By Bradley Kujawski
In response to the letter of April 4, “Don’t believe wind energy is ‘green,’” which said, “Presented as green energy they (wind turbines) are probably the greatest threats to the environment. The huge machines not only pollute the view but kill birds, bats, ruin farmland and probably drive humans in close proximity crazy
Oh, and what about subsidies? I don’t know anything about the inner-workings and deal-doing processes of our government, but I do know that subsidies are everywhere, and are there for a reason. How about our food, our farmers, and the millions of miles of corn they put in every year? They are all subsidized to keep the cash-crop a-cashin’, the farmers in business, and us hungry Americans full. Perhaps that explains why corn syrup is in just about everything. But this can be applied to the current wind-power situation just the same. Wind power is a business, just like General Motors and Ford, and just like GE and National Grid. They all create (or destroy) jobs, provide a necessary service, and charge the people who want it money. These two processes — creating energy and selling energy — are what America and the rest of the world runs on. Why not make it a bit cleaner by turning a few more turbines with blowing wind rather than burning more fossilized carbon and letting its reaction (ash and smoke) swirl into the sky? If for nothing else, for the sake of the future humans that will walk this earth. And, just a quick F.Y.I., unlike any fossil-fuel resource, or any nuclear-powered reactor, the resource called wind never stops, unless the world stops turning. And if that happens, we will have a lot more problems than trying to find an outlet to charge our cell phone.
Bradley Kujawski lives in Batavia. Windmills are absolutely not the greatest threat to our environment. On the other hand, being influenced and persuaded by our closed-minded neighbors who think wind power will negatively impact our environment just may be. Windmills are certainly not the solution to our global energy problems nor to our smog-filled skies (credit there is due to coal and oil, of course), but is definitely a viable and positive beginning to solving these problems. If “threat to our environment” was equal to “fuel economy,” then “wind-power” would be equal to a modern 4-cylinder car — except wind turbines consume no fuel and emit no pollution once they are in place; after manufacturing, transportation, and setup. There is and there will be better, but there is most certainly worse.
Bats and birds like many other animals are killed every day, in many different ways, due to the wildly imaginative constructs of humanity (see: fast cars, theme park rides, vampires). Why let something like a few birds get in the way of such a feat like farming electricity from wind? We never have before with new and innovative technology, and studies are done to ensure wind farm compatibility with local ecologies. What about other technologies that benefit mankind, like roads and railroads, skyscrapers, planes, and military weapons? Certainly each one by itself causes a threat equal or greater to animal life and the environment than wind-farming. And I would rank the need for energy quite high on the typical American’s list of dependencies.
How about “polluting the view” or “ruining farmland?” I see no damage to farmland other than the lost acreage to the large pillars, if they are erected on farmland at all. And the lost space is made up by “farming” the air above it into a turbine, just like the corn and combine below. Every person has their own definition of a “good view”; some like looking out from a penthouse in Manhattan, others like to gaze over the rolling hills of splendor in their back 40, and some can only look out their window to the see the apartment next door to them. What then, would the aforementioned people make of coal-fired power plants, with the steam and smoke rising to the sky above them? And what will the scenery look like if the world population continues to multiply and more power plants pop-up in more places? Not only is it polluting their view, but it pollutes the air we all breathe. I would take staring at a windmill over that. And it wouldn’t drive me crazy. (H2 Hummers on the other hand …)
