I have been vacationing and now living in Maine since 1949.  The lure of The North Woods was ingrained in me from my earliest memories.  Our family came every summer from wherever we lived at the time. Alabama, Ohio, New York, Maryland, New Jersey . . . . none of them had the draw we had to this beautiful, wild wilderness.  We brought a number of families with us over the years to experience Maine, and every one of them ended up coming back again and again and some eventually retired here.

Our destination was a small lake in the Lincoln area where the last 15 miles of the road was dirt in 1949.  The camp we rented was primitive . . . no electricity, an outhouse, no TV and a crackly transistor radio, kerosene lamps, an old fashioned ice box, with real ice, a wood cook stove .…

“After billions in public hand-outs spanning nearly four decades, big wind has never been able to stand on its own and there’s no reason to believe this will change. … If yanking the handouts causes the industry to flat line then so be it. The US has elected a businessman at the helm who understands what it means to cut your losses. It’s time we did exactly that!”

Elections matter! 

Last week, untold thousands of Americans in deep-red counties took a stand. After eight years of “bureaucracy knows best” and the abuses that followed, voters shouted ‘NO’ to the wanton march of government-funded industrial wind turbines destroying the landscape and threatening their communities. The Trump victory will finally put an end to big wind’s vice grip on Washington.

And you can bet the wind sector is in full panic mode.…

” … building renewable energy infrastructure need not – and must not – be at the expense of birds and wildlife. Migratory birds face many threats and poorly sited renewable energy facilities and their associated infrastructure, notably power lines and towers, are killing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of birds annually, including species of conservation concern.”-

– Open Letter to the US Department of Interior (below)

The American Bird Conservancy (ABC) has actively complained to state and federal authorities about a double standard applied to politically correct, environmentally incorrect wind farms and central-station solar farms cited in bird-sensitive areas. The letter below is the latest attempt of ABC to apply existing statutes to energy infrastructure.

Dear Secretary Jewell and Acting Manager Goldfuss,

2016 marks the 100th anniversary of the Migratory Bird Treaty, a landmark and unparalleled international agreement that has protected, recovered, and maintained abundant bird populations for many groups of birds, especially shorebirds, waterfowl, and herons, and has helped maintain the spectacle of bird migration throughout the hemisphere.…

“Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was the impetus for the modern environmental movement dating back to the early 1960s…. It is beyond ironic that some 50 years later, the environmental movement has come full circle in its zeal to support wind energy whose 500 foot tall towers support (occasionally) whirring blades that have done untold harm to avian populations throughout rural America.”

– Sen. Bill Seitz (letter below)

Ohio Senator Bill Seitz defends fairness over favors. More like him are needed at all levels of government. May Ohio Governor John Kasich et al. reconsider energy policy with pointers from the likes of Senator Seitz.

Of sharp mind and with tell-it-like-it-is prose, Sen. Seitz recently weighed in on the offshore wind proposal for Lake Erie, the subject of two recent posts (here and here at MasterResource).…