Belief in free lunches, tooth fairy still strong

Posted by JMG (Guest Contributor) at 12:46 PM on 10 Dec 2007

Read more about: Maryland | energy | wind power

Once in a while a pundit will say something quite revealing without intending to do so. You'd think a newspaper in a state that was recently looking down the barrel of a 72 percent electric rate hike might have beamed onto the fact that power doesn't come from wishes, and often requires difficult choices:

During a week filled with concerns about protecting the environment comes the alarming news that state officials are considering exploiting one resource to develop another.

As reported by The Sun's Tom Pelton, the O'Malley administration is weighing a request from Pennsylvania developers to lease and clear-cut 400 mountaintop acres in two state forests in Western Maryland so they can erect 100 wind turbines, 40 stories tall, to supply clean power to just 55,000 homes ...

"Sput, sput, sput!" they sputter. "The governor's job is to provide free lunches to all, along with cheap, clean power and no pollution, and above all no trade-offs, ever."

(I'd say the writer's implicit statement of belief in free lunches -- in having goods and services that magically appear without the need for exploiting anything or anyone -- is the real root cause of many of our most vexing environmental problems. But of course discussions about limits and trade-offs isn't very popular in ad-supported media at any time, particularly around the SaleAbration of the Christ's Birth Shopping Season that dominates right now.)

For story: Belief in free lunches, tooth fairy still strong
10 Comments | Post a Comment

Not knowing the details

I would tend to agree with this guy. Destroying the biosphere to save it is as dumb as it sounds. Find a place to put them that won't destroy 400 acres of forest. It is a matter of cost I'm sure and we all know that it is cheaper to destroy carbon sinks than to evict vacation home owners. We have to draw lines around forests or they will all be gone.

Of course, it's just a short newspaper article. I don't know any of the real details and might conclude that cutting down this forest is a good idea if I did know more of them.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

by biodiversivist at 2:42 PM on 10 Dec 2007

Yes, let's get a grip

1 square mile = 640 acres

So less than a square mile in forests that probably have several hundred square miles. What about the equivalent amount of coal to be mined and burned for those 55,000 houses? Acid rain? Sulfer? Lead? Mercury? And run the comparison for at least 30 years.

by RoySV at 3:29 PM on 10 Dec 2007

Better balance, better policy

The pros and cons aren't as simplistic as the Baltimore Sun editorial makes them out to be. The developer's profile of the site shows that parts of it are already logged over and have coal mining currently underway. A Sun reporter blogged about the story, showing a string of proposed turbines along an Interstate freeway. So from the limited information that's available right now, it appears some sites are suitable for development and some are not.

More fundamentally, why don't we see this sort of hue and cry from the media and preservationists when thousands of acres of forests are destroyed for coal? As Mike Tidwell observes,

Unbelievably, thanks to regulatory help from the Bush Administration, another 326,000 acres of prime Appalachian land are scheduled for mountaintop removal in the next eight years. That makes a total area of land from 1992-2012 equivalent to blowing up and leveling virtually the entire panhandle of western Maryland!

Where is the outrage about this ruination of Appalachia's "pristine" "wilderness" "sanctuaries"?

Ped Shed Blog

by Laurence Aurbach at 5:10 PM on 10 Dec 2007

Oh, well, there you go

I was assuming they could find a square mile somewhere in Maryland without a forest on it.

You're saying that if they can't cut down this forest to do it then they will build another coal fired powerplant ... or did you make that up?

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

by biodiversivist at 5:21 PM on 10 Dec 2007

n

Biodiversivist wrote: Find a place to put them

For what purpose? So the US can have 30-cent/kwh power, just like Denmark?
gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/11/4/104246/978#comment17

by Nucbuddy at 5:47 PM on 10 Dec 2007
[ Parent ]

I figured there was more to the story, Laurence

Sounds suspiciously like another NIMBY battle looming.

I have no intention of getting embroiled in the siting of a single wind farm in Maryland. I was making a general point about humanity's propensity to bulldoze nature at the drop of a hat. It is always justified at the time. The planet is dying from 6.5 billion small cuts. This is just the tip of an iceberg. Hydroelectric projects in China, Africa, and Brazil are also converting slivers of the planet's biodiversity and biosphere into electricity.

If the issue truly came down to destroying a forest or building another coal plant and fueling it with another mountain top mine then clearly the forest would have to go. I have not seen anything suggesting to me that this is actually the case.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

by biodiversivist at 5:50 PM on 10 Dec 2007

Just considering is apparently the crime

The editorial was in response to the news that the government is CONSIDERING the siting idea. I always thought that newspapers would think considering ideas to be a good thing, rather than, say, expecting decisions to be made without benefit of some consideration.

The point is that nobody can say anything much about this siting decision without a lot more information -- but apparently the state is supposed to REJECT the idea out of hand.

The 5% Project

by JMG at 7:37 PM on 10 Dec 2007

view from WV

First of all, Maryland and surrounding states are naturally forested--if there isn't a forest on a piece of land, it's because somebody cleared it. Real estate in Maryland goes pretty high, so I doubt you will find cleared acres sitting around not being used, just waiting for windmills. Nor can you put windmills just anywhere--generally only ridgetops have sufficient wind.
So IS it a trade-off between strip mines and windmills? As long as energy use is growing, of course it is. And windmills use a fair amount of land for "only 55,000 homes" but the land can be used for other things sometimes, and can be reclaimed afterward. A coal-fired power plant feeds a lot more homes without taking up much space--but then there's the need to endlessly bring in more fuel for it. Mountaintop removal coal mines begin by stripping off the forests--some of the most biodiverse in the world, by the way. Generally they just dump these valuable hardwoods, not even bothering to sell them--they bury them under the hundreds of tons of what used to be the mountaintop, along with the creeks that used to be there. These mines often comprise thousands of acres. People who live near these mines feel under siege. They tend to be poor and uneducated. People who live on the ridges to the east tend to be well off and well educated and empowered to fight for their views. Thus those who fight the MTR coal mines end up feeling bitter, feeling that this is a class struggle. Which of course, it is.

by mwildfire at 4:49 AM on 11 Dec 2007

Corporate confederacey

Don't look to the stars and bars states to buck the energy status quo. Even offshore out of sight, the loyal shills for the company store would object to anything except new coal or nuke plants. A score of nice floating barge mounted Chernobyls, supplied by pooty poot industries (duuhboy's nickname for Putin) is what they really crave.

A vocal wing nut contingent in the belly of the bushed even begs for more nukes. Do they want to bury the waste under their trailers to supply free heat? That's my guess.

Never mind that the actual footprint on the ground of this wind farm would not necessitate clearing the 400 acres of trees. Meanwhile all the trees on every mountain top are at risk from acid rain from coal plants.

Far better sites exist for wind farms though. Already developed land, actual farms, on the midwestern plains. Coastal areas should have their wind power out of sight offshore on floating platforms that also incorporate wave power and ocean current power generation.

In water short areas like the California coast, they should also house desalinization equipment.

Placing small to medium wind installations distributed here and there along with solar power on roofs and biogas systems on farms and landfills and sewage plants will be hard enough in the bushwacked southlands. Large wind farms with huge wind machines need to be located elsewhere, out of sight and mind, and lawsuit range of NIMBYs shilling for their corporate energy monopoly friends.

Remember the anti-Cape Wind crusaders that showed up here? And that's from a normally progressive region. Forget large wind farms in the southland. Texas being the exception, because of the great plains extension down across the northern border of Mordor.

The source of the bushwacker himself is the leader in wind, the all hat, no cattle, pickup truck cowboy (he's afraid of horses), shaved chimp himself has a new wind machine at his "ranch" in crawdad.

That's good diversion. get solar and wind and geothermal heat pumping for your own home, then do all you can as prez to keep anyone else from getting it. They don't call him "the worst president in history" for nothing. To put a more positive spin on it, why not call him "the best president from Saudi Arabia" the US has ever had.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

by amazingdrx at 7:06 AM on 11 Dec 2007

how bout taking out the 55,000 homes?

why should wilderness and rural homeowners take this massive hit for the NIMBY gluttons of the cities? why not just yank out 55,000 homes and put the windmills there? win/win!

don't believe the greenwashing and hype around wind farms. they permanently destroy thousands of acres of wilderness that is essential to the ecosystem. you can't destroy the planet to save it.

aggressive conservation and 100% PV coverage before new destruction is the only answer. Urban dwellers have no god-given right to consume as much power as they want without paying the true costs and if steeply tiered energy building isn't implemented, those costs must be borne by the planet and rural homeowners/farmers. and that ain't right.

the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.

by stopgreenpath at 11:21 AM on 11 Dec 2007

ADVERTISING POLICY

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