Conflicting priorities

Waterbury Republican-American ^ | June 27, 2009 | Editorial

[Graybeard58]

In 1999, Enron, then a fast-growing energy company, proposed building windmills in a mountain pass east of Los Angeles. The animal-rights crowd intervened, predicting the windmills would kill the few remaining California condors. The activists won; the windmills never were built.

Fast-forward to the present day. A company called Optiwind looked long and hard for a site for a test of its new windmill design that would not breed controversy. Where better than a sewage-treatment plant in Goshen, out in the middle of nowhere? Better still, the energy produced by the windmill would serve the plant, reducing costs. It's a win-win from every angle. Except neighbors protested. Ten months of hearings and acrimony came and went, and Optiwind finally was run out of town. A few more months of hearings in a friendlier environment resulted in approval June 24 to build the windmill on George "Butch" Klug's dairy farm in Torrington.

Solar-energy advocates and entrepreneurs are running into a different set of obstacles in California. As reported by The New York Times' Business Day section June 19, organized labor threatened to bury one company in environmental litigation if it hired nonunion workers. Another company that promised to use union labor for its solar project got nothing but encouragement from the labor group, California Unions for Reliable Energy.

Many Americans believe windmills, solar panels, biofuels and other alternative-energy sources have potential to play an important role in the nation's future. But the fossil-fuel industry may have no better allies than the NIMBYs, environmental activists with conflicting priorities, and political groups with agendas having little or nothing to do with energy, that are all but smothering the alternatives.

[Graybeard58]

Ping to a Republican-American Editorial.

If you want on or off this list, let me know.

[P-Marlowe]

Wind and solar are pipe dreams.

The only reliable energy sources are coal and nuclear and we have enough of both to run all the air conditioners in the world for a thousand years after the globe supposedly warms up.

[uncommonsense]

This should put a lot of lawyers to work. Lawyers passing asinine laws to benefit their brethren and provide a ready-make channel of lucrative employment when they’re defeated in the next election.

[The Great RJ]

In drive up Highway 23 in SW Minnesota you will see a forest of windmills stretching to the horizon. I have driven by recently when only one of the hundreds of windmills was moving and at other times when fewer than half were turning. Given the sizable investment in building these monstrosities it is obvious they are hardly efficient enough to offset their cost.

[Redbob]

"The only reliable energy sources are coal and nuclear..."

Here's a source that is neither, yet somehow has been reliable for quite a few years now; care to comment?

[Justa]

Yeah, Ok, Bob, hydro power is only available to a small fraction of US consumers, egro it is not reliable for the majority of consumers.

[yawningotter]

Wind and solar may have a place, but make them viable first!

[NYC Republican]

MJ was a talented performer. He was also a child molester and a freak. He abused drugs and screwed himself. Sorry, I have no sympathy for him

[P-Marlowe]

I forgot. Nobody has built a dam in my lifetime.

[Graybeard58]

Sorry, I have no sympathy for him

Nor do I.