Editor Note: This post is indicative of growing grassroot opposition to industrial wind development from traditional left-of-center environmentalists. Note how economics and affordability is part of the argument; indeed, protecting the wallet of the little guy and gal was once a core principle of those who would otherwise call themselves traditional environmentalists.
I once believed in the Sierra Club, until the CLUB ( an insular bunch of activists who aren’t looking at the entire picture but only at their own agendas) started fully supporting the Green Energy Act (Canada).
The Green Energy Act and the PM government is placing turbines everywhere and anywhere. This includes in pristine areas, in and around fresh lakes, on mountains, on ridges, on the Niagara Escarpment, near communities. Such activity is blasting, drilling, destroying the environment, and it has stripped away the rights of municipalities and the proper consultation of the public.
Everything the environmentalists (including myself for 20 years) have worked so hard to protect, is now being destroyed or in jeopardy. Wind factories are industrial projects. Every industrial project has had strict laws put in place to protect the environment. The Green Energy Act no longer protects those laws. Wind turbine factories are no different and should get no special treatment. Especially, when big greedy companies or individuals are the only people benefiting.
John Bennett of the Ontario, Canada Sierra Club, has accused Wind Concerns Ontario (WCO) as being supported by the Progressive Conservatives (PC’s). I’m a liberal, and I support and volunteered for WCO after my town was ruined by wind turbines, the Sierra Club’s and the PM’s agenda and enforcements.
Mr. Bennett is a hypocrite in my opinion. He fought against industrial industries for imposing onto citizens and the land. However, the turbines projects are the worst projects that are having the most enforcements in Canada’s history. It wasn’t okay for other industries to do what the wind turbine industry is doing in Ontario. But it’s okay for the wind turbine industry to do what it’s doing because Mr. Bennett believes in the industry. What a shame the Sierra Club and Mr. Bennett have become.
I would like to invite the Sierra Club to visit every single city and town in Ontario facing environmental, human and economic impacts from wind turbines. Then conclude factual information based on real Ontario people’s stories and evidence about wind turbine horror stories.
What are the abilities of the wind turbine business under the recklessness of the Green Energy Act?
Being able to take out a section 17a permit from the Ministry of Environment to kill, harm and harass wildlife under the endangered species act is unacceptable and reckless. Why did Canadians and the Sierra Club fight so hard for the endangered species acts, for it to be overruled by foreign, and oil and gas wind companies, who own turbines etc?
Being able to clear cut trees and remove carbon dioxide is unacceptable and reckless. What was the point in all the Sierra Club’s fights to save trees?
Being able to kill, harm and destroy endangered species is unacceptable and reckless. What was the point of the Sierra Club fighting hard to save all living creatures?
Being able to potentially harm water sources is unacceptable and reckless. What was the point of the Sierra Club and Canadians, to fight hard for water protection?
Being able to blast fields and mountains for turbines is unacceptable and reckless. Why isn’t it okay for mine’s to blast mountains but it’s okay for turbine companies to blast everything and anything according to the Sierra Club and their support for turbines and the Green Energy Act?
Being able to place industrial industries in once protected areas is unacceptable and reckless. What was the point of all the man hours, money and laws put into parks and wild spaces to protect it?
Being able to build any type of industrial industry without proper and full environmental and human impact assessments is unacceptable and reckless. Why should the wind industry be any different?
Being able to say there are no health risks is unacceptable and reckless. Since when did the Sierra Club believe in mainstream propaganda? How come there is hundreds of creditable doctors being ignored, who are saying the turbines do cause health effects to humans, nature, and wildlife? How come the Sierra Club didn’t believe Health Canada when they said many things were healthy but now those things aren’t considered healthy? Are wind turbines any different? (Example: It was once okay to drink and smoke when a woman was pregnant.)
Being able to strip away the people’s voice and their right to a full consultation is tyranny, unacceptable and reckless. What’s is the point of the constitution act? Why did the Sierra Club fight hard for people’s rights but now their helping to strip away people’s rights?
Being able to put any industrial industry, (I don’t care what industry it is) near people where they live, work, sleep, play, and go to school is unacceptable and reckless. What was the point in making laws for every other industry but the wind industry?
Being able to build an industry for the profiteering of greedy human consumption when Ontario has the best green energy, it’s water and not wind turbines is unacceptable and reckless. Since when did the Sierra Club start saying the profiteering of human consumption out weighs the rights of the environments. I thought the whole point of being a steward of the land was to protect the biodiversity and wildlife that can’t speak for itself!
Being able to make billions in carbon credits is unacceptable and reckless. Why doesn’t the Sierra Club print that in the SC website and the truth about Al Gore and the billions he stands to make? Print how big companies stand to make millions a year at the expense of the environment, Canadians in Ontario and the economics of this country. If a home of $300,000 takes a property value loss of 30%; who is going to pay for that loss of $90, 000? Will it be the wind turbine company who will make 10 million dollars a month from wind turbines, or the municipality who will make $200,000 a year? Will it be the hard working Canadians who are broke from the recession and all these increases like hydro because of wind turbines who can’t afford to put food on their tables?
Being able to reference other peoples work like the Sierra Club has, about the benefits of turbine report and without writing the true impacts is biased, unacceptable and reckless.
Being able to clear cut, blast, and ruin pristine areas does not equal clean, green and sustainable it is unacceptable and reckless and = an unplanned mess for the future.
Being able to bypass environmental laws is unacceptable and reckless.
Being able to economically impact locals, municipalities and Ontarian’s economically without consultation is unacceptable and reckless. Many cities are having backroom deals done with respect to turbines. What is the point of having laws to protect citizens from backdoor deals?
Being able to override other renewable energy sources all ready in place is a waste, unacceptable and reckless.
Being able to loose geology, fields, soils, water, wetlands, forests, wildlife, marshes to turbine factories = a negative impact on climate change, it is unacceptable and reckless.
Biased Wind Report
The Sierra Club (SC) recently released a wind turbine report “Get the truth about Wind Turbines“:
How come SC didn’t print the information about all the oil and gas companies who own the wind factories?
How come SC didn’t print all the information about the carbon footprint of the turbine industry?
How come SC didn’t print how many turbines it takes to replace coal plants?
How come the reports don’t show any of the negatives about the wind turbines? This is very biased and one sided.
How come SC didn’t print about the hydro cost increases, the people who are sick from turbines, the people who have lost their homes because of turbines, the destruction to the environment, all the companies (anyone and everyone) who is jumping on the wind turbine money train, who don’t care about the environment and who are snakes going into every city and town destroying them and getting away with it because of the Green Energy Act?
SC’s information about bird mortality by wind turbines is wrong. Just ask the American bird association. SC’s information about health risks are one sided. Why didn’t SC write about any of the information from doctors who oppose turbines and have medical evidence about Wind Turbine Syndrome? Why not tell the truth about decommissioning as per the governments information, SC’s reports don’t match it.
What right does SC have to support the environmental and human impacting Green Energy Act? I no longer believe in the Sierra Club, and I will no longer support it.
Wind Turbines are for the profiteering of human consumption, big corporations and jobs. It does have huge impacts and a carbon footprint. So, why should this industry be treated any different then any other industry? Why should all the laws we put in place get thrown out the window overnight, by wind enthusiasts (who don’t have all their facts)?
Why isn’t Mr. Bennett or the Sierra Club traveling across Ontario, to get documentation from real Ontario people, to find out for themselves, the horror stories people are encountering with turbines from a human, economical, and environmental impact? Put your money where your mouth is Sierra Club and come talk to the people of Ontario from the Manitoba border to Southern Ontario.
Is the Sierra Club and Mr. Bennett members all to busy sitting in their little offices in Ottawa, while the citizens of Ontario are suffering? Are they too busy to get out of their office in Ottawa to go to Bruce County, Wolf Island, Sault Saint Marie, or Dorian Township in Northern Ontario?
Where is the Sierra Club hiding? Is the Sierra Club getting it’s information from the wind turbine industries who stand to make millions, one sided professionals, the Internet and books? Is the Sierra Club going door to door in every city getting the information first hand about wind turbine factories in place or going to be in place about wind factories? How creditable is the SC’s sources and information?
How come the Sierra Club is using biased information about wind turbine information from foreign countries that do not have the same geography, climate, and terrain? Why is SC supporting foreign companies like Germany who have stated that turbines have not made a difference in carbon emissions? How come the SC is supporting German companies like Enridge to come into Canada, who stand to make billions while they steal our land and money?
Why is the Sierra Club believing Enridge an industrial company is good for Canada but no other industry or company is believed by Sierra Club when they try to sell their industrial propaganda and how good it is for us? Just ask the First Nations and Canadians when they were told whisky, beaver hunting, reserves, the trains, mining, asbestos, vaccines, cow’s milk, etc. would all be good for them. The information Sierra Club prints about wind turbines is for fields but it does not apply to wind turbines on places like the Niagara escarpment.
Therefore, the Sierra Club is incorrect because it does not apply to every geographic area because Sierra Club does not have the research and assessments. Remember when all the sports industries were supported by the cigarette industry?
I’m embarrassed to say I was once a member of the Sierra Club. Sierra Club you have lost myself and my environmental friends as a member forever!
Says it all really, the complete lack of moral value associated with the implementation of wind farms, and also the complete lack of value to the energy grid and the environment.
I predicted in a letter once to my local council that these wind turbines on our hills would serve as an inescapable reminder of our monumental stupidity, I remain confident that this will come to pass.
Without wind energy, what is the supply side strategy of the anti-conventional-energy Left? The answer is not much. No hydro, no nuclear…. Biomass not sure … Solar VERY expensive.
So the pro-wind ‘environmentalists’ find themselves stuck with a bad technology. How many can change their minds?
And, Rob, although solar is expensive, what will provide power at night, on cloudy days, and when dust covers the solar cells….?
Daylight, wind, and smoke signals. High tech in the Neolithic….
It’s Big Environmentalism, predictably they have become the kind of power mad bloated corporation they professed to be against. The irony is palpable. And just like the worst corporate offenders, the real source of their malice is in their association with the government, attempting to use it’s monopoly on the use of force to unfairly get around the market, itself the greatest method to protect the environment known to man.
This is a positive development in two respects:
1) it is entertaining to watch neo-environmentalists/neo-environmentalism cannabalize themselves through the very policies/programs they created in the first place; and
2) when the hard left neo-environmentalists (a significant portion of which are actually eco-socialists) wake up to the error of their ways – and openly admit it – there is hope that the uneducated populace will soon follow suit.
In the end, science and observational evidence always win out.
In this case, the laws of physics and economics will not be altered by neo-environmentalist ideology. Quite the contrary. They will simply alter neo-environmentalist ideology over time. But it won’t happen overnight.
The Sierra Club joins those ignoble agencies that aid and abet a wind economy that is corrupt and doesn’t work. The Sierra Club in my view joins the Audubon MASS for unclear thinking and less than clear objectives re the environment. The Sierra Club joins David Suzuki, who still promotes wind power. It is a club that is being exposed now, and donors will be loathe to forget. Sierra will be known for its very sad conclusion, being in the hands of an industry that VERY SHORTLY, will be, as it increasingly is seen, as a complete boondoggle, as full of wishful thinking as Santa coming down the chimney with “free energy.” This is so sad because Sierra was once a respected and noble name. Good article, Jen!
Sadly in Ontario we are afflicted with oligarchs of GREEN who are wedded to Big Energy funding rather than environmental principles. The ECO here stands for ECONOMICS rather than ECOLOGY and the McGuinty government is at fault for GREED Energy.
While it may be acceptable to use a financial nudge to start a beneficial social change the gross over-subsidization of renewable energy projects is a known formula: money=power=corruption.
This guarantees a planetary SwindLE of the true protection from industrialization and human encroachment our wilderness and wetlands must have to ensure a greener future.
Jen is right to say that those of us who have invested our lives and resources to the cause of environmental protection are being robbed of return on investment (ROI) we and past generations have made through public education, parks and other habitat conservation initiatives. This is not the way to save Mother Earth.
We see Species At Risk legislation being bored through with loopholes to facilitate development and call on everyone to help STOP this betrayal of Canada’s Natural Heritage. http://windconcernsontario.wordpress.com/2011/06/04/save-the-blanding-turtle-and-the-whip-poor-will/ last day to comment and also http://www.ebr.gov.on.ca/ERS-WEB-External/displaynoticecontent.do?noticeId=MTEyNTQ1&statusId=MTY4Nzk4&language=en
[…] and the economics of this country. The Sierra Club joins those ignoble agencies that aid and abet a Wind economy that is corrupt and doesn’t work. The Sierra Club in my view joins the Audubon MASS […]
You greenies are against everything. Don’t want coal because of air emissions; don’t want nukes because of radioactivity; don’t want hydropower because it floods riparian habitat; don’t want wind because it chops bird and the tower ruin the “viewshed”; don’t want solar because it takes a huge area of solar panels to replace one 500 mw coal plant and they want to build them in the desert. Do you all wish to sit around in the coal (or heat) and dark?
There are over 6 billion of us on earth. If we do away with all the technology, the impact of everyone stripping wood for cooking fires and going out of our cave to releive ourselves on the ground each morning will dwarf the impacts of anything we have done so far!
For “Gary, West Virginia”:
Your argument is overused, just like those who say “NIMBY” is hypocritical. At some point, anyone who cares about remaining wild and scenic places needs to take a stand against random industrialization of the landscape. The idea that Man “needs” to constantly usurp more and more land is immoral.
As I see it, those who are “against everything” are mainly against the effects of population growth, whether they realize it or not. The impossible vision of perpetual economic growth (fiat money & endless debt repayment) is closely linked to population growth. I see that whole mindset as a brain disease. The planet is finite and growth should cease at maturity, as we expect it to in most other realms.
The world population is now over 7 billion and climbing, and that’s the whole problem. We need massive birth control efforts to minimize all forms of human impact. Wind turbines are unique in their scale and domination of the landscape. They fall into a new category of sprawl, especially with the trend is toward making them as large as possible. Wind turbines are very inefficient in terms of power per acre.
Solar makes a lot more sense to me, and it should get subsidies, if anything does. We should be putting solar panels on every possible roof and parking lot (elevated panels).