Yesterday I saw the movie Lincoln , and loved it. The story is focused on a few weeks in January, 1865, when “insider politics” resulted in Congressional passage of the 13th Amendment. The amendment freed America’s slaves, and was at least as polarizing as the carbon tax is today. The movie is up for various awards and has an impressive cast, with Daniel Day-Louis and Sally Field in the principle roles. Tommy Lee Jones plays the radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens and even James Spader entertains as W.N. Bilbo, a just-this-side-of-believable political fixer.
There are lots of moral and historical lessons to be drawn from this movie, but one lesson is of interest to climate activists. Environmentalists are often accused of being too pure to make political deals, and insistent that everyone recognize the high value and moral imperative of their stand. While that assertion is not uniformly true, we all know well-meaning people who opposed the recent cap & trade bill because it did not go far enough. Of course, it wasn’t opposition from enviro’s that scuttled the bill, but the mixed reception didn’t help. From the perspective of 2013, having some kind of carbon legislation on the books would be much better than our present state.
One of the central ideas of the movie has to do with the question: does the end justify the means? Lincoln wanted to pass the legislation (a moral imperative if there ever was one) even to the point of overriding the advice of the Team of Rivals in his own cabinet. If the movie is to be believed, he was even putting an early end to the Civil War in jeopardy. He resorted to the kind of ‘earmarks’ policy we all pretend to abhor, handing out political appointments in return for votes. Even the righteous Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens engaged in word games on topics he had previously been adamant about, distinguishing between ‘racial equality’ and ‘equality before the law’, in order to get the bill through Congress.
For climate activists, this is food for thought. Addressing global warming is a high ethical concern for us, but so was ending slavery for Lincoln. The likelihood of carbon legislation that meets the high threshold of our hopes is small. Is it more important to be morally right, even if nothing ever passes Congress? If we compromise our principles in order to get a bill, would we be happy with ineffectual legislation? We need to think carefully about how, as Lincoln tells Stevens, we can follow our North Star but also find a way through the swamps and deserts on our path. Let’s hope that in a hundred and fifty years people regard our decisions as wise ones.
I haven’t seen the movie yet but I have heard others come away with similar thoughts. There was a profit motive for slaveowners to resist change, but it is not comparable to the profits the fossil fuel industry will lose if they are forced to leave their product in the ground. In the meantime, we are all slaves to their industry. The slaves of that era could not rise up against their masters without certain death, but we can and hopefully, we will.
Otis ANG Base Cape Cod Admits Million Dollar Repairs on Three Year Old Wind Turbine
http://www.capenews.net/communities/bourne/news/2333
Home > Communities > Bourne > Military Base Having Trouble With German-Made Wind Turbine
Military Base Having Trouble With German-Made Wind Turbine
By: Diana T. Barth
Published: 01/17/13
One of the major lessons learned over the past several years by the Air Force Civil Engineer Center (AFCEC) on the Massachusetts Military Reservation might be that it pays to buy local.
Well, if you read the story you’ll see that the turbine will still pay for itself in 10 years, even with these defects. Also, as you allude to in your comment part of the reason for the extensive time it takes for repairs was the fact that they had to use a German company because they couldn’t get an American company (which would have been local and wouldn’t have had the communication problems referenced in the article) to sell a single turbine.
Which argues for more turbines to achieve an economy of scale!
The top news story for 2013 will be wind turbine noise and second the operation and maintenance costs of those turbines.
The SouthCoast and Cape Cod are today the most sophisticated wind turbine noise experiment in the world.
Falmouth had a commercial wind turbine installed several years ago. The result is hundreds of noise complaints that the noise causes “clear and significant” damage to people’s sleep and mental health.
Next comes Fairhaven, Scituate and Kingston residents complaints which now number in the thousands.
Massachusetts has a well financed semi quasi state agency whose goal is to reach a mandated renewable energy goal to reach by 2020. The state agency provides resources to supply studies for the placement of commercial wind turbines. Large megawatt land based wind turbines is the quickest way to reach that goal.
The residents or abutters to the megawatt wind turbines have had to use their own resources to prove the low frequency / infra sound is causing physical pressure, fear, disorientation, negative physical and mental symptoms. As each commercial wind turbine is installed more attorneys, acoustic engineers,sleep specialist, epidemiologist and physiologists are being hired to show megawatt turbines represents a major public health threat.
The pro wind turbine camp says the residential illness is based on selfish hysteria. The residents who live around the turbines have sold homes,moved to their basements and become ill.In most cases the residents that live within 3000 feet of turbines are making complaints .
Where does that leave us today ? A semi quasi state agency created by Beacon Hill that made a mistake siting commercial megawatt wind turbines too close to residential homes ? Falmouth, Fairhaven, Scituate and Kingston have thousands of homes near or abutting the turbines how can the state admit a mistake ?
In addition to the noise issues the megawatt turbines installed in the past four years are experiencing catastrophic gear box failures . The mandated 2020 renewable energy goal looks a long way off !