“The people who build wind farms are not environmentalists. . . . Business is a delicate balancing act, and chief executives are always walking a tightrope between the needs of the community, their employees, and the marketplace.”

– Paul Gipe, Wind Energy Comes of Age (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1995), p. 454.

The front page exposé in the New York Times of another problem of industrial wind—coming on top of Robert Bryce’s eye-opening Wall Street Journal piece on air emissions relating to firming wind energy—presents another problem for Big Wind and Big Environmentalism.

Windpower’s noise problem is nothing new–it has just been swept under the rug by the industrial wind complex. The oft photoshoped pictures of wind turbines skip the sound–that would ruin the idyllic facade of the energy source that is radically uneconomic and an inferior energy source compared to conventional electricity generation.…

On September 21, 2010, U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) introduced a bill[1] that would create an insidious national “Renewable Electricity Standard” (RES). Bingaman now has 32 cosponsors but expects 60.

The bill would result in higher monthly bills for millions of home owners and renters, farms, businesses, industries, hospitals, educational institutions, and any other organization that uses electricity.

Despite the intense citizen displeasure with Congress, Bingaman’s RES bill shows that both Democrats and Republicans, while in Washington, are eager to favor special interests and their lobbyists while ignoring the adverse impact of their actions on the nation’s ordinary citizens, consumers and taxpayers. The bill belies Republican claims that they favor less federal government intrusion, control, and damage.

Key Provisions

The bill would require that, by 2021, 15% of the electricity sold by an electric utility must be generated from wind or certain other “renewable” energy sources, or from energy efficiency.…

“It’s time to stop debating the issues surrounding climate change initiatives and focus instead on simple, realistic, cost-effective solutions. This is one area where an ounce of near-term prevention will be worth considerably more than a pound of cure later on.”

– Ken Lay, “Let’s Have an Ounce of Global-Warming Prevention,” December 1997.

“An ounce of global warming prevention is worth a ton of CO2 cure.  There are no emergency rooms for a sick planet.”

– Edward J. Markey (D–MA), “Second Life Remarks to the Virtual Bali UN Climate Conference,” December 2008.

The New York Times and other media outlets have identified the principled free-market advocates Charles and David Koch as supporters of California’s Prop. 23, a measure to suspend the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32).…

Part I examined the true costs of ethanol and windpower to find that both were highly uneconomic compared to their alternatives. Both government-dependent fuels are also inferior products, making a straight comparative cost comparison misleading.

The environmental characteristics of both ethanol and windpower are also problematic compared to their more energy-dense, consumer-preferred alternatives.

Is Ethanol Green?

Given the high cost of the ethanol mandate, the putative benefits – energy independence, green jobs creation, environmental improvement – come at a steep price. But costs aside, there are other reasons to doubt whether these benefits are real. The gulf between hype and reality is perhaps greatest when it comes to environmental performance.

The negative environmental externalities associated with petroleum-derived fuels – particularly oil spills, air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions – have long been a major focus of the environmental movement and federal regulators.…