The Not-So-Green Mountains

[XemaSab]

BULLDOZERS arrived a couple of weeks ago at the base of the nearby Lowell Mountains and began clawing their way through the forest to the ridgeline, where Green Mountain Power plans to erect 21 wind turbines, each rising to 459 feet from the ground to the tip of the blades.

This desecration, in the name of “green” energy, is taking place in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom on one of the largest tracts of private wild land in the state. Here and in other places — in Maine and off Cape Cod, for instance — the allure of wind power threatens to destroy environmentally sensitive landscapes.

Erecting those turbines along more than three miles of ridgeline requires building roads — with segments of the ridgeline road itself nearly half as wide as one of Vermont’s interstate highways — in places where the travel lanes are now made by bear, moose, bobcat and deer.

It requires changing the profile of the ridgeline to provide access to cranes and service vehicles. This is being accomplished with approximately 700,000 pounds of explosives that will reduce parts of the mountaintops to rubble that will be used to build the access roads.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/29/opinion/the-not-so-green-mountains.html?_r=2

[david_vincent]

1. I live in VT and I support this

Alternatives??? Keeping VT Yankee open another 15 - 20 years???? Mandating by law that everyone in the state install energy-efficient windows??? Or just hiring the Quebecois to do our dirty work for us so we can pretend our hands are clean ????

on edit: the use of the word "desecration" in reference to the Northeast Kingdom is bizarre and laughable. It's very far from being paradisiacal, and most of the local residents themselves show little to zero respect for their supposed eden. I live on the edge of the NE Kingdom and drive through it regularly. Having electricity is good. It lets us operate these magic boxes called computers. There are no easy answers and the attempt by the author of this piece to imply that there are easy answers when it comes to energy is facile and dishonest.

[NV Whino]

2. You would prefer mountain top mining?

Or may a couple of nuke plants? Yes, it is a shame the roads have to be built, but landscape (and wildlife) recovers fairly rapidly from this unfortunate invasion. From mining and the dangers of nukes, not so much.

[bananas]

3. Reminds me of this Daily Show Video: "Duck Hunters Oppose Wind Farm Because it Kills Ducks"

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/08/duck-hunters-oppose-wind-farm-kills-ducks.php

Duck Hunters Oppose Wind Farm Because it Kills Ducks (Daily Show Video)
by Brian Merchant, Brooklyn, New York on 08. 4.11

Yes, wind turbines kill birds. But only a very small number of them, and scientists are hard at work to further improve technology that might prevent these deaths in the future. Cats and sport hunters kill many more birds every year than do wind turbines -- which is why this Daily Show bit about duck hunters fighting a proposed wind farm on the grounds that it will kill ducks is particularly amusing:

The spot is funny because of the rampant absurdity, of course, but it also goes a length towards exposing the NIMBY-ism that's truly behind the resistance to the wind farms -- not concern over the birds.

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