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True, Broken Tap. It always amazes me how people can talk about 'their' views, 'their' amenities, and 'their' quality of life - when they don't pay the bills on all of 'their' wants and desires.
I compost and recycle everything organic, and do it not because some entity thinks it is good for the planet, but because it is good for my soil as a gardener to be self-cycling as naturally as possible. I want to put up turbines, not to decrease global warming from humanity (which I just can't force myself to believe in) but because I want to find a way to have power when ours is so frequently interrupted and unreliable (we have a steady wind here of 15 mph, and several days a week, every week, it is 25-35 mph on my hills).
People may SAY they do things from purely altruistic motives, but they won't like spending thousands of dollars for something that doesn't work or impacts them negatively. I prefer to weigh things VERY carefully - after all, it is my money, my land, my time, and my life that I invest in things. When my choices impact others, then those impacts have to be weighed for validity as well; their wants and needs against mine. I totally believe that real property rights are sacrosanct, too bad others like the lady at that meeting don't understand that. At least my neighbors don't mind the smell of manure!
At town meeting I was talking to one guy about how some of us who have lived on these hills all our lives have had to pay extra for heating, pushing snow, damage to our homes, etc and that this was finally a way of making our farms help pay for themselves. So this woman overhears me talking and said...
"Yes I understand that, but when I want to return home from a trip I don't want to look up at MY hills and see windmills on them."
At which point I reminded her that those hills are someones property and they have been paying taxes on them for a very long time. The truth is, once these windmills are up people will grow to like them. They just:
1. Hate change
2. Are jealous that people in elevated areas will get money and they won't
Actually I've spent a bit of time in Maine and have several good friends who live "Down East." I don't disagree with your two points, but also feel that there will be a several hundred MW of wind built in Maine over the next decade.
I'm with you, Broken Tap. It's time for positive change but for many, change is ,wooooo, too scary. and like Richurch has pointed out, over time, when these fixtures like wind turbines have been in place for some time, people will take them for granted just like miles of wooden telephone poles.
I'm with you, Broken Tap. It's time for positive change but for many, change is ,wooooo, too scary. and like Richurch has pointed out, over time, when these fixtures like wind turbines have been in place for some time, people will take them for granted just like miles of wooden telephone poles.
If the next round of windmills goes up, I will be able to watch them from my kitchen table and it does not bother me in the least. Actually I think it will be neat to see them whirl-gigging around. After awhile, those views of Mt Washington get kind of boring!
As a pragmatic greenie I realize that we, in addition to harvesting green energy, have to have a sufficiently robust economy to support the industrial base needed to build the hydroelectric generators, wind turbines, solar collectors and (here's the real biggie) a nuclear fission base power system with full fuel recycle and reuse. I believe it is time to phase out coal fueled electric power plants and leave the coal for future gasification and/or petroleum synthesis and for coke to smelt ore into metals.
Cities are here to stay and require tremendous amounts of heat and electricity to remain habitable. The energy demand is far greater than can be generated inside the city without building nuclear plants within the city limits. Unfortunately hysterical “greenies” seduced, or simply bought off by the fossil fuel industry, has propagated a desperate fear of this energy. Despite what all the propagandists in the world would have us believe a properly designed nuclear power plant is not and cannot be a bomb. The plants should be built as close to the load as possible.
In any case the world needs to invest a tremendous amount of wealth into the future energy supply or sink into a “World is Flat” economy with very low energy and very primitive and unhealthy, for all but the privileged few, desperation for most.
I think one of the biggest problems is that so many people are looking for a single solution. That just isn't going to happen because different regions have different needs and resources. We need the small, local production and we need better large production. We definitely need to upgrade the grid so that all the small, local production can feed into the grid so the large, centralized production plants don't need to be as big... both because the communities are generating most of thier power, but also because they are feeding the grid with surplus as well. Unfortunately, our highest priority is to reduce the amount of energy we waste on non-essentials. Streetlights are important, but huge lightshows and billboards like you see in Vegas and Time Square, etc are just plain wasteful. Maybe cities wouldn't be such huge power-sucks if a lot of that nonsense was eliminated and the power put to better use.
That "nonsense" that you describe is in place simply because it works. Disneyland and Disney World are HUGE power draws, as are Busch Gardens. But will you stop taking your kids there - or even to your local county fair - because the rides draw a ridiculous amount of power? No? Neither will Vegas or any city give up its lights and advertisments; Times Square won't shut down to go green. Because the people demand it, they live on it and live for it and make their purchasing decisions from it. As much as folks talk about "going green" and start their own little victory gardens and demand that "big business" and "big agriculture" shut down their greedy demands on power supplies, they will scream bloody murder when the big diesel trucks and ships stop bringing their various supplies from all over the country and world. What do you MEAN they can't have the huge selection of everything from fruits and toilet paper to the latest lawn furniture? Are you MAD? What are we - some thrid world country that has to live only on what it can produce locally? Tell your wives they can't go get that cute pair of shoes or that new spring wardrobe, tell your husbands that they can't have the latest golf clubs or the satellite sports broadcasts, and tell your children that they can't have that trip to Disney World or the new iPod that all of their friends have, because you are "going green" - and you might just find yourself all alone in the world. Pitting the cities against the rural areas is just another politicizing tactic. Fact is, no one wants to do without, no matter how much it costs them.
And that's precisely my point... capitalism and our propensity to put our short-term conveniences before our long-term needs is what has gotten into this position and will inevitably bite us in the butt (as is starting to happen now). It's not so much pitting city against rural, it's more about recognizing and reducing waste where ever it might be occuring. Yes, that might mean giving up or reducing some of those conveniences, but it also means that you will have affordable energy to heat your home or produce your goods because that power isn't being wasted on a gazillion billboards and lightshows that serve no other purpose than to promote a product and get more of your money... at best, simply to entertain.
Most of those conveniences could still be available, but maybe in more moderation or alternatively powered. There are tons of convenient contraptions that could be made more energy-efficient but haven't been simply because they haven't really needed to be... I think the time has come for all of us to start making demands for these improvements and do our parts not to waste what we have. If we can spend the remaining decades of "cheap power" conserving, improving efficiency, and developing/utilizing alternate power isn't that a much better use of dwindling resources? Wouldn't that possibly put us ahead of the ball just enough that we don't end up completely without all those modern conveniences we've come to love so much?
Well, I don't believe blaming "capitalism" has much validity. True Capitalism doesn't have lobbyists and profiteers and lobbyists coercing political representatives into making laws that cater solely to their profit margin. That's not capitalism, it's profiteering. Many electric companies have sewed up their states' legislatures into binding laws that actually inhibit the free and open development of alternative energy resources - some don't allow the grid-tied solar or wind applications because they don't want to 'owe' the residential or commercial customer when the meter goes backwards. Some states only allow the development of alternative resources under the auspices of the primary electric companies. The touted "Green Home" in Traditions of South Carolina only has storage batteries, and is not allowed to do anything other than use its stored electricity. Once the batteries are fully charged, there is no reversal of the meter, no reciprocal 'trade' of electricity. Either you use the stored energy or you shut it off and use the grid. Where I live now in NE, the electrical companies have to approve any alternative energies - and have the right to condemn and prohibit them if they are not done through their auspices and with their approval. THAT is not capitalism, but profiteering. Businesses and residences who would eagerly embrace solar or wind power to offset or augment their power draws are crippled by governments being used as tools by the electric companies to ensure their own technologies and profits remain at the top. Limiting businesses or residential power draws, by force or cost, only stymies development and usage of new technology. The key is not to learn to live with less, nor to governmentally restrict consumption, but to free the individuals to explore, use, and enhance technology to 'build a better mousetrap' - the real capitalism.
I agree, the system we have in place is not true Capitalism and is much more like Profiteering. The corporations control too much of the government and government is involved with trade for real capitalism to work like it's supposed to. It's not just the utility companies abusing the customers either, automobiles and agriculture run into the same issues. There are just too many areas where cartel-like conglomerates have cornered the market and are price fixing and caging the customers.
It's a tough position to be in when the customer wants something different and is attempting to do something different with their dollars; but the corporations and legislation are set up to prohibit it. I run into some of these issues here myself, and they are very frustrating. Unfortunately we've given so much power to the corporations and the government for so long it's almost impossible to take it back now... but I agree we have to do something soon because it certainly seems that the skipper is driving the boat right into the shoals!
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