Before the warm fuzzy feelings of the Inaugural fade, there is one more point to be made.
The Preamble to the Constitution is clear that, as a country, we intend to form “a more perfect union.” It is an interesting verbal construction. We are not trying to make a “perfect union”, since some static version of perfection will never remain intact. Instead, we are tasked with making our national union ever more perfect. This is an ongoing task, requiring us to be continuously attentive to the problems and perils facing our nation. In my mind, this national resolve is exemplified by Myrlie Evers-Williams’ opening prayer at the Inaugural. As the widow of the assassinated Civil Rights hero Medgar Evers, she seemed to have a unique and poignant perspective on how our union is becoming more perfect.
So what is the point?
As climate activist, we intend to form a ‘sustainable future.’ But perhaps that goal is too elusive and too static. It leads to debates about whether to buy plastic diapers or wash the cloth sort, whether to buy organic food from California or pesticide-sprayed local food. Such discussions are a waste of time, since every bona-fide choice made in an attempt to reduce our planetary impact is a good one. We should always work to be ‘more sustainable’ in the future than we are in the present and take advantage of each new lesson as we learn it.
All of us are on a journey to “more perfect sustainability”, each in our own way. Just as with our national union, we must be forever attentive and thoughtful about how to make our attempts to live sustainably every more perfect.
…Ted McIntyre
During my years at Boston College, I had the good fortune to study with Dr. William Ryan, then Professor of Social Psychology, and the author of a the acclaimed book, “Blaming the Victim.” At the time of its writing, Dr. Ryan focused attention on pressing social issues of the day, such as poverty and racism.
He contended, for example, that we blame the poor for poverty; and that we blame minorities for their own disfranchisement; we fault victims for somehow inviting the social inequities they endure. In effect, we hide behind an ideological façade rather than face our responsibilities to redress such injustices.
Lately, I have been struck by how Dr. Ryan’s description of this phenomenon applies to the victims of Big Wind—to those who have become ill or were forced to flee their homes to escape the toxic effects of industrial wind turbines sited in close proximity to them.
Just as we blame the poor for their poverty, we seem compelled to blame the victims of Big Wind for their own illness. Apostles of the wind industry, like Dr. Dora Mills, Dr. Robert McCunney and Australia’s Professor Simon Chapman, are only too happy to furnish the tacit explanations needed to justify blaming these victims for their own plight. These typically include psychosomatic causes, hypochondria, delusions, and other forms of mental illness. Interestingly, these “diagnoses” are always arrived at without benefit of examining a single patient, conducting an independent study, or even speaking with those suffering from adverse health effects.
It is guilt is by reason of insanity. In this inverted logic, the victims are to blame, not the turbines.
In some cases, we are told the illness associated with these toxic monsters is actually caused merely by the negative perceptions created when someone is ill-disposed to renewable energy—as though anyone could be against such an idea in principle. This is the always-handy nocebo effect.
This justification for blame is particularly absurd and reprehensible because it flies in the face of a simple fact. Most of the people who become ill were actually in favor of wind energy; that is, until they had firsthand experience of turbines spinning near their homes.
Why are so many ready to blame the victims of wind? Why so willing to receive these explanations without skepticism, without demanding the same scientific rigor demanded of wind critics? Dr. Ryan’s work is especially useful on this question. The answer is simple; it is a convenient form of social denial. People prefer blaming the victim to taking responsibility for confronting the real issue. It is much easier, for example, to blame someone in poverty for laziness, than to accept responsibility to find the true causes of economic inequities, much less take action to correct them.
This pitfall is easier to fall into than one might think. It is easy to believe that if we feed the hungry, we risk rewarding them for being hungry. It’s much harder to make sure they can find ways to help them feed themselves. Accepting personal or social responsibility requires change, action, or personal sacrifice to effect positive change or prevent harm. It forces people to confront the contradictions and absurdities in their ideological dogmas and replace them with facts, to reject social delusions and face inconvenient truths.
In short, it is much, much easier to blame the victims—than ourselves.
The overwhelming body of medical and scientific evidence demonstrates that infrasound, low frequency noise, and vibration of the kind produced by industrial wind turbines cause serious adverse health effects. The evidence has grown steadily for more than 30 years. It shows compellingly that the symptoms and illnesses called Wind Turbine Syndrome and Vibro-Acoustic Disease are caused by exposure to this toxic form of sound energy. Despite the vocal denials of the wind industry, there are no independent studies of merit to contradict this finding. There are only the groundless, though profuse, assertions and rhetoric of the windy industry to assure us that their denial of the real dangers is well founded.
There is also incontrovertible evidence that industrial wind turbines produce excessive quantities of this dangerous form of sound and vibration. Recently, the wind industry itself is being forced to gradually admit this fact. But even if the underlying causal connection were a complete mystery, the simple empirical evidence that many, many people become ill when they are near turbines is undeniable to anyone with eyes, ears, or one iota of common sense. Of equal importance, the same people who become ill near turbines, feel better when they get away from them. This simple form of evidence, referred to as case-crossover data by epidemiologists, matches common sense. It furnishes irrefutable proof that, in fact, the turbines are to blame, not the victims.
Wind turbines cannot eliminate our dependency on fossil fuels. They will not reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, nor save us from climate change. Wind turbines are not safe, they are not clean, and they have proven to be economically unsustainable—time and time again. Wind power will not prevent irreparable harms to people as well as the environment caused by our own insatiable appetite for energy. Wind cannot alleviate our obligation to one another to use energy wisely and conservatively.
There is virtually no benefit to justify the harm caused to victims. Even if such benefits existed, they could hardly outweigh the harm being done to people. If we continue to blame the victims and deny this truth, we will soon become victims of our own devices. This ironic little reversal of fate is what Hegel referred to as dialectic and it is inevitable. We will become the victims of our own blindness and we will be blamed for it—though perhaps only by history.
This last thought is cold comfort to those who must face the steady erosion of their health, their families’ and financial reserves, and the destruction of their very livelihoods that is created by living too close to turbines. The victims of Big Wind are like so many canaries in the mine shaft, who flee or fall in the face of this industrial toxin. Those who blame them are like unwitting miners who stand staring dumbfounded at the obvious, wondering what these canaries have done to bring this catastrophe upon themselves—and then continue along their merry way down the mine shaft, oblivious to the clear and present danger as though they are immune to it. Until it is too late.
Hi All,
Sustainability is where the planet, the nation and our communities can keep a good level of quality of life and diversity forever.
A while back Consumer Reports did a report on cloth vs disposable diapers. The bottom line, they are both harmful to the environment. The problem, says CR, is there are too may babies. Most choices are like that — no good choices — at best one choice just a bit less damaging than another, especially when looking holistically at the entire raw materials to waste process.
US Population doubles every 60 years and GDP doubles every 40. We cannot get to REAL sustainability as long is this growth continues — and overwhelms all else we do. And, for that to happen, we have to stop fooling ourselves and each other — and support what will really make our kids say thank you in 30 years — a steady state economy. Sustainability and growth in the same sentence is an oxymoron, as are “smart growth” and “sustainable growth”. Ignoring it is costing our children dearly in spite of our feel-good efforts in rearranging the deck chairs.
Please, let’s stop mis-using the term sustainable. We can feel good and do good too — only by including advocating for what will matter.
And yes, stabilizing and stopping “eternal growth” does start at the community level. See http://www.amazon.com/Better-NOT-Bigger-Eben-Fodor/dp/189740803X.
AllTheBest.
~Mike
Several years back, we wrote how the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MTC), a quasi-public agency tasked with encouraging renewable energy technologies in the State of Massachusetts, gambled $5.28 million in public funds to purchase two new (at the time) Vestes V82 – 1.65 megawatt wind turbines. MTC hoped to jumpstart local public renewable projects by making the Vestas turbines available for sale.
The Town of Orleans was one of the first candidates for the towers but sensitive watershed areas compromised the plan. The agency then moved aggressively to place them in Mattapoisett, MA and neighboring Fairhaven, MA, but public opposition to the giant turbines too close to residential areas stymied the effort. MTC took delivery of the V82 turbines in September, 2006 and warehoused them in Houston, TX at storage fees as high as $3,000 a month. They eventually found a ‘home’ — in Falmouth, MA.
WIND 1 went online in early 2010 at Falmouth’s Wastewater Treatment Plant. WIND 2, currently under construction, will be located only 1000 feet (less than five rotor widths) away.
With homes a short 1,350 feet from WIND 1, as soon as it started spinning complaints about noise and shadow flicker hit the media.
GE and Buy America
While WIND 1 was community funded through a combination of general bonds, grants and advanced payments on renewable energy credits sold under the State’s Renewable Portfolio Standard program, the second is being funded entirely through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) .
Recall, ARRA Section 1605 asserts a “buy America” provision and MTC’s Vestas V82 (vintage 2005-06) turbines were not American-made. Falmouth needed a waiver to get its hands on the stimulus money or change out MTC’s turbine in-hand for a domestic-made equivalent.
Apparently, the Town solicited General Electric as a potential turbine supplier, but GE’s siting standards required a safety setback of 1.5 times the hub height plus rotor diameter be maintained in the event of icing. The setback distance would be measured from occupied structures, roads, property lines and public access areas.
Unless the turbine was moved, GE was unwilling to do business.
This must have been a relief for Falmouth and MTC. Why hassle with another vendor, especially one so particular about safety, when the Vestas turbine was already in hand and, better yet, Vestas, the company, didn’t suffer the same safety hang-ups. The town would solve the problem by requesting a waiver from the Buy America provision in the law.
GE’s safety setback applied to the Vestas V82 would be 797 feet [1]. WIND 2 will exceed the standard to the property line (552 feet), the nearest public road (646 feet) and come within 350 feet of the nearest residential structure.
In siting documents prepared for the Falmouth site, risks of ice throw were dismissed this way:
Icing of wind turbine blades mainly occurs during standstill periods. If icing appears to be a problem at the proposed location, then adequate start-up procedures should prevent the wind turbine from starting if blades are covered with ice. Regardless, the recommended location is far enough away from property lines or public ways to minimize risks associated with these issues.
Waiver granted
The federal government, in this case the EPA, determined that no domestic manufactured wind turbines were available that could meet WIND 2′s project design and performance specifications. The waiver was granted.
The notice of waiver that appeared in the Federal Register on April 27, 2010 included this text:
Section 1605 of the ARRA requires that none of the appropriated funds may be used for the construction, alteration, maintenance, or repair of a public building or a public works project unless all of the iron, steel, and manufactured goods used in the project is produced in the United States, or unless a waiver is provided to the recipient by the head of the appropriate agency, here the EPA. A waiver may be provided if EPA determines that (1) applying these requirements would be inconsistent with the public interest; (2) iron, steel, and the relevant manufactured goods are not produced in the United States in sufficient and reasonably available quantities and of a satisfactory quality; or (3) inclusion of iron, steel, and the relevant manufactured goods produced in the United States will increase the cost of the overall project by more than 25 percent.
So, let’s be clear here. GE, which has more of its turbines installed in the United States than any other manufacturer, and arguably the most experience with operating turbines in the varied climates within the US — certainly more experience than EPA and the Town of Falmouth — raised public safety concerns over the risks of ice throw, and Falmouth looked the other way. EPA, in turn, agreed that applying GE safety standards to the site would be “inconsistent with the public interest”. Is it any wonder Falmouth is the latest poster child for poor turbine siting?
The risk is real
If anyone doubts that ice builds up on turbines in the Massachusetts area, it’s worth watching this short video clip from Newburyport, MA where a smaller 600-kw turbine standing just under 300-feet was erected. Or watch this clip from Wisconsin involving turbines similar in size to the V82.
The story doesn’t end there.
Two months prior to Falmouth receiving its waiver, EPA supported a waiver request by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (“MWRA”) to acquire a turbine built by Chinese turbine maker, Sinovel. The turbine is expected to power the DeLauri Pump Station in Charlestown, Massachusetts where GE found the setback distances insufficient to protect the public from ice throw. Lucky for the MWRA, Sinovel was more than happy to take the money.
We would have expected public safety to trump other interests, but apparently not. At some point, the turbines in Falmouth and Charlestown will throw ice and the risk is real that people/property will be on the receiving end. But with EPA, MTC, the US Treasury and other public entities all willing to waive the risk on behalf of the public, who will be held accountable?
Bill (Frank):
What are you for? Horrible economy and $500 million a year in energy efficiency work in Massachusetts has seen a 1% drop in load in 2012. The coal plants are nearing the end of their economic usefulness, and new resources will be required. Where we going to get that power? Nuclear? More natural gas?
At some point you have to be for something, not just against everything.
And not every post is an opportunity to post an anti-wind missive. Just repeating the same thing over and over again isn’t the same as making a compelling argument.
Driving into Marblehead today, I was admiring the beauty of the frozen harbor when I spotted the ugly smokestacks of the Salem power plant framing the viewscape. I thought….wouldn’t the people of Salem and Marblehead love to have tall graceful wind turbines instead of smoke-spewing stacks? And imagine how clean the air would be!