to push the PTC through various bills, not once, not twice, but FIVE (5) times in a little over a year.…
The grassroots rebellion against the government-created industrial wind industry grows apace. MasterResource has given voice to a number of us engaged in this volunteer ecological fight, to which we are grateful.
Industrial Wind Action Group keeps a list of U.S., Canadian, and European groups challenging local wind projects or the unholy alliance of Big Wind and Big Environmentalism.
For the U.S., I count 156 organizations in 29 states: Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
A listing follows (and please add any groups missed in the comments section to this post):