From Examiner.com
Two of California's greatest environmental causes, renewable energy and saving the California condor, are on a collision course.
The explosion of lethal prop-style wind farms being built in condor habitat is putting the hard-won future of the condor at risk.
Many condors undoubtedly perish at such wind farms, although official reports attribute losses to other causes. Remember, great financial investments often warrant great cover-ups by those who stand to lose money.
Nearly 1/3 of the captive-bred California condors -- released into the wild since 1992, and closely monitored by scientists, are missing.
If one looks into the scientific literature, ‘collision’ is nearly always listed as a major cause of death to condors, yet there is never any mention of collision in association with the thousands of prop turbines, spinning at 200 deadly miles per hour, in their habitat. In fact, reports are careful to point out that, despite killing thousands of other bird-of-prey species a year, condors are, somehow, miraculously, not victims of the turbines.
Is this believable?
The leading cause of golden eagle mortality in California is collisions with prop wind turbines. (Wiegand: private correspondence.) Golden eagles are lighter and more agile in the air than giant, awkward condors. If eagles can’t avoid the blades, how can a clumsy flier like the imperiled California condor?
Photo: Wikipedia, public domain
At Altamont Pass, where nearly 7000 prop wind turbines choke the landscape, over 1000 birds of prey die each year. One of the most commonly killed species at the Altamont pass wind farm is the turkey vulture.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
MLA Re: turbine issue
Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2009 3:47 PM
Subject: Re: Digby Wind Turbine project
Dear Mr. Mills,
Thank you for your messages regarding the wind turbine project in Digby.
As you are aware, the Environment Minister has approved the wind turbine
project on Digby Neck. The minister did include consideration of some
requests we made, specifically, requiring a mechanism for dealing with noise
complaints.
The minister did not approve three turbines deemed to be questionable in
terms of location relative to residences, although it is expected a new
application for these three turbines will be forthcoming in the coming
months with new locations.
As you are aware from your experience, the responsibility for zoning and
siting of turbines is a municipal one. I am disappointed that the current
government has not already engaged the Union of Nova Scotia Municipalities
in establishing clear and uniform guidelines and planning legislation for
locating turbines. Consistency and clarity would benefit both residents, who
must deal with projects individually, and the renewable energy industry.
The Liberal Caucus met and discussed the Digby Wind Turbine project, and
other wind projects in general, on Wednesday afternoon. We are concerned
that the lack of clear guidelines and uniformity in regulations hurt both
residents and the industry. We also are concerned about the difficulty you
have had in getting information throughout this process.
I recognize that while we achieved some improvements through the EA, you and
many of the other residents, will still not be happy with the outcome. I am
prepared to bring any specific concerns or questions to the attention of the
company, to ensure any additional efforts the company can make to minimize
impact are given consideration even though the project is approved.
As the House of Assembly prepares to begin sitting for its fall session, I
will be calling on the government to do the necessary work and engage
residents and the Union of Nova Scotia Municipalities in establishing clear
and consistent rules for wind turbine projects. I welcome any input you may
have.
Sincerely,
Andrew Younger
MLA Dartmouth East
Subject: Re: Digby Wind Turbine project
Dear Mr. Mills,
Thank you for your messages regarding the wind turbine project in Digby.
As you are aware, the Environment Minister has approved the wind turbine
project on Digby Neck. The minister did include consideration of some
requests we made, specifically, requiring a mechanism for dealing with noise
complaints.
The minister did not approve three turbines deemed to be questionable in
terms of location relative to residences, although it is expected a new
application for these three turbines will be forthcoming in the coming
months with new locations.
As you are aware from your experience, the responsibility for zoning and
siting of turbines is a municipal one. I am disappointed that the current
government has not already engaged the Union of Nova Scotia Municipalities
in establishing clear and uniform guidelines and planning legislation for
locating turbines. Consistency and clarity would benefit both residents, who
must deal with projects individually, and the renewable energy industry.
The Liberal Caucus met and discussed the Digby Wind Turbine project, and
other wind projects in general, on Wednesday afternoon. We are concerned
that the lack of clear guidelines and uniformity in regulations hurt both
residents and the industry. We also are concerned about the difficulty you
have had in getting information throughout this process.
I recognize that while we achieved some improvements through the EA, you and
many of the other residents, will still not be happy with the outcome. I am
prepared to bring any specific concerns or questions to the attention of the
company, to ensure any additional efforts the company can make to minimize
impact are given consideration even though the project is approved.
As the House of Assembly prepares to begin sitting for its fall session, I
will be calling on the government to do the necessary work and engage
residents and the Union of Nova Scotia Municipalities in establishing clear
and consistent rules for wind turbine projects. I welcome any input you may
have.
Sincerely,
Andrew Younger
MLA Dartmouth East
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Environmental Approval Given for wind project
From CNW Group
SkyPower receives environmental approval for Digby, Nova Scotia, wind project
TORONTO, Aug. 24 /CNW/ - SkyPower Corp. and Scotian Windfields are
pleased to announce today that Nova Scotia Environment has granted
environmental approval for 25.5 MW of wind turbine capacity for the Digby wind
power project which is to be located in Digby, Nova Scotia. Once completed,
the Digby Project will be one of Nova Scotia's largest wind parks.
SkyPower and Scotian Windfields had originally filed a request for
approval for a 30MW project. As part of the Environmental Assessment Approval
process, 3 of the proposed turbines (4.5 MWs) were excluded from the approval
and will require relocation subject to further consultation with Nova Scotia
Department of Natural Resources (NSDNR) Wildlife Division regarding wildlife
connectivity and Nova Scotia Environment (NSE) regarding sound and setbacks.
The proposed relocation of the turbines will be shortly submitted to the NSE
Environmental Assessment Branch for review and further consideration. SkyPower
and Scotian Windfields are confident today that it will be able to identify 3
more suitable turbine locations in the next few weeks and proceed to seek
approval for the final 4.5MWs.
"In concert with our partner Scotian WindFields, SkyPower has worked for
several years with a view to building an outstanding project in Nova Scotia.
Clearly, support from the community and local government has been instrumental
in helping us secure our Environmental Approval," said Kerry Adler, President
and Chief Executive of SkyPower Corp. "We look forward to continuing to
support Premier Darrell Dexter's mandate to achieve the government's
aggressive renewable energy and emission reduction targets."
"SkyPower would like to take this opportunity to thank the community,
landowners, Nova Scotia Power Incorporated (NSPI), and both the local and
provincial governments for their support and approval today. This is a
significant milestone for the people of Nova Scotia and will help generate a
brighter future for generations to come."
SkyPower and Scotian Windfields have received a tremendous amount of
community support for the Digby project. A recent independent research survey
conducted by Pollara revealed:
- 84% of residents within Digby area support wind power development in
their area;
- 88% of residents within the Digby Neck and Town support the proposed
Digby wind power project;
- 90% of residents within the Digby area support increased wind power
development in the Province of Nova Scotia.
Over the next few weeks SkyPower and Scotian Windfields will continue to
work closely with its partners, engineers and local constituents to finalize
its revised schedule and looks forward to commencing construction of this
exciting project in the near future.
About Scotian Windfields
Scotian WindFields Inc. is a Community based company providing leadership
and investment opportunities for local Nova Scotians to invest in and share in
the development of renewable energy projects. Its initial focus has been in
Nova Scotia but is now sharing its knowledge and approach throughout Atlantic
Canada and beyond. In addition to this large scale project Scotian WindFields
is developing many projects designed to assist businesses and homeowners in
moving towards a more sustainable forms of energy utilization. Scotian
WindFields offer solar hot water systems and embedded wind energy solutions to
its ever increasing list of clients. For more information about Scotian
WindFields and how you can get involved please visit our website
www.scotianwindfields.ca
About SkyPower Corp.
SkyPower is a leading developer of renewable energy projects. SkyPower
has interests in a substantial number of renewable energy projects at various
stages of development, representing thousands of MW of potential nameplate
capacity. SkyPower is developing significant renewable energy projects in
Canada, the United States, India and Panama. SkyPower drives all phases of
project development including exploration, construction and operation. For
more information, visit www.skypower.com
SkyPower receives environmental approval for Digby, Nova Scotia, wind project
TORONTO, Aug. 24 /CNW/ - SkyPower Corp. and Scotian Windfields are
pleased to announce today that Nova Scotia Environment has granted
environmental approval for 25.5 MW of wind turbine capacity for the Digby wind
power project which is to be located in Digby, Nova Scotia. Once completed,
the Digby Project will be one of Nova Scotia's largest wind parks.
SkyPower and Scotian Windfields had originally filed a request for
approval for a 30MW project. As part of the Environmental Assessment Approval
process, 3 of the proposed turbines (4.5 MWs) were excluded from the approval
and will require relocation subject to further consultation with Nova Scotia
Department of Natural Resources (NSDNR) Wildlife Division regarding wildlife
connectivity and Nova Scotia Environment (NSE) regarding sound and setbacks.
The proposed relocation of the turbines will be shortly submitted to the NSE
Environmental Assessment Branch for review and further consideration. SkyPower
and Scotian Windfields are confident today that it will be able to identify 3
more suitable turbine locations in the next few weeks and proceed to seek
approval for the final 4.5MWs.
"In concert with our partner Scotian WindFields, SkyPower has worked for
several years with a view to building an outstanding project in Nova Scotia.
Clearly, support from the community and local government has been instrumental
in helping us secure our Environmental Approval," said Kerry Adler, President
and Chief Executive of SkyPower Corp. "We look forward to continuing to
support Premier Darrell Dexter's mandate to achieve the government's
aggressive renewable energy and emission reduction targets."
"SkyPower would like to take this opportunity to thank the community,
landowners, Nova Scotia Power Incorporated (NSPI), and both the local and
provincial governments for their support and approval today. This is a
significant milestone for the people of Nova Scotia and will help generate a
brighter future for generations to come."
SkyPower and Scotian Windfields have received a tremendous amount of
community support for the Digby project. A recent independent research survey
conducted by Pollara revealed:
- 84% of residents within Digby area support wind power development in
their area;
- 88% of residents within the Digby Neck and Town support the proposed
Digby wind power project;
- 90% of residents within the Digby area support increased wind power
development in the Province of Nova Scotia.
Over the next few weeks SkyPower and Scotian Windfields will continue to
work closely with its partners, engineers and local constituents to finalize
its revised schedule and looks forward to commencing construction of this
exciting project in the near future.
About Scotian Windfields
Scotian WindFields Inc. is a Community based company providing leadership
and investment opportunities for local Nova Scotians to invest in and share in
the development of renewable energy projects. Its initial focus has been in
Nova Scotia but is now sharing its knowledge and approach throughout Atlantic
Canada and beyond. In addition to this large scale project Scotian WindFields
is developing many projects designed to assist businesses and homeowners in
moving towards a more sustainable forms of energy utilization. Scotian
WindFields offer solar hot water systems and embedded wind energy solutions to
its ever increasing list of clients. For more information about Scotian
WindFields and how you can get involved please visit our website
www.scotianwindfields.ca
About SkyPower Corp.
SkyPower is a leading developer of renewable energy projects. SkyPower
has interests in a substantial number of renewable energy projects at various
stages of development, representing thousands of MW of potential nameplate
capacity. SkyPower is developing significant renewable energy projects in
Canada, the United States, India and Panama. SkyPower drives all phases of
project development including exploration, construction and operation. For
more information, visit www.skypower.com
Labels:
Digby Neck wind park
Minister Approves Turbines
Sterling Belliveau, the new NDP Environment Minister, has approved 17 of the proposed 20 turbines of the Digby Wind Power Project for the villages of Rossway, Gulliver's Cove and Waterford on Digby Neck, with conditions. For more information, see http://www.gov.ns.ca/nse/ea/digby.wind.sky.power.asp.
Nova Scotia Environment Department (NSE) appears to be satisfied with a 1000 metre setback from homes, though there remain homes in Gulliver's Cove within that distance of approved turbines.
Until more research on the health effects of wind turbines on humans living nearby is completed by third party researchers, we believe setbacks of at least 2.4 kilometres should be used as a precaution against any ill effects among residents of the host communities. This is in accordance with preliminary studies done by non-affiliated doctors as well as anecdotal evidence from residents who live near wind farms around the world.
NSE has joined the proponent in ignoring concerns from community members about possible effects on eco-tourism, migratory birds and bats, property values, impact of the transport of machinery and equipment on public roads, impact of new access roads, collector lines and transmission lines, impact of construction activity on residents (including blasting for foundations), full cost-benefit accounting of GHGs, and general fragmentation of the landscape.
We're very disappointed to learn that our new NDP government seems to be behaving the same way as our previous Conservative government when it comes to listening to the people.
If you sent a submission to NSE on this project, thank you! We will continue to fight this project.
Nora T. Peach
Judith Peach
Waterford, Digby Neck
Nova Scotia Environment Department (NSE) appears to be satisfied with a 1000 metre setback from homes, though there remain homes in Gulliver's Cove within that distance of approved turbines.
Until more research on the health effects of wind turbines on humans living nearby is completed by third party researchers, we believe setbacks of at least 2.4 kilometres should be used as a precaution against any ill effects among residents of the host communities. This is in accordance with preliminary studies done by non-affiliated doctors as well as anecdotal evidence from residents who live near wind farms around the world.
NSE has joined the proponent in ignoring concerns from community members about possible effects on eco-tourism, migratory birds and bats, property values, impact of the transport of machinery and equipment on public roads, impact of new access roads, collector lines and transmission lines, impact of construction activity on residents (including blasting for foundations), full cost-benefit accounting of GHGs, and general fragmentation of the landscape.
We're very disappointed to learn that our new NDP government seems to be behaving the same way as our previous Conservative government when it comes to listening to the people.
If you sent a submission to NSE on this project, thank you! We will continue to fight this project.
Nora T. Peach
Judith Peach
Waterford, Digby Neck
Labels:
tubines approved Digby Neck
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Canada's Health Care System- from Danny
Subject: Thanks for signing on to the campaign!
Avaaz usually sends about one email per week, offering a chance to take
quick action on an urgent global issue. If you received this message in
error, or would prefer not to receive email from Avaaz, click here to
unsubscribe or email unsubscribe@avaaz.org.
Thank you for signing the petition standing up for the truth about the
health care system in Canada.
Our voices will help shift the media debate in the US -- and we'll deliver
our message to wavering US Senators this month before they cast their vote
in Congress.
Forward the link or email below to friends and family in Canada and help
stop lies about our system from undoing Obama's whole movement for change in
the US:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/reform_health_care/97.php?cl_tta_sign=f9d9c849118ab66824b1399f5c0b906c
Many thanks,
The Avaaz team
-------------
Here's the original email you can forward to your friends:
Dear friends,
Obama's movement for change in the US is collapsing -- in large part because
of lies about the Canadian healthcare system!
It's incredible, but Obama's health plan, and with it his entire Presidency,
could be derailed because big corporations and the radical right manage to
convince Americans that our health system is a nightmare similar to "Soviet
Russia".
We need a huge popular outcry to show the truth -- how proud and grateful we
are in Canada to have a public healthcare system that works. Sign on to the
message to America and forward this email -- if enough of us sign, we'll
cause a stir in US media and help change the debate:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/reform_health_care/97.php?cl_tta_sign=f9d9c849118ab66824b1399f5c0b906c
US healthcare is run by large corporations - it's the most expensive in the
world, but ranks 37th in quality, and 40 million Americans can't afford any
care at all. It's an awful system for people, but corporations make enormous
profits, so they're fighting to keep it. If they win and Obama fails, the
Democrats could lose the Congress in elections next year. If this happens,
progress on every global issue is endangered, from climate change to the war
in Iraq.
We have no time to lose. Industry lobbyists are ramping up their smear
campaigns right now to make sure the Obama plan is dead on arrival when
Congress meets in September. Americans are hearing a constant barrage of
propaganda that Canadian healthcare is a nightmare. Let's say it ain't so
below:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/reform_health_care/97.php?cl_tta_sign=f9d9c849118ab66824b1399f5c0b906c
Canadian healthcare isn't perfect -- but it works far better than the US
system. Let's stand up to the lies, and help save Obama's movement for
change with the truth about Canada's healthcare system.
With hope,
Ricken, Brett, Benjamin, Alice, Graziela, Paula, Paul, Pascal and the whole
Avaaz team.
Here's some links for more info:
Myths about the proposed health care reforms
http://www.communitycatalyst.org/projects/national_reform/alerts?id=0066
How health care works in Canada
http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/health-care-abroad-canada/?scp=15&sq=health&st=cse
Extreme tactics of the conservative right
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/health/policy/04townhalls.html
http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-08-17-voa45.cfm
Canada's health care system under attack
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/08/18/the_most_outrageous_us_lies_about_global_healthcare?page=0,0
http://mediamatters.org/research/200904290032
http://www.edmontonsun.com/news/world/2009/08/10/10419141-sun.html
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=N2M0ODk0OTNkZjkwNGM4OGMyYTEwYWY3ODUzMzFiOTc=
Paul Krugman on health care
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/opinion/17krugman.html?_r=2&scp=31&sq=health&st=cse
The extent of the health care lobby
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aZdbr0YXz5jI
Health insurers stocks rise as health care plans fade
http://www.reuters.com/article/hotStocksNews/idUSTRE57G4BU20090817?sp=true
ABOUT AVAAZ
Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization
that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform
global decision-making. (Avaaz means "voice" in many languages.) Avaaz
receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a
global team based in Ottawa, London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Buenos Aires,
and Geneva.
Click here to learn more about our largest campaigns.
Don't forget to check out our Facebook and Myspace and Bebo pages! You can
also follow Avaaz on Twitter!
Avaaz usually sends about one email per week, offering a chance to take
quick action on an urgent global issue. If you received this message in
error, or would prefer not to receive email from Avaaz, click here to
unsubscribe or email unsubscribe@avaaz.org.
Thank you for signing the petition standing up for the truth about the
health care system in Canada.
Our voices will help shift the media debate in the US -- and we'll deliver
our message to wavering US Senators this month before they cast their vote
in Congress.
Forward the link or email below to friends and family in Canada and help
stop lies about our system from undoing Obama's whole movement for change in
the US:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/reform_health_care/97.php?cl_tta_sign=f9d9c849118ab66824b1399f5c0b906c
Many thanks,
The Avaaz team
-------------
Here's the original email you can forward to your friends:
Dear friends,
Obama's movement for change in the US is collapsing -- in large part because
of lies about the Canadian healthcare system!
It's incredible, but Obama's health plan, and with it his entire Presidency,
could be derailed because big corporations and the radical right manage to
convince Americans that our health system is a nightmare similar to "Soviet
Russia".
We need a huge popular outcry to show the truth -- how proud and grateful we
are in Canada to have a public healthcare system that works. Sign on to the
message to America and forward this email -- if enough of us sign, we'll
cause a stir in US media and help change the debate:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/reform_health_care/97.php?cl_tta_sign=f9d9c849118ab66824b1399f5c0b906c
US healthcare is run by large corporations - it's the most expensive in the
world, but ranks 37th in quality, and 40 million Americans can't afford any
care at all. It's an awful system for people, but corporations make enormous
profits, so they're fighting to keep it. If they win and Obama fails, the
Democrats could lose the Congress in elections next year. If this happens,
progress on every global issue is endangered, from climate change to the war
in Iraq.
We have no time to lose. Industry lobbyists are ramping up their smear
campaigns right now to make sure the Obama plan is dead on arrival when
Congress meets in September. Americans are hearing a constant barrage of
propaganda that Canadian healthcare is a nightmare. Let's say it ain't so
below:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/reform_health_care/97.php?cl_tta_sign=f9d9c849118ab66824b1399f5c0b906c
Canadian healthcare isn't perfect -- but it works far better than the US
system. Let's stand up to the lies, and help save Obama's movement for
change with the truth about Canada's healthcare system.
With hope,
Ricken, Brett, Benjamin, Alice, Graziela, Paula, Paul, Pascal and the whole
Avaaz team.
Here's some links for more info:
Myths about the proposed health care reforms
http://www.communitycatalyst.org/projects/national_reform/alerts?id=0066
How health care works in Canada
http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/health-care-abroad-canada/?scp=15&sq=health&st=cse
Extreme tactics of the conservative right
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/health/policy/04townhalls.html
http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-08-17-voa45.cfm
Canada's health care system under attack
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/08/18/the_most_outrageous_us_lies_about_global_healthcare?page=0,0
http://mediamatters.org/research/200904290032
http://www.edmontonsun.com/news/world/2009/08/10/10419141-sun.html
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=N2M0ODk0OTNkZjkwNGM4OGMyYTEwYWY3ODUzMzFiOTc=
Paul Krugman on health care
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/opinion/17krugman.html?_r=2&scp=31&sq=health&st=cse
The extent of the health care lobby
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aZdbr0YXz5jI
Health insurers stocks rise as health care plans fade
http://www.reuters.com/article/hotStocksNews/idUSTRE57G4BU20090817?sp=true
ABOUT AVAAZ
Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization
that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform
global decision-making. (Avaaz means "voice" in many languages.) Avaaz
receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a
global team based in Ottawa, London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Buenos Aires,
and Geneva.
Click here to learn more about our largest campaigns.
Don't forget to check out our Facebook and Myspace and Bebo pages! You can
also follow Avaaz on Twitter!
Labels:
Canada's Health Care System
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Petition about Canada Health
Tom Haynes-Paton
Date: Thu Aug 20, 2009 10:44 am
Subject: They're Lying about Canada health--petition tomhaynespaton
Hello,
Please help our neighbours to the south who have no medical coverage or
treatment available.
You might wish to note the section below:
"How health care works in Canada
http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/health-care-abroad-canada/?scp\
=15&sq=health&st=cse
"(Interview with) Theodore R. Marmor is professor emeritus of public policy and
political
science at Yale University and a former fellow of the Canadian
Institute for Advanced Research. He is the author of “The Politics of
Medicare” (Aldine Transaction, 2000). He spoke to freelance writer
Sarah Arnquist."
Thanks,
Tom
They're lying about Canada
Ricken Patel - Avaaz.org to me show details 7:21 AM (4 hours ago) Reply
Images are not displayed.
Display images below - Always display images from avaaz@avaaz.org
Dear friends,
American corporations are spreading lies about Canadian health care to kill
Obama's health plan -- and with it his whole movement for change. Sign a message
to Americans about how Canada's system really works - and how much we value it.
Let's set the record straight!
Obama's movement for change in the US is at risk of collapsing -- in large part
because of lies about the Canadian healthcare system!
It's incredible, but Obama's health plan, and with it his entire
Presidency, could be derailed if big corporations and the radical right
manage to convince Americans that our health system is a nightmare
similar to "Soviet Russia".
We need a huge popular outcry to show the truth -- how proud and
grateful we are in Canada to have a public healthcare system that works. Sign on
to the message to America and forward this email -- if enough of us sign, we'll
cause a stir in US media and help change the debate:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/reform_health_care
US healthcare is run by large corporations - it's the most expensive in
the world, but ranks 37th in quality, and 40 million Americans can't
afford any care at all. It's an awful system for people, but
corporations make enormous profits, so they're fighting to keep it. If
they win and Obama fails, the Democrats could lose the Congress in
elections next year. If this happens, progress on every global issue is
endangered, from climate change to the war in Iraq.
We have no time to lose. Industry lobbyists are ramping up their
smear campaigns right now to make sure the Obama plan is dead on
arrival when Congress meets in September. Americans are hearing a
constant barrage of propaganda that Canadian healthcare is a nightmare.
Let's say it ain't so below:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/reform_health_care
Canadian healthcare isn't perfect -- but it works far better than the US system.
Let's stand up to the lies, and help save Obama's movement for change with the
truth about Canada's healthcare system.
With hope,
Ricken, Brett, Benjamin, Alice, Graziela, Paula, Paul, Pascal and the whole
Avaaz team.
Here's some links for more info:
Myths about the proposed health care reforms
http://www.communitycatalyst.org/projects/national_reform/alerts?id=0066
How health care works in Canada
http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/health-care-abroad-canada/?scp\
=15&sq=health&st=cse
Extreme tactics of the conservative right
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/health/policy/04townhalls.html
http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-08-17-voa45.cfm
Canada's health care system under attack
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/08/18/the_most_outrageous_us_lies_abo\
ut_global_healthcare?page=0,0
http://mediamatters.org/research/200904290032
http://www.edmontonsun.com/news/world/2009/08/10/10419141-sun.html
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=N2M0ODk0OTNkZjkwNGM4OGMyYTEwYWY3ODUzMzFiOTc\
=
Paul Krugman on health care
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/opinion/17krugman.html?_r=2&scp=31&sq=health&s\
t=cse
The extent of the health care lobby
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aZdbr0YXz5jI
Health insurers stocks rise as health care plans fade
http://www.reuters.com/article/hotStocksNews/idUSTRE57G4BU20090817?sp=true
Date: Thu Aug 20, 2009 10:44 am
Subject: They're Lying about Canada health--petition tomhaynespaton
Hello,
Please help our neighbours to the south who have no medical coverage or
treatment available.
You might wish to note the section below:
"How health care works in Canada
http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/health-care-abroad-canada/?scp\
=15&sq=health&st=cse
"(Interview with) Theodore R. Marmor is professor emeritus of public policy and
political
science at Yale University and a former fellow of the Canadian
Institute for Advanced Research. He is the author of “The Politics of
Medicare” (Aldine Transaction, 2000). He spoke to freelance writer
Sarah Arnquist."
Thanks,
Tom
They're lying about Canada
Ricken Patel - Avaaz.org to me show details 7:21 AM (4 hours ago) Reply
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Dear friends,
American corporations are spreading lies about Canadian health care to kill
Obama's health plan -- and with it his whole movement for change. Sign a message
to Americans about how Canada's system really works - and how much we value it.
Let's set the record straight!
Obama's movement for change in the US is at risk of collapsing -- in large part
because of lies about the Canadian healthcare system!
It's incredible, but Obama's health plan, and with it his entire
Presidency, could be derailed if big corporations and the radical right
manage to convince Americans that our health system is a nightmare
similar to "Soviet Russia".
We need a huge popular outcry to show the truth -- how proud and
grateful we are in Canada to have a public healthcare system that works. Sign on
to the message to America and forward this email -- if enough of us sign, we'll
cause a stir in US media and help change the debate:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/reform_health_care
US healthcare is run by large corporations - it's the most expensive in
the world, but ranks 37th in quality, and 40 million Americans can't
afford any care at all. It's an awful system for people, but
corporations make enormous profits, so they're fighting to keep it. If
they win and Obama fails, the Democrats could lose the Congress in
elections next year. If this happens, progress on every global issue is
endangered, from climate change to the war in Iraq.
We have no time to lose. Industry lobbyists are ramping up their
smear campaigns right now to make sure the Obama plan is dead on
arrival when Congress meets in September. Americans are hearing a
constant barrage of propaganda that Canadian healthcare is a nightmare.
Let's say it ain't so below:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/reform_health_care
Canadian healthcare isn't perfect -- but it works far better than the US system.
Let's stand up to the lies, and help save Obama's movement for change with the
truth about Canada's healthcare system.
With hope,
Ricken, Brett, Benjamin, Alice, Graziela, Paula, Paul, Pascal and the whole
Avaaz team.
Here's some links for more info:
Myths about the proposed health care reforms
http://www.communitycatalyst.org/projects/national_reform/alerts?id=0066
How health care works in Canada
http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/health-care-abroad-canada/?scp\
=15&sq=health&st=cse
Extreme tactics of the conservative right
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/health/policy/04townhalls.html
http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-08-17-voa45.cfm
Canada's health care system under attack
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/08/18/the_most_outrageous_us_lies_abo\
ut_global_healthcare?page=0,0
http://mediamatters.org/research/200904290032
http://www.edmontonsun.com/news/world/2009/08/10/10419141-sun.html
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=N2M0ODk0OTNkZjkwNGM4OGMyYTEwYWY3ODUzMzFiOTc\
=
Paul Krugman on health care
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/opinion/17krugman.html?_r=2&scp=31&sq=health&s\
t=cse
The extent of the health care lobby
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aZdbr0YXz5jI
Health insurers stocks rise as health care plans fade
http://www.reuters.com/article/hotStocksNews/idUSTRE57G4BU20090817?sp=true
Wind Farm a Bad Fit for Digby Neck? Tom
Subject: DEADLINE FRIDAY: Eight Reasons the Digby Wind Power Project is a bad fit for Digby Neck tomhaynespaton
Offline
Send Message
Edit Membership
Tom's note: I favor wind energy. But because of the serious potential
health threats to residents, not when located in the midst of a residential
community like Digby Neck.
And also for economic/environmental reasons not on Digby Neck, because it
will seriously disrupt and damage our area's primary eco-tourism destination.
My business dropped 50% for a 4-week period while they merely resurfaced the
Digby Neck highway. Many tourists, told about the disruptions, went via the
South Shore instead. The wind farm construction is to take more than a year. And
worse, with permanent industrial wind installations, "The best kept eco-tourism
secret Digby Neck" will become industrial-park Digby Neck.
Skypower Inc. is now trying to flood Nova Scotia Environment Minister
Sterling Belliveau with a "I support the Digby Neck wind farm" form letter.
Please mail or email EA@gov.ns.ca your own concerns by this Friday's
postmarked deadline to:
Environmental Assessment
Branch
Nova Scotia
Environment
PO Box 442
Halifax, NS B3J 2P8 Or phone the Review Manager at
902-424-7630
For further background information, see the helpful summation article below.
From: fntp1@ns.sympatico.ca
To: fntp1@ns.sympatico.ca
Subject: Eight Reasons the Digby Wind Power Project is a bad fit for Digby Neck
Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2009 11:42:01 -0300
Digby Neck
needs your help again if it is to remain unmolested by thoughtless
industrialization.
Perhaps you have heard that a 20 turbine wind farm,
"Digby Wind Park", is proposed for the Gulliver's Cove/Rossway area
of Digby Neck. Construction is
scheduled to begin in September with an April 2010 "in service" date for the 30
megawatt facility.
The proponent is a partnership of Scotian WindFields
Inc. of Nova
Scotia and
SkyPower Corp. of Toronto.
The
project is currently undergoing a provincial Environmental Assessment
(EA).
SkyPower's EA, prepared by Jacques Whitford Stantec
Ltd., was filed on April 30, 2009. On
June 19, the Deputy Minister of the Environment found it lacking and gave the
proponent a year to come up with additional information.
Two weeks later on July 3, SkyPower filed their
Addendum with most of the additional information in the form of a new turbine
layout.
The deadline for comments on the Addendum, which can
include comments on the original EA, is next Saturday August 8. All
documents are available for review on the Department of Environment website
www.gov.ns.ca/nse/ea
Please take
the time to send your comments on this proposed project to the NS Department of
Environment. Contact
information is at the end of this email.
-------------------------------------------------
Regardless of how you feel about the benefits of wind
power, the Digby Wind Power Project
should not be allowed to go ahead for the environmental and health reasons
summarized below:
1)
According to the Addendum, there
are 113 residences within 2 km
of a proposed turbine. Of these, 39 are within 1 km of a turbine -
several are 600 to 700 metres away from a turbine even in the latest
turbine layout.
There is peer-reviewed medical evidence that there
are likely to be health effects among some of these residents. Current
knowledge indicates that these
health effects are caused by the low frequency noise (LFN) created by the 77
metre diameter rotors (rotating blades) slicing through the air, not from the
mechanical noise of the gears in the nacelle. Dr. Nina Pierpont, a medical
doctor in private practice in upstate New York has studied cases of people
affected by large
turbines. She suggests turbines be
located a minimum of 2.4 km (1.5 miles)
from occupied buildings.
Though the Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA)
cites the opinions of acousticians to dispute Dr. Pierpont’s work, we know of no
medical doctor who has reviewed her work and found her methods or
conclusions to be unscientific. See www.windturbinesyndrome.com for
more on Dr. Pierpont's work.
With the Addendum,
the proponent submitted a paper prepared by CanWEA that
"reiterates that peer-reviewed scientific literature have consistently found no
evidence linking wind turbines to human health concerns."
2)
Health Canada, in their
submission on the EA, asked the proponent to Please ensure that the
environmental
assessment contains a discussion regarding the audibility of the turbines and it
is advisable to also develop a communication strategy to accurately disclose the
potential noise related to the project to nearby residents prior to project
construction....Please provide a
discussion of the potential for low frequency noise at the nearest residential
receptors, and provide an assessment of whether or not monitoring for low
frequency noise is warranted.
In the Addendum, the proponent responded there is no evidence that the wind
turbine
technology proposed for the Project presents any potential problems related to
the generation of infrasound energy. Infrasound is
generally accepted to be frequencies ranging from 0 to 20 cycles per second
(Hz). Low frequency noise (LFN) is 20 to 200 cycles per second (Hz).
They are clearly avoiding the question.
3)
If any residents in the local
communities of Gulliver's Cove, Rossway and Waterford do end up being affected
by the 118 metre tall machines, the 35.4 kilovolt overhead connector lines
running between them, the substation, or the new 69 kilovolt transmission line
to be built to connect to the grid at Digby, the proponents offer no mitigation
other
than creating a registry for complaints.
4)
If residents wish to sell their
homes and move away, rather than live with the noise and annoyance of the
machines, or the drastic change in their landscape, the proponents offer no
guarantee that
their homes won't have lost most of their current value by being within a wind
farm. Many people will have no option but to continue living in what
may become a very undesirable and disturbing place. Many local families have
lived in the
area for generations.
5)
The proponent states that the
project will have no significant negative effect on tourism in the area.
NS Tourism, Culture and Heritage in their submission on the EA stated that the
general area does have an extensive
history and natural beauty which gives it tourism appeal and
potential. The department has several concerns about the impact of the
project on the area and its people. These concerns about the impact of the
project on tourism in the area are not addressed in the Addendum as they
were not specifically spelled out in the Deputy Minister's
decision.
6)
The new turbine layout creates a
row of ten turbines along approximately 2500 metres of the ridge of the
North Mountain, west of the village of Gulliver's Cove.
Digby Neck in this area is about 3 km wide and the
turbines would occupy the northern half of the width for a distance of 2.5 km
along the Neck. Digby Neck is a known bird migration corridor,
particularly during the fall migration (flying north to south). Nearby
Brier Island has the international designation "Important Bird
Area".
There is
no discussion in the Addendum of the impact of the latest turbine configuration
on migrating birds or bats.
The conclusions in the EA are that Although Digby Neck itself is considered to
be an important bird migration corridor, no such importance has been identified
for the Project area itself. The mitigation proposed, in the event of
bird or bat fatalities, is that "it is likely" they will count the
bodies for two years after construction.
7)
Ecology Action Centre which, like
many environmental groups, supports the development of this type of wind project
expects that municipal land use by-laws will make sure they are sited in locally
appropriate places.
In Digby Municipality, a draft by-law was developed over the past year by
the Planning Advisory Committee with input from concerned residents.
This by-law was then rejected by Council on July 20, after the proponent
strongly voiced their objections to it during the final hearing on June
29. Incredible as it may seem, three of the four councillors who voted
against the draft by-law also sit on the Planning Advisory Committee which
developed it.
Though we
participated in the municipal planning process in good faith we remain without
any protection from a local land use by-law to regulate wind development in
Digby
Municipality.
8)
Lease agreements for the lands to
be used for the wind farm were negotiated in secret. There was no public
consultation about
the project by the proponent until months later.
Two members of council were informed of the proposal
at a secret meeting in July 2007, reportedly after key lands had been secured
through lease options. The
ill-fated by-law process was begun the following spring as additional Lease
Options were being signed.
The first public meeting, in open house format, was
held by the proponent in November 2008. Between the Deputy
Minister's decision on June 19, 2009 and the upcoming deadline for comments on
the
Addendum, August 8, there will have been three additional open houses.
Repeated requests from concerned residents for a
formal, recordable public meeting to answer our questions have been rejected by
the proponent. This lack of true public consultation
during the planning stages of the project is unacceptable to
us.
--------------------------------------------
We urge
you to submit a short comment to the Department of Environment on or before the
Saturday,
August 8, 2009
deadline.
Please email your comments to EA@gov.ns.ca, phone the Review Manager at
902-424-7630, or mail them to Environmental Assessment Branch, Nova Scotia
Environment, PO
Box 442,
Halifax, NS B3J 2P8 postmarked on or before August
8.
Thank you!
A Growing
Number of Concerned Residents of Digby
Municipality
Offline
Send Message
Edit Membership
Tom's note: I favor wind energy. But because of the serious potential
health threats to residents, not when located in the midst of a residential
community like Digby Neck.
And also for economic/environmental reasons not on Digby Neck, because it
will seriously disrupt and damage our area's primary eco-tourism destination.
My business dropped 50% for a 4-week period while they merely resurfaced the
Digby Neck highway. Many tourists, told about the disruptions, went via the
South Shore instead. The wind farm construction is to take more than a year. And
worse, with permanent industrial wind installations, "The best kept eco-tourism
secret Digby Neck" will become industrial-park Digby Neck.
Skypower Inc. is now trying to flood Nova Scotia Environment Minister
Sterling Belliveau with a "I support the Digby Neck wind farm" form letter.
Please mail or email EA@gov.ns.ca your own concerns by this Friday's
postmarked deadline to:
Environmental Assessment
Branch
Nova Scotia
Environment
PO Box 442
Halifax, NS B3J 2P8 Or phone the Review Manager at
902-424-7630
For further background information, see the helpful summation article below.
From: fntp1@ns.sympatico.ca
To: fntp1@ns.sympatico.ca
Subject: Eight Reasons the Digby Wind Power Project is a bad fit for Digby Neck
Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2009 11:42:01 -0300
Digby Neck
needs your help again if it is to remain unmolested by thoughtless
industrialization.
Perhaps you have heard that a 20 turbine wind farm,
"Digby Wind Park", is proposed for the Gulliver's Cove/Rossway area
of Digby Neck. Construction is
scheduled to begin in September with an April 2010 "in service" date for the 30
megawatt facility.
The proponent is a partnership of Scotian WindFields
Inc. of Nova
Scotia and
SkyPower Corp. of Toronto.
The
project is currently undergoing a provincial Environmental Assessment
(EA).
SkyPower's EA, prepared by Jacques Whitford Stantec
Ltd., was filed on April 30, 2009. On
June 19, the Deputy Minister of the Environment found it lacking and gave the
proponent a year to come up with additional information.
Two weeks later on July 3, SkyPower filed their
Addendum with most of the additional information in the form of a new turbine
layout.
The deadline for comments on the Addendum, which can
include comments on the original EA, is next Saturday August 8. All
documents are available for review on the Department of Environment website
www.gov.ns.ca/nse/ea
Please take
the time to send your comments on this proposed project to the NS Department of
Environment. Contact
information is at the end of this email.
-------------------------------------------------
Regardless of how you feel about the benefits of wind
power, the Digby Wind Power Project
should not be allowed to go ahead for the environmental and health reasons
summarized below:
1)
According to the Addendum, there
are 113 residences within 2 km
of a proposed turbine. Of these, 39 are within 1 km of a turbine -
several are 600 to 700 metres away from a turbine even in the latest
turbine layout.
There is peer-reviewed medical evidence that there
are likely to be health effects among some of these residents. Current
knowledge indicates that these
health effects are caused by the low frequency noise (LFN) created by the 77
metre diameter rotors (rotating blades) slicing through the air, not from the
mechanical noise of the gears in the nacelle. Dr. Nina Pierpont, a medical
doctor in private practice in upstate New York has studied cases of people
affected by large
turbines. She suggests turbines be
located a minimum of 2.4 km (1.5 miles)
from occupied buildings.
Though the Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA)
cites the opinions of acousticians to dispute Dr. Pierpont’s work, we know of no
medical doctor who has reviewed her work and found her methods or
conclusions to be unscientific. See www.windturbinesyndrome.com for
more on Dr. Pierpont's work.
With the Addendum,
the proponent submitted a paper prepared by CanWEA that
"reiterates that peer-reviewed scientific literature have consistently found no
evidence linking wind turbines to human health concerns."
2)
Health Canada, in their
submission on the EA, asked the proponent to Please ensure that the
environmental
assessment contains a discussion regarding the audibility of the turbines and it
is advisable to also develop a communication strategy to accurately disclose the
potential noise related to the project to nearby residents prior to project
construction....Please provide a
discussion of the potential for low frequency noise at the nearest residential
receptors, and provide an assessment of whether or not monitoring for low
frequency noise is warranted.
In the Addendum, the proponent responded there is no evidence that the wind
turbine
technology proposed for the Project presents any potential problems related to
the generation of infrasound energy. Infrasound is
generally accepted to be frequencies ranging from 0 to 20 cycles per second
(Hz). Low frequency noise (LFN) is 20 to 200 cycles per second (Hz).
They are clearly avoiding the question.
3)
If any residents in the local
communities of Gulliver's Cove, Rossway and Waterford do end up being affected
by the 118 metre tall machines, the 35.4 kilovolt overhead connector lines
running between them, the substation, or the new 69 kilovolt transmission line
to be built to connect to the grid at Digby, the proponents offer no mitigation
other
than creating a registry for complaints.
4)
If residents wish to sell their
homes and move away, rather than live with the noise and annoyance of the
machines, or the drastic change in their landscape, the proponents offer no
guarantee that
their homes won't have lost most of their current value by being within a wind
farm. Many people will have no option but to continue living in what
may become a very undesirable and disturbing place. Many local families have
lived in the
area for generations.
5)
The proponent states that the
project will have no significant negative effect on tourism in the area.
NS Tourism, Culture and Heritage in their submission on the EA stated that the
general area does have an extensive
history and natural beauty which gives it tourism appeal and
potential. The department has several concerns about the impact of the
project on the area and its people. These concerns about the impact of the
project on tourism in the area are not addressed in the Addendum as they
were not specifically spelled out in the Deputy Minister's
decision.
6)
The new turbine layout creates a
row of ten turbines along approximately 2500 metres of the ridge of the
North Mountain, west of the village of Gulliver's Cove.
Digby Neck in this area is about 3 km wide and the
turbines would occupy the northern half of the width for a distance of 2.5 km
along the Neck. Digby Neck is a known bird migration corridor,
particularly during the fall migration (flying north to south). Nearby
Brier Island has the international designation "Important Bird
Area".
There is
no discussion in the Addendum of the impact of the latest turbine configuration
on migrating birds or bats.
The conclusions in the EA are that Although Digby Neck itself is considered to
be an important bird migration corridor, no such importance has been identified
for the Project area itself. The mitigation proposed, in the event of
bird or bat fatalities, is that "it is likely" they will count the
bodies for two years after construction.
7)
Ecology Action Centre which, like
many environmental groups, supports the development of this type of wind project
expects that municipal land use by-laws will make sure they are sited in locally
appropriate places.
In Digby Municipality, a draft by-law was developed over the past year by
the Planning Advisory Committee with input from concerned residents.
This by-law was then rejected by Council on July 20, after the proponent
strongly voiced their objections to it during the final hearing on June
29. Incredible as it may seem, three of the four councillors who voted
against the draft by-law also sit on the Planning Advisory Committee which
developed it.
Though we
participated in the municipal planning process in good faith we remain without
any protection from a local land use by-law to regulate wind development in
Digby
Municipality.
8)
Lease agreements for the lands to
be used for the wind farm were negotiated in secret. There was no public
consultation about
the project by the proponent until months later.
Two members of council were informed of the proposal
at a secret meeting in July 2007, reportedly after key lands had been secured
through lease options. The
ill-fated by-law process was begun the following spring as additional Lease
Options were being signed.
The first public meeting, in open house format, was
held by the proponent in November 2008. Between the Deputy
Minister's decision on June 19, 2009 and the upcoming deadline for comments on
the
Addendum, August 8, there will have been three additional open houses.
Repeated requests from concerned residents for a
formal, recordable public meeting to answer our questions have been rejected by
the proponent. This lack of true public consultation
during the planning stages of the project is unacceptable to
us.
--------------------------------------------
We urge
you to submit a short comment to the Department of Environment on or before the
Saturday,
August 8, 2009
deadline.
Please email your comments to EA@gov.ns.ca, phone the Review Manager at
902-424-7630, or mail them to Environmental Assessment Branch, Nova Scotia
Environment, PO
Box 442,
Halifax, NS B3J 2P8 postmarked on or before August
8.
Thank you!
A Growing
Number of Concerned Residents of Digby
Municipality
Labels:
wind farms
Seabeds and Turbines
From "The Examiner"
Challenge to Newsweek to correct omissions in their recent Wind Farm article
August 21, 4:10 PMWildlife Conservation ExaminerCathy TaibbiPrevious Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe Subscribe
Puffin. Photo: WikipediaFollowing is a letter penned by Jim Wiegand, Wildlife Biologist, in response to the recent Newsweek article I linked in my last story on the Queen Charlotte fight against a proposed prop-style wind farm. (Used with permission.)
I would like to preface that the fight isn’t simply to protect birds (as important as that is). The proposed construction will damage the local, economically vital crabbing industry and require the dredging and permanent destruction of crucial seabed – impacting ALL marine life in the area. See the letter below:
Delkatla Sanctuary Society
Box 246, Masset BC VOT IMO
THE NAIKUN OFFSHORE WIND ENERGY PROJECT will cause irreparable environmental damage to Hecate Strait
Naikun says “no significant adverse effects are expected” from a wind farm in Hecate Strait
NOT TRUE - In the first of five phases Naikun plans to:
Scour 100 square kilometres of the Dogfish Banks sea bed
Remove up to 320,000 cubic metres (approximately 32,000 dump truck loads) of the sea bottom to a maximum depth of 8 metres (24 feet). (Naikun’s Application for an Environmental Assessment Certificate, Volume 2 – Project Design. Page 2-17).
This is one of the major halibut, crab and clam ‘nurseries’ in Hecate Strait and Dixon Entrance. Removing this natural seabed will be devastating.
THIS IS ONLY THE FIRST PHASE –
§ The total wind farm area is actually 560square kilometres, most of which will be dredged.
§ Total estimated dredgeate of the seabed will be 1.15 million cubic metres (160,000 dump truck loads) to a maximum depth of 8 metres (24 feet).
§ Practically all the natural seabed of the Dogfish Banks will be stripped.
In addition, there are increasing concerns about the risks of the rotating blades on humans, including effects on the inner ear and emotional problems in children
1. sleep disturbance
2. headache
3. tinnitus (pronounced “tin-uh-tus"; ringing or buzzing in the ears)
4. ear pressure
5. dizziness (a general term that includes vertigo, lightheadedness, sensation of almost fainting, etc.)
6. vertigo (clinically, vertigo refers to the sensation of spinning, or the room moving)
7. nausea
8. visual blurring
9. tachycardia (rapid heart rate)
10. irritability
11. problems with concentration and memory
12. panic episodes associated with sensations of internal pulsation or quivering, which arise while awake or asleep
There are even concerns about the rapid heartbeat that accompanies exposure to the machines.
With all this in mind, I reprint the letter from Mr. Wiegand to Newsweek.
Editor, I read over your Newsweek story “Birds vs. Environmentalists? concerning the conflict between prop wind turbines and wildlife. I understand this problem better than most so I thought I would comment on the content of the story and provide additional background.
The Newsweek article is useless in solving the Prop turbine bird/bat mortality problem and dealing with the proliferation of the prop turbines across America. First of all NOTHING is said about new turbine designs. There are new vertical shaft turbine and other designs that produce far more wind energy than prop turbines. This is very important because this would also solve the bird mortality problem and produce more energy. Birds and bats fly around these designs and do not try to fly through blades spinning at 200 mph. It is absurd that this was left out of the article.
The use of the word “Mitigate” by the wind industry is a joke. The industry uses this term regularly and they claim to have a right to mitigate any environmental problem. This term is also used in all their Environmental Impact Reports. Anytime you see this word put out by the industry think of it as posturing, a legal dance, or a comforting hand holding session by the industry that goes nowhere.
Part of the mitigation process involves studies. Studies are important in the mitigation process for two reasons, first it is a good reason to stall for years and second studies can be slanted or rigged. This is how the industry dealt with the slaughtered birds of prey issue at Altamont pass. Look at the two golden eagle studies and the vertical shaft turbine comparison study for Altamont pass. These are published as being credible and scientific but they were rigged for the benefit of the wind industry. Anyone that tried to stop the killing at Altamont Pass was engaged in this entirely corrupt process. At this point any new studies are virtually meaningless. The problems are already known… birds and bats are not compatible with prop turbines and never will be. Blades tips that spin at over 300 ft or the length of a football field per second are much faster than any bird.
Committees and proposed legislation as mentioned in the article are also useless. It is just part of the posturing process. Look at this statement in the article.
“Mostly conducting research such as determining the extent to which an area being considered for wind development can harm wildlife. If the potential is great, the AWWI will recommend the project be abandoned; if there are less dangerous consequences, the committee may suggest certain measures to minimize any potential impact. Curtailment—or shutting down the turbines at times when bats or migratory birds appear and are more vulnerable to collision—is one such measure.”
The “AWWI will recommend” and “the committee may suggest certain measures”. These are carefully chosen words written by lawyers that mean absolutely nothing. It is again just industry posturing from our corrupt green friends.
The final statement in the article….."We understand that certainly there are impacts, but they need to be viewed in the larger context, "It's not wind energy versus nothing; it's wind energy versus some other form of energy which will also invariably have an impact—potentially more of an impact than a wind project.”
This is again, meaningless garbage used to rationalize the mortality issue. As we know and it does not state anywhere in the article is that a prop turbine wind farm targets and chops up protected species every time they put one of these projects into their critical habitats. Over 90% of the species killed by prop turbines are protected by laws.
Finally the article gives the wind industry the last word. This is very important because the last statement is used illustrate the slant of the article and persuade the readers. The article puts some of the problems out there but in the end it is made it look like the industry is aware of and handling the problems. In actuality the wind industry is just selling lethal and archaic technology, to a misinformed public. There is a much bigger and more important story here if you decide to run with it.
Jim Wiegand
OK, Newsweek, what do you say?
Challenge to Newsweek to correct omissions in their recent Wind Farm article
August 21, 4:10 PMWildlife Conservation ExaminerCathy TaibbiPrevious Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe Subscribe
Puffin. Photo: WikipediaFollowing is a letter penned by Jim Wiegand, Wildlife Biologist, in response to the recent Newsweek article I linked in my last story on the Queen Charlotte fight against a proposed prop-style wind farm. (Used with permission.)
I would like to preface that the fight isn’t simply to protect birds (as important as that is). The proposed construction will damage the local, economically vital crabbing industry and require the dredging and permanent destruction of crucial seabed – impacting ALL marine life in the area. See the letter below:
Delkatla Sanctuary Society
Box 246, Masset BC VOT IMO
THE NAIKUN OFFSHORE WIND ENERGY PROJECT will cause irreparable environmental damage to Hecate Strait
Naikun says “no significant adverse effects are expected” from a wind farm in Hecate Strait
NOT TRUE - In the first of five phases Naikun plans to:
Scour 100 square kilometres of the Dogfish Banks sea bed
Remove up to 320,000 cubic metres (approximately 32,000 dump truck loads) of the sea bottom to a maximum depth of 8 metres (24 feet). (Naikun’s Application for an Environmental Assessment Certificate, Volume 2 – Project Design. Page 2-17).
This is one of the major halibut, crab and clam ‘nurseries’ in Hecate Strait and Dixon Entrance. Removing this natural seabed will be devastating.
THIS IS ONLY THE FIRST PHASE –
§ The total wind farm area is actually 560square kilometres, most of which will be dredged.
§ Total estimated dredgeate of the seabed will be 1.15 million cubic metres (160,000 dump truck loads) to a maximum depth of 8 metres (24 feet).
§ Practically all the natural seabed of the Dogfish Banks will be stripped.
In addition, there are increasing concerns about the risks of the rotating blades on humans, including effects on the inner ear and emotional problems in children
1. sleep disturbance
2. headache
3. tinnitus (pronounced “tin-uh-tus"; ringing or buzzing in the ears)
4. ear pressure
5. dizziness (a general term that includes vertigo, lightheadedness, sensation of almost fainting, etc.)
6. vertigo (clinically, vertigo refers to the sensation of spinning, or the room moving)
7. nausea
8. visual blurring
9. tachycardia (rapid heart rate)
10. irritability
11. problems with concentration and memory
12. panic episodes associated with sensations of internal pulsation or quivering, which arise while awake or asleep
There are even concerns about the rapid heartbeat that accompanies exposure to the machines.
With all this in mind, I reprint the letter from Mr. Wiegand to Newsweek.
Editor, I read over your Newsweek story “Birds vs. Environmentalists? concerning the conflict between prop wind turbines and wildlife. I understand this problem better than most so I thought I would comment on the content of the story and provide additional background.
The Newsweek article is useless in solving the Prop turbine bird/bat mortality problem and dealing with the proliferation of the prop turbines across America. First of all NOTHING is said about new turbine designs. There are new vertical shaft turbine and other designs that produce far more wind energy than prop turbines. This is very important because this would also solve the bird mortality problem and produce more energy. Birds and bats fly around these designs and do not try to fly through blades spinning at 200 mph. It is absurd that this was left out of the article.
The use of the word “Mitigate” by the wind industry is a joke. The industry uses this term regularly and they claim to have a right to mitigate any environmental problem. This term is also used in all their Environmental Impact Reports. Anytime you see this word put out by the industry think of it as posturing, a legal dance, or a comforting hand holding session by the industry that goes nowhere.
Part of the mitigation process involves studies. Studies are important in the mitigation process for two reasons, first it is a good reason to stall for years and second studies can be slanted or rigged. This is how the industry dealt with the slaughtered birds of prey issue at Altamont pass. Look at the two golden eagle studies and the vertical shaft turbine comparison study for Altamont pass. These are published as being credible and scientific but they were rigged for the benefit of the wind industry. Anyone that tried to stop the killing at Altamont Pass was engaged in this entirely corrupt process. At this point any new studies are virtually meaningless. The problems are already known… birds and bats are not compatible with prop turbines and never will be. Blades tips that spin at over 300 ft or the length of a football field per second are much faster than any bird.
Committees and proposed legislation as mentioned in the article are also useless. It is just part of the posturing process. Look at this statement in the article.
“Mostly conducting research such as determining the extent to which an area being considered for wind development can harm wildlife. If the potential is great, the AWWI will recommend the project be abandoned; if there are less dangerous consequences, the committee may suggest certain measures to minimize any potential impact. Curtailment—or shutting down the turbines at times when bats or migratory birds appear and are more vulnerable to collision—is one such measure.”
The “AWWI will recommend” and “the committee may suggest certain measures”. These are carefully chosen words written by lawyers that mean absolutely nothing. It is again just industry posturing from our corrupt green friends.
The final statement in the article….."We understand that certainly there are impacts, but they need to be viewed in the larger context, "It's not wind energy versus nothing; it's wind energy versus some other form of energy which will also invariably have an impact—potentially more of an impact than a wind project.”
This is again, meaningless garbage used to rationalize the mortality issue. As we know and it does not state anywhere in the article is that a prop turbine wind farm targets and chops up protected species every time they put one of these projects into their critical habitats. Over 90% of the species killed by prop turbines are protected by laws.
Finally the article gives the wind industry the last word. This is very important because the last statement is used illustrate the slant of the article and persuade the readers. The article puts some of the problems out there but in the end it is made it look like the industry is aware of and handling the problems. In actuality the wind industry is just selling lethal and archaic technology, to a misinformed public. There is a much bigger and more important story here if you decide to run with it.
Jim Wiegand
OK, Newsweek, what do you say?
Thursday, August 20, 2009
skypower comment?
From: M.L. Anderson
To: Wind Concerns
Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 8:10 PM
Subject: Skypower Senior Wind Analyst "not equipped with answers"
This comment was sent to the Skypower Obituary from the Senior Wind Analyst at SkyPower Corp. I can't believe she's making excuses!
I can appreciate the sentiments being aired in both the original article and the comments.
Unfortunately, the individuals responsible for project development, assessment, community relations, etc. within SkyPower (i.e., the mid-level doers) really do care about doing the right thing but are entangled in corporate matters beyond their control, not equipped with answers to pressing questions which come up during community consultation sessions, and not provided with sufficient information to adequately assess whether a project is truly appropriate i.e., the right place & size.
I believe that wind energy has a very important role to play in our future, but believe that it is best developed through grass-root cooperatives for their local needs i.e., distributed generation vs. large-scale centralized generation.
http://windconcernsontario.wordpress.com/2009/08/19/skypower-obituary/
To: Wind Concerns
Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 8:10 PM
Subject: Skypower Senior Wind Analyst "not equipped with answers"
This comment was sent to the Skypower Obituary from the Senior Wind Analyst at SkyPower Corp. I can't believe she's making excuses!
I can appreciate the sentiments being aired in both the original article and the comments.
Unfortunately, the individuals responsible for project development, assessment, community relations, etc. within SkyPower (i.e., the mid-level doers) really do care about doing the right thing but are entangled in corporate matters beyond their control, not equipped with answers to pressing questions which come up during community consultation sessions, and not provided with sufficient information to adequately assess whether a project is truly appropriate i.e., the right place & size.
I believe that wind energy has a very important role to play in our future, but believe that it is best developed through grass-root cooperatives for their local needs i.e., distributed generation vs. large-scale centralized generation.
http://windconcernsontario.wordpress.com/2009/08/19/skypower-obituary/
Labels:
Digby Neck wind turbines
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Wind Concerns
Canadian Hydro Developers [company] “increased expenses” in second quarter a result of
low winds and high cost of victim compensation.
A Press Release from Wind Concerns Ontario
August 18, 2009
Toronto - Canadian Hydro Developers (TSX: KHD) has spent 1.75 million dollars since 2005 purchasing the property of residents who have reported negative health effects as a result of Phases I and II of the Melancthon Wind Project. Families have literally been bought out of their own communities by Canadian Hydro Developers as a result.
With a plate (potential) capacity of 199.5 Megawatts, Canadian Hydro Wind Developer’s Melancthon project is Ontario’s largest wind factory. However, on the Canadian Hydro Wind Developer’s website that anticipated power production is only be 31.2% of capacity.
Meanwhile, the most recent hourly data provided by the Independent Electricity Operator for Ontario which monitors output shows that during the hottest week this summer – August 10th to August 16th, the Melancthon Project’s electricity output was just 5.9% of capacity and just 20% of Canadian Wind Developer’s anticipated return.
“Reckless provincial regulations that allow for irresponsible project design have put developers like Canadian Hydro Developers in a position of liability for impacts on human health surrounding their wind factories. So far this one project has cost Canadian Hydro Developers $1.75 million due to health impacts. As more evidence continues to mount, the liability of companies like Canadian Hydro Developers will also increase,” said John Laforet, President of Wind Concerns Ontario, a coalition of thirty-four grassroots citizens groups in twenty-one counties and the City of Toronto.
Mr. Laforet continued, “The reality is the current model for wind power installations in Ontario is harmful to citizens’ health and the pocketbooks of investors. Between the liability for impacts on human health and simply a lack of constant wind, these are high risk investments, regardless of what price the government of Ontario puts on each kilowatt hour.”
Wind Concerns Ontario is calling for a minimum setback requirement of 1.5 KM from residences to be included in the Green Energy Act regulations, to protect human health from the negative affects of wind factories.
low winds and high cost of victim compensation.
A Press Release from Wind Concerns Ontario
August 18, 2009
Toronto - Canadian Hydro Developers (TSX: KHD) has spent 1.75 million dollars since 2005 purchasing the property of residents who have reported negative health effects as a result of Phases I and II of the Melancthon Wind Project. Families have literally been bought out of their own communities by Canadian Hydro Developers as a result.
With a plate (potential) capacity of 199.5 Megawatts, Canadian Hydro Wind Developer’s Melancthon project is Ontario’s largest wind factory. However, on the Canadian Hydro Wind Developer’s website that anticipated power production is only be 31.2% of capacity.
Meanwhile, the most recent hourly data provided by the Independent Electricity Operator for Ontario which monitors output shows that during the hottest week this summer – August 10th to August 16th, the Melancthon Project’s electricity output was just 5.9% of capacity and just 20% of Canadian Wind Developer’s anticipated return.
“Reckless provincial regulations that allow for irresponsible project design have put developers like Canadian Hydro Developers in a position of liability for impacts on human health surrounding their wind factories. So far this one project has cost Canadian Hydro Developers $1.75 million due to health impacts. As more evidence continues to mount, the liability of companies like Canadian Hydro Developers will also increase,” said John Laforet, President of Wind Concerns Ontario, a coalition of thirty-four grassroots citizens groups in twenty-one counties and the City of Toronto.
Mr. Laforet continued, “The reality is the current model for wind power installations in Ontario is harmful to citizens’ health and the pocketbooks of investors. Between the liability for impacts on human health and simply a lack of constant wind, these are high risk investments, regardless of what price the government of Ontario puts on each kilowatt hour.”
Wind Concerns Ontario is calling for a minimum setback requirement of 1.5 KM from residences to be included in the Green Energy Act regulations, to protect human health from the negative affects of wind factories.
Thoughts on our Civilisation
"You can't put new wine into old wineskins".......This discussion between Paul and George (Weren't they "Beetle Peepel" a long time ago? Maybe they are back re-incarnated....
For my 2 cents worth,this is a pretty good summary of the state of affairs......I don't know any answers but this is thought- provoking and helps in understanding...I think we all know this but it is hard to articulate it as well as these two have....Let me know what you think.....danny
Published on Tuesday, August 18, 2009 by The Guardian/UK
Is There Any Point in Fighting to Stave off Industrial Apocalypse?
The collapse of civilisation will bring us a saner world, says Paul Kingsnorth. No, counters George Monbiot – we can't let billions perish
by George Monbiot and Paul Kingsnorth
Dear George
On the desk in front of me is a set of graphs. The horizontal axis of each represents the years 1750 to 2000. The graphs show, variously, population levels, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, exploitation of fisheries, destruction of tropical forests, paper consumption, number of motor vehicles, water use, the rate of species extinction and the totality of the human economy's gross domestic product.
What grips me about these graphs (and graphs don't usually grip me) is that though they all show very different things, they have an almost identical shape. A line begins on the left of the page, rising gradually as it moves to the right. Then, in the last inch or so – around 1950 – it veers steeply upwards, like a pilot banking after a cliff has suddenly appeared from what he thought was an empty bank of cloud.
The root cause of all these trends is the same: a rapacious human economy bringing the world swiftly to the brink of chaos. We know this; some of us even attempt to stop it happening. Yet all of these trends continue to get rapidly worse, and there is no sign of that changing soon. What these graphs make clear better than anything else is the cold reality: there is a serious crash on the way.
Yet very few of us are prepared to look honestly at the message this reality is screaming at us: that the civilisation we are a part of is hitting the buffers at full speed, and it is too late to stop it. Instead, most of us – and I include in this generalisation much of the mainstream environmental movement – are still wedded to a vision of the future as an upgraded version of the present. We still believe in "progress", as lazily defined by western liberalism. We still believe that we will be able to continue living more or less the same comfortable lives (albeit with more windfarms and better lightbulbs) if we can only embrace "sustainable development" rapidly enough; and that we can then extend it to the extra 3 billion people who will shortly join us on this already gasping planet.
I think this is simply denial. The writing is on the wall for industrial society, and no amount of ethical shopping or determined protesting is going to change that now. Take a civilisation built on the myth of human exceptionalism and a deeply embedded cultural attitude to "nature"; add a blind belief in technological and material progress; then fuel the whole thing with a power source that is discovered to be disastrously destructive only after we have used it to inflate our numbers and appetites beyond the point of no return. What do you get? We are starting to find out.
We need to get real. Climate change is teetering on the point of no return while our leaders bang the drum for more growth. The economic system we rely upon cannot be tamed without collapsing, for it relies upon that growth to function. And who wants it tamed anyway? Most people in the rich world won't be giving up their cars or holidays without a fight.
Some people – perhaps you – believe that these things should not be said, even if true, because saying them will deprive people of "hope", and without hope there will be no chance of "saving the planet". But false hope is worse than no hope at all. As for saving the planet – what we are really trying to save, as we scrabble around planting turbines on mountains and shouting at ministers, is not the planet but our attachment to the western material culture, which we cannot imagine living without.
The challenge is not how to shore up a crumbling empire with wave machines and global summits, but to start thinking about how we are going to live through its fall, and what we can learn from its collapse.
All the best, Paul
Dear Paul
Like you I have become ever gloomier about our chances of avoiding the crash you predict. For the past few years I have been almost professionally optimistic, exhorting people to keep fighting, knowing that to say there is no hope is to make it so. I still have some faith in our ability to make rational decisions based on evidence. But it is waning.
If it has taken governments this long even to start discussing reform of the common fisheries policy – if they refuse even to make contingency plans for peak oil – what hope is there of working towards a steady-state economy, let alone the voluntary economic contraction ultimately required to avoid either the climate crash or the depletion of crucial resources?
The interesting question, and the one that probably divides us, is this: to what extent should we welcome the likely collapse of industrial civilisation? Or more precisely: to what extent do we believe that some good may come of it?
I detect in your writings, and in the conversations we have had, an attraction towards – almost a yearning for – this apocalypse, a sense that you see it as a cleansing fire that will rid the world of a diseased society. If this is your view, I do not share it. I'm sure we can agree that the immediate consequences of collapse would be hideous: the breakdown of the systems that keep most of us alive; mass starvation; war. These alone surely give us sufficient reason to fight on, however faint our chances appear. But even if we were somehow able to put this out of our minds, I believe that what is likely to come out on the other side will be worse than our current settlement.
Here are three observations: 1 Our species (unlike most of its members) is tough and resilient; 2 When civilisations collapse, psychopaths take over; 3 We seldom learn from others' mistakes.
From the first observation, this follows: even if you are hardened to the fate of humans, you can surely see that our species will not become extinct without causing the extinction of almost all others. However hard we fall, we will recover sufficiently to land another hammer blow on the biosphere. We will continue to do so until there is so little left that even Homo sapiens can no longer survive. This is the ecological destiny of a species possessed of outstanding intelligence, opposable thumbs and an ability to interpret and exploit almost every possible resource – in the absence of political restraint.
From the second and third observations, this follows: instead of gathering as free collectives of happy householders, survivors of this collapse will be subject to the will of people seeking to monopolise remaining resources. This will is likely to be imposed through violence. Political accountability will be a distant memory. The chances of conserving any resource in these circumstances are approximately zero. The human and ecological consequences of the first global collapse are likely to persist for many generations, perhaps for our species' remaining time on earth. To imagine that good could come of the involuntary failure of industrial civilisation is also to succumb to denial. The answer to your question – what will we learn from this collapse? – is nothing.
This is why, despite everything, I fight on. I am not fighting to sustain economic growth. I am fighting to prevent both initial collapse and the repeated catastrophe that follows. However faint the hopes of engineering a soft landing – an ordered and structured downsizing of the global economy – might be, we must keep this possibility alive. Perhaps we are both in denial: I, because I think the fight is still worth having; you, because you think it isn't.
With my best wishes, George
Dear George
You say that you detect in my writing a yearning for apocalypse. I detect in yours a paralysing fear.
You have convinced yourself that there are only two possible futures available to humanity. One we might call Liberal Capitalist Democracy 2.0. Clearly your preferred option, this is much like the world we live in now, only with fossil fuels replaced by solar panels; governments and corporations held to account by active citizens; and growth somehow cast aside in favour of a "steady state economy".
The other we might call McCarthy world, from Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road [1] – which is set in an impossibly hideous post-apocalyptic world, where everything is dead but humans, who are reduced to eating children. Not long ago you suggested in a column [2] that such a future could await us if we didn't continue "the fight".
Your letter continues mining this Hobbesian [3] vein. We have to "fight on" because without modern industrial civilisation the psychopaths will take over, and there will be "mass starvation and war". Leaving aside the fact that psychopaths seem to be running the show already, and millions are suffering today from starvation and war, I think this is a false choice. We both come from a western, Christian culture with a deep apocalyptic tradition. You seem to find it hard to see beyond it. But I am not "yearning" for some archetypal End of Days, because that's not what we face.
We face what John Michael Greer [4], in his book of the same name, calls a "long descent": a series of ongoing crises brought about by the factors I talked of in my first letter that will bring an end to the all-consuming culture we have imposed upon the Earth. I'm sure "some good will come" from this, for that culture is a weapon of planetary mass destruction.
Our civilisation will not survive in anything like its present form, but we can at least aim for a managed retreat to a saner world. Your alternative – to hold on to nurse for fear of finding something worse – is in any case a century too late. When empires begin to fall, they build their own momentum. But what comes next doesn't have to be McCarthyworld. Fear is a poor guide to the future.
All the best, Paul
Dear Paul
If I have understood you correctly, you are proposing to do nothing to prevent the likely collapse of industrial civilisation. You believe that instead of trying to replace fossil fuels with other energy sources, we should let the system slide. You go on to say that we should not fear this outcome.
How many people do you believe the world could support without either fossil fuels or an equivalent investment in alternative energy? How many would survive without modern industrial civilisation? Two billion? One billion? Under your vision several billion perish. And you tell me we have nothing to fear.
I find it hard to understand how you could be unaffected by this prospect. I accused you of denial before; this looks more like disavowal. I hear a perverse echo in your writing of the philosophies that most offend you: your macho assertion that we have nothing to fear from collapse mirrors the macho assertion that we have nothing to fear from endless growth. Both positions betray a refusal to engage with physical reality.
Your disavowal is informed by a misunderstanding. You maintain that modern industrial civilisation "is a weapon of planetary mass destruction". Anyone apprised of the palaeolithic massacre of the African and Eurasian megafauna, or the extermination of the great beasts of the Americas, or the massive carbon pulse produced by deforestation in the Neolithic must be able to see that the weapon of planetary mass destruction is not the current culture, but humankind.
You would purge the planet of industrial civilisation, at the cost of billions of lives, only to discover that you have not invoked "a saner world" but just another phase of destruction.
Strange as it seems, a de-fanged, steady-state version of the current settlement might offer the best prospect humankind has ever had of avoiding collapse. For the first time in our history we are well-informed about the extent and causes of our ecological crises, know what should be done to avert them, and have the global means – if only the political will were present – of preventing them. Faced with your alternative – sit back and watch billions die – Liberal Democracy 2.0 looks like a pretty good option.
With my best wishes, George
Dear George
Macho, moi? You've been using the word "fight" at a Dick Cheney [5]-like rate. Now my lack of fighting spirit sees me accused of complicity in mass death. This seems a fairly macho accusation.
Perhaps the heart of our disagreement can be found in a single sentence in your last letter: "You are proposing to do nothing to prevent the likely collapse of industrial civilisation." This invites a question: what do you think I could do? What do you think you can do?
You've suggested several times that the hideous death of billions is the only alternative to a retooled status quo. Even if I accepted this loaded claim, which seems designed to make me look like a heartless fascist, it would get us nowhere because a retooled status quo is a fantasy and even you are close to admitting it. Rather than "do nothing" in response, I'd suggest we get some perspective on the root cause of this crisis – not human beings but the cultures within which they operate.
Civilisations live and die by their founding myths. Our myths tell us that humanity is separate from something called "nature", which is a "resource" for our use. They tell us there are no limits to human abilities, and that technology, science and our ineffable wisdom can fix everything. Above all, they tell us that we are in control. This craving for control underpins your approach. If we can just persaude the politicians to do A, B and C swiftly enough, then we will be saved. But what climate change shows us is that we are not in control, either of the biosphere or of the machine which is destroying it. Accepting that fact is our biggest challenge.
I think our task is to negotiate the coming descent as best we can, while creating new myths that put humanity in its proper place. Recently I co-founded a new initiative, the Dark Mountain Project [6], which aims to help do that. It won't save the world, but it might help us think about how to live through a hard century. You'd be welcome to join us.
Very best, Paul
Dear Paul
Yes, the words I use are fierce, but yours are strangely neutral. I note that you have failed to answer my question about how many people the world could support without modern forms of energy and the systems they sustain, but 2 billion is surely the optimistic extreme. You describe this mass cull as "a long descent" or a "retreat to a saner world". Have you ever considered a job in the Ministry of Defence press office?
I draw the trifling issue of a few billion fatalities to your attention not to make you look like a heartless fascist but because it's a reality with which you refuse to engage. You don't see it because to do so would be to accept the need for action. But of course you aren't doing nothing. You propose to stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, and, er … "get some perspective on the root cause of this crisis". Fine: we could all do with some perspective. But without action – informed, focused and immediate – the crisis will happen. I agree that the chances of success are small. But they are non-existent if we give up before we have started. You mock this impulse as a "craving for control". I see it as an attempt at survival.
What could you do? You know the answer as well as I do. Join up, protest, propose, create. It's messy, endless and uncertain of success. Perhaps you see yourself as above this futility, but it's all we've got and all we've ever had. And sometimes it works.
The curious outcome of this debate is that while I began as the optimist and you the pessimist, our roles have reversed. You appear to believe that though it is impossible to tame the global economy, it is possible to change our founding myths, some of which predate industrial civilisation by several thousand years. You also believe that good can come of a collapse that deprives most of the population of its means of survival. This strikes me as something more than optimism: a millenarian [7] fantasy, perhaps, of Redemption after the Fall. Perhaps it is the perfect foil to my apocalyptic vision.
With my best wishes, George
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2009
Paul Kingsnorth is a writer, environmentalist and poet. He has written widely for publications worldwide. His new book, Real England [8], is published by Portobello. George Monbiot is the author of the bestselling books The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order [9] and Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain [10], as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows [11], Amazon Watershed [12] and No Man's Land [13].
For my 2 cents worth,this is a pretty good summary of the state of affairs......I don't know any answers but this is thought- provoking and helps in understanding...I think we all know this but it is hard to articulate it as well as these two have....Let me know what you think.....danny
Published on Tuesday, August 18, 2009 by The Guardian/UK
Is There Any Point in Fighting to Stave off Industrial Apocalypse?
The collapse of civilisation will bring us a saner world, says Paul Kingsnorth. No, counters George Monbiot – we can't let billions perish
by George Monbiot and Paul Kingsnorth
Dear George
On the desk in front of me is a set of graphs. The horizontal axis of each represents the years 1750 to 2000. The graphs show, variously, population levels, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, exploitation of fisheries, destruction of tropical forests, paper consumption, number of motor vehicles, water use, the rate of species extinction and the totality of the human economy's gross domestic product.
What grips me about these graphs (and graphs don't usually grip me) is that though they all show very different things, they have an almost identical shape. A line begins on the left of the page, rising gradually as it moves to the right. Then, in the last inch or so – around 1950 – it veers steeply upwards, like a pilot banking after a cliff has suddenly appeared from what he thought was an empty bank of cloud.
The root cause of all these trends is the same: a rapacious human economy bringing the world swiftly to the brink of chaos. We know this; some of us even attempt to stop it happening. Yet all of these trends continue to get rapidly worse, and there is no sign of that changing soon. What these graphs make clear better than anything else is the cold reality: there is a serious crash on the way.
Yet very few of us are prepared to look honestly at the message this reality is screaming at us: that the civilisation we are a part of is hitting the buffers at full speed, and it is too late to stop it. Instead, most of us – and I include in this generalisation much of the mainstream environmental movement – are still wedded to a vision of the future as an upgraded version of the present. We still believe in "progress", as lazily defined by western liberalism. We still believe that we will be able to continue living more or less the same comfortable lives (albeit with more windfarms and better lightbulbs) if we can only embrace "sustainable development" rapidly enough; and that we can then extend it to the extra 3 billion people who will shortly join us on this already gasping planet.
I think this is simply denial. The writing is on the wall for industrial society, and no amount of ethical shopping or determined protesting is going to change that now. Take a civilisation built on the myth of human exceptionalism and a deeply embedded cultural attitude to "nature"; add a blind belief in technological and material progress; then fuel the whole thing with a power source that is discovered to be disastrously destructive only after we have used it to inflate our numbers and appetites beyond the point of no return. What do you get? We are starting to find out.
We need to get real. Climate change is teetering on the point of no return while our leaders bang the drum for more growth. The economic system we rely upon cannot be tamed without collapsing, for it relies upon that growth to function. And who wants it tamed anyway? Most people in the rich world won't be giving up their cars or holidays without a fight.
Some people – perhaps you – believe that these things should not be said, even if true, because saying them will deprive people of "hope", and without hope there will be no chance of "saving the planet". But false hope is worse than no hope at all. As for saving the planet – what we are really trying to save, as we scrabble around planting turbines on mountains and shouting at ministers, is not the planet but our attachment to the western material culture, which we cannot imagine living without.
The challenge is not how to shore up a crumbling empire with wave machines and global summits, but to start thinking about how we are going to live through its fall, and what we can learn from its collapse.
All the best, Paul
Dear Paul
Like you I have become ever gloomier about our chances of avoiding the crash you predict. For the past few years I have been almost professionally optimistic, exhorting people to keep fighting, knowing that to say there is no hope is to make it so. I still have some faith in our ability to make rational decisions based on evidence. But it is waning.
If it has taken governments this long even to start discussing reform of the common fisheries policy – if they refuse even to make contingency plans for peak oil – what hope is there of working towards a steady-state economy, let alone the voluntary economic contraction ultimately required to avoid either the climate crash or the depletion of crucial resources?
The interesting question, and the one that probably divides us, is this: to what extent should we welcome the likely collapse of industrial civilisation? Or more precisely: to what extent do we believe that some good may come of it?
I detect in your writings, and in the conversations we have had, an attraction towards – almost a yearning for – this apocalypse, a sense that you see it as a cleansing fire that will rid the world of a diseased society. If this is your view, I do not share it. I'm sure we can agree that the immediate consequences of collapse would be hideous: the breakdown of the systems that keep most of us alive; mass starvation; war. These alone surely give us sufficient reason to fight on, however faint our chances appear. But even if we were somehow able to put this out of our minds, I believe that what is likely to come out on the other side will be worse than our current settlement.
Here are three observations: 1 Our species (unlike most of its members) is tough and resilient; 2 When civilisations collapse, psychopaths take over; 3 We seldom learn from others' mistakes.
From the first observation, this follows: even if you are hardened to the fate of humans, you can surely see that our species will not become extinct without causing the extinction of almost all others. However hard we fall, we will recover sufficiently to land another hammer blow on the biosphere. We will continue to do so until there is so little left that even Homo sapiens can no longer survive. This is the ecological destiny of a species possessed of outstanding intelligence, opposable thumbs and an ability to interpret and exploit almost every possible resource – in the absence of political restraint.
From the second and third observations, this follows: instead of gathering as free collectives of happy householders, survivors of this collapse will be subject to the will of people seeking to monopolise remaining resources. This will is likely to be imposed through violence. Political accountability will be a distant memory. The chances of conserving any resource in these circumstances are approximately zero. The human and ecological consequences of the first global collapse are likely to persist for many generations, perhaps for our species' remaining time on earth. To imagine that good could come of the involuntary failure of industrial civilisation is also to succumb to denial. The answer to your question – what will we learn from this collapse? – is nothing.
This is why, despite everything, I fight on. I am not fighting to sustain economic growth. I am fighting to prevent both initial collapse and the repeated catastrophe that follows. However faint the hopes of engineering a soft landing – an ordered and structured downsizing of the global economy – might be, we must keep this possibility alive. Perhaps we are both in denial: I, because I think the fight is still worth having; you, because you think it isn't.
With my best wishes, George
Dear George
You say that you detect in my writing a yearning for apocalypse. I detect in yours a paralysing fear.
You have convinced yourself that there are only two possible futures available to humanity. One we might call Liberal Capitalist Democracy 2.0. Clearly your preferred option, this is much like the world we live in now, only with fossil fuels replaced by solar panels; governments and corporations held to account by active citizens; and growth somehow cast aside in favour of a "steady state economy".
The other we might call McCarthy world, from Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road [1] – which is set in an impossibly hideous post-apocalyptic world, where everything is dead but humans, who are reduced to eating children. Not long ago you suggested in a column [2] that such a future could await us if we didn't continue "the fight".
Your letter continues mining this Hobbesian [3] vein. We have to "fight on" because without modern industrial civilisation the psychopaths will take over, and there will be "mass starvation and war". Leaving aside the fact that psychopaths seem to be running the show already, and millions are suffering today from starvation and war, I think this is a false choice. We both come from a western, Christian culture with a deep apocalyptic tradition. You seem to find it hard to see beyond it. But I am not "yearning" for some archetypal End of Days, because that's not what we face.
We face what John Michael Greer [4], in his book of the same name, calls a "long descent": a series of ongoing crises brought about by the factors I talked of in my first letter that will bring an end to the all-consuming culture we have imposed upon the Earth. I'm sure "some good will come" from this, for that culture is a weapon of planetary mass destruction.
Our civilisation will not survive in anything like its present form, but we can at least aim for a managed retreat to a saner world. Your alternative – to hold on to nurse for fear of finding something worse – is in any case a century too late. When empires begin to fall, they build their own momentum. But what comes next doesn't have to be McCarthyworld. Fear is a poor guide to the future.
All the best, Paul
Dear Paul
If I have understood you correctly, you are proposing to do nothing to prevent the likely collapse of industrial civilisation. You believe that instead of trying to replace fossil fuels with other energy sources, we should let the system slide. You go on to say that we should not fear this outcome.
How many people do you believe the world could support without either fossil fuels or an equivalent investment in alternative energy? How many would survive without modern industrial civilisation? Two billion? One billion? Under your vision several billion perish. And you tell me we have nothing to fear.
I find it hard to understand how you could be unaffected by this prospect. I accused you of denial before; this looks more like disavowal. I hear a perverse echo in your writing of the philosophies that most offend you: your macho assertion that we have nothing to fear from collapse mirrors the macho assertion that we have nothing to fear from endless growth. Both positions betray a refusal to engage with physical reality.
Your disavowal is informed by a misunderstanding. You maintain that modern industrial civilisation "is a weapon of planetary mass destruction". Anyone apprised of the palaeolithic massacre of the African and Eurasian megafauna, or the extermination of the great beasts of the Americas, or the massive carbon pulse produced by deforestation in the Neolithic must be able to see that the weapon of planetary mass destruction is not the current culture, but humankind.
You would purge the planet of industrial civilisation, at the cost of billions of lives, only to discover that you have not invoked "a saner world" but just another phase of destruction.
Strange as it seems, a de-fanged, steady-state version of the current settlement might offer the best prospect humankind has ever had of avoiding collapse. For the first time in our history we are well-informed about the extent and causes of our ecological crises, know what should be done to avert them, and have the global means – if only the political will were present – of preventing them. Faced with your alternative – sit back and watch billions die – Liberal Democracy 2.0 looks like a pretty good option.
With my best wishes, George
Dear George
Macho, moi? You've been using the word "fight" at a Dick Cheney [5]-like rate. Now my lack of fighting spirit sees me accused of complicity in mass death. This seems a fairly macho accusation.
Perhaps the heart of our disagreement can be found in a single sentence in your last letter: "You are proposing to do nothing to prevent the likely collapse of industrial civilisation." This invites a question: what do you think I could do? What do you think you can do?
You've suggested several times that the hideous death of billions is the only alternative to a retooled status quo. Even if I accepted this loaded claim, which seems designed to make me look like a heartless fascist, it would get us nowhere because a retooled status quo is a fantasy and even you are close to admitting it. Rather than "do nothing" in response, I'd suggest we get some perspective on the root cause of this crisis – not human beings but the cultures within which they operate.
Civilisations live and die by their founding myths. Our myths tell us that humanity is separate from something called "nature", which is a "resource" for our use. They tell us there are no limits to human abilities, and that technology, science and our ineffable wisdom can fix everything. Above all, they tell us that we are in control. This craving for control underpins your approach. If we can just persaude the politicians to do A, B and C swiftly enough, then we will be saved. But what climate change shows us is that we are not in control, either of the biosphere or of the machine which is destroying it. Accepting that fact is our biggest challenge.
I think our task is to negotiate the coming descent as best we can, while creating new myths that put humanity in its proper place. Recently I co-founded a new initiative, the Dark Mountain Project [6], which aims to help do that. It won't save the world, but it might help us think about how to live through a hard century. You'd be welcome to join us.
Very best, Paul
Dear Paul
Yes, the words I use are fierce, but yours are strangely neutral. I note that you have failed to answer my question about how many people the world could support without modern forms of energy and the systems they sustain, but 2 billion is surely the optimistic extreme. You describe this mass cull as "a long descent" or a "retreat to a saner world". Have you ever considered a job in the Ministry of Defence press office?
I draw the trifling issue of a few billion fatalities to your attention not to make you look like a heartless fascist but because it's a reality with which you refuse to engage. You don't see it because to do so would be to accept the need for action. But of course you aren't doing nothing. You propose to stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, and, er … "get some perspective on the root cause of this crisis". Fine: we could all do with some perspective. But without action – informed, focused and immediate – the crisis will happen. I agree that the chances of success are small. But they are non-existent if we give up before we have started. You mock this impulse as a "craving for control". I see it as an attempt at survival.
What could you do? You know the answer as well as I do. Join up, protest, propose, create. It's messy, endless and uncertain of success. Perhaps you see yourself as above this futility, but it's all we've got and all we've ever had. And sometimes it works.
The curious outcome of this debate is that while I began as the optimist and you the pessimist, our roles have reversed. You appear to believe that though it is impossible to tame the global economy, it is possible to change our founding myths, some of which predate industrial civilisation by several thousand years. You also believe that good can come of a collapse that deprives most of the population of its means of survival. This strikes me as something more than optimism: a millenarian [7] fantasy, perhaps, of Redemption after the Fall. Perhaps it is the perfect foil to my apocalyptic vision.
With my best wishes, George
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2009
Paul Kingsnorth is a writer, environmentalist and poet. He has written widely for publications worldwide. His new book, Real England [8], is published by Portobello. George Monbiot is the author of the bestselling books The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order [9] and Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain [10], as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows [11], Amazon Watershed [12] and No Man's Land [13].
Skypower Obit- Danny
Skypower Obituary“The mighty have fallen from their thrones” the psalmist wrote. It’s a day now since the news got out that Skypower of Toronto the Good has had a financial collapse, and to say that I was sorry would be a lie.
I am in a celebrative mood for one reason alone: my neighbors nor I shall not have to live with them as corporate neighbors! They don’t deserve to because they did not treat the people with due honor or respect.
They were a people with a book of rules and regulations but without heart, a group of men and women who chose the letter of the law and used it as a club to get their way, rather than to meet the people half way and live by the spirit of it instead.
They did what they seem predestined to do viz. to divide and conquer. Secret tryst with municipal leaders, faulty and flawed pseudo-Consultations with the people, secret leases with lessors sworn to secrecy, and unkept promises for meetings never held – all about a Wind Turbine Communal Home Invasion in the name of clean energy regardless of the cost to man nor beast in one of Nova Scotia’s prime pristine gems still left.
From all appearances, neither our Municipal leaders nor Skypower, had the intestinal fortitude to venture into the homeland of families here fifteen generations or more and many who have come here since, to lay the cards on the table and open a discussion with the people. They slayed, instead, democracy stone dead!
The issue for me is not the wind! The issue is democracy denied! At days end, some may have a few more bucks in their pockets, but there still shall be no winners. Another chip off an already fragile community demeans and cripples all the more.
Whatever be the future I don’t know, but as for Skypower I must say: Good Riddance!
Dan Mills
Waterford, Digby County, Nova Scotia, Canada
I am in a celebrative mood for one reason alone: my neighbors nor I shall not have to live with them as corporate neighbors! They don’t deserve to because they did not treat the people with due honor or respect.
They were a people with a book of rules and regulations but without heart, a group of men and women who chose the letter of the law and used it as a club to get their way, rather than to meet the people half way and live by the spirit of it instead.
They did what they seem predestined to do viz. to divide and conquer. Secret tryst with municipal leaders, faulty and flawed pseudo-Consultations with the people, secret leases with lessors sworn to secrecy, and unkept promises for meetings never held – all about a Wind Turbine Communal Home Invasion in the name of clean energy regardless of the cost to man nor beast in one of Nova Scotia’s prime pristine gems still left.
From all appearances, neither our Municipal leaders nor Skypower, had the intestinal fortitude to venture into the homeland of families here fifteen generations or more and many who have come here since, to lay the cards on the table and open a discussion with the people. They slayed, instead, democracy stone dead!
The issue for me is not the wind! The issue is democracy denied! At days end, some may have a few more bucks in their pockets, but there still shall be no winners. Another chip off an already fragile community demeans and cripples all the more.
Whatever be the future I don’t know, but as for Skypower I must say: Good Riddance!
Dan Mills
Waterford, Digby County, Nova Scotia, Canada
Labels:
wind turbines
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Sound Travels- Windmills
Mr.MacAlpine, I appreciate your fixation on decibel measurement, but
I want to relate a story of my own.
You know where I live...on top of Seawall Hill. It was very still here this
morning and the stillness brought to mind nights when I am kept awake or
awakened by noise. I jumped in my car and calculated the mileage from my
door to the site of numerous beach parties on the shore in summer.
My bedroom faces the east. Many a night when the young are celebrating their
lives, I not only hear the noise of music and talking; I can understand
every word distinctly - every cuss word and expetlive, even the words of the
playing music as if it was outside my open window.
It is 1.5 km. from my driveway to the shore. How do you set a proper
distance with the decibel measure as all you've got and seem to trust in?
There are nights when I close my window and bedroom door and move accross
the hall to a bedroom on the western side.
Let me add another true story. On Saturday last, a wedding took place at a
neighbors nearby. Again it was a fairly still evening. I heard nothing at my
place, but in another direction a neighbor cleary heard the music at 300 m.
away.
That may not seem so strange.However,over the mountain, 3700 m. away from
the party, according to the map,in Gullivers Cove just below the mountains
crest, the music from the party was heard, not as clearly assuredly as at
300 m., but nonetheless it was heard clearly enough that a resident stepped
outside to see if the music was coming from the nearby woods, if not
consistently but certainly with some sporadic regularity.
I am not criticizing my neighbour for celebrating a family members wedding.
It's the bravest who have the courage to marry today. They need to be
celebrated. My question is: "What distance would a bylaw have to set, and
what sort of decibel measurement would be effective in that case? Noise
differs, of course, when the grass is long than when it is flattened by the
elements...., when trees are cut or grow, and countless other factors.
It seems to me that determining a fixed decibel maximum would be
commensurate with shooting yourself in the foot.
Dan Mills
I want to relate a story of my own.
You know where I live...on top of Seawall Hill. It was very still here this
morning and the stillness brought to mind nights when I am kept awake or
awakened by noise. I jumped in my car and calculated the mileage from my
door to the site of numerous beach parties on the shore in summer.
My bedroom faces the east. Many a night when the young are celebrating their
lives, I not only hear the noise of music and talking; I can understand
every word distinctly - every cuss word and expetlive, even the words of the
playing music as if it was outside my open window.
It is 1.5 km. from my driveway to the shore. How do you set a proper
distance with the decibel measure as all you've got and seem to trust in?
There are nights when I close my window and bedroom door and move accross
the hall to a bedroom on the western side.
Let me add another true story. On Saturday last, a wedding took place at a
neighbors nearby. Again it was a fairly still evening. I heard nothing at my
place, but in another direction a neighbor cleary heard the music at 300 m.
away.
That may not seem so strange.However,over the mountain, 3700 m. away from
the party, according to the map,in Gullivers Cove just below the mountains
crest, the music from the party was heard, not as clearly assuredly as at
300 m., but nonetheless it was heard clearly enough that a resident stepped
outside to see if the music was coming from the nearby woods, if not
consistently but certainly with some sporadic regularity.
I am not criticizing my neighbour for celebrating a family members wedding.
It's the bravest who have the courage to marry today. They need to be
celebrated. My question is: "What distance would a bylaw have to set, and
what sort of decibel measurement would be effective in that case? Noise
differs, of course, when the grass is long than when it is flattened by the
elements...., when trees are cut or grow, and countless other factors.
It seems to me that determining a fixed decibel maximum would be
commensurate with shooting yourself in the foot.
Dan Mills
Labels:
noise and turbines
Dr. Pierpont and Health Issues
Leading article: Wind power – a cautionary word
Sunday, 2 August 2009
All new technologies carry risk. That is true of benign new technologies as well as the old industrial sort. This paper's report on the potential health hazards of wind turbines, generators of eco-friendly wind power, will be unwelcome for many environmentalists and indeed for the Government, which for entirely creditable reasons is committed to a great increase in their number. But a new book by a New York paediatrician, Dr Nina Pierpont, on which our report is based and which draws on international studies, ought not to be ignored.
This paper is in favour of wind turbines. But Dr Pierpont suggests that the vibrations and low-level subsonic noise that is emitted can cause a range of health problems, including sleep disorders, and may aggravate more serious underlying conditions. She attributes this to the fact that the human ear is far more sensitive to vibrations, not merely audible noise, than we have assumed. And the disruption to the ear's vestibular system – directly linked to our sense of balance – caused by vibrations and low-level noise from turbines is a factor that the British Government has not, so far, taken into account in assessing whether to commission wind farms. For the sake of public reassurance, it should.
Related articles
Are wind farms a health risk? US scientist identifies 'wind turbine syndrome'
This newspaper believes that Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy, ought to study these findings, as indeed should the Department for Health. And we do so as firm supporters of the principle that Britain must take its environmental responsibilities seriously, and as a supporter of Mr Miliband's radical White Paper on energy. It is not incompatible with support for green issues to suggest that the move towards renewable energy sources should take account of human health concerns. Indeed, the Government stands a far greater chance of winning public support for reducing carbon emissions if it shows it is receptive to new scientific findings. Public health issues and eco-sensitivity must not be mutually exclusive if people are to be won over to the larger project of changing our patterns of energy consumption.
We hope, therefore, that Mr Miliband will not simply dismiss Dr Pierpont's book, which will be published in October, simply as ammunition for what he describes as "socially unacceptable" opposition to wind power. Dr Pierpont's research was self-funded, and she is not personally opposed to wind turbines. Only last week, we saw the consequences of a cavalier attitude to health in the decommissioning of the steelworks at Corby, which resulted in some children conceived at the time being born with deformities. If the Government were to continue to commission and site wind farms without regard for these new scientific findings, ministers, or their successors, may be laying the taxpayer open to the possibility of large claims for compensation. More importantly, they may be exposing innocent members of the public, including children, to avoidable health problems.
The obvious recommendations that flow from the new research about the effects of wind turbines on a range of health issues – effects that also flow, to a lesser extent, from reflected light off the blades – are actually relatively modest. Foremost, there is an urgent need for credible official research into the health effects of the turbines. Then there is a prudential argument for postponing the commissioning of land-based wind farms until they are shown to be safe. At the very least, they should be treated like electricity pylons, and houses should not be built close by – the French government allows a radius of 1.5km for residential developments near wind turbines, while Dr Pierpont recommends a radius of 2km.
This approach may seem contrary to a vigorous commitment to greener energy, but it need not be. Additionally, wind power is just one of several good options. It may seem perverse just now, given the weather, to argue for solar energy, but the German government has made huge strides in the past decade in promoting the production and use of solar energy panels. It has set a useful example, which the White Paper seeks to emulate, in encouraging citizens to generate solar energy for sale to the national grid. Japan too, has embraced solar energy. There is also wave power, a potentially vast source of energy, which should be explored further.
In any event, Dr Pierpont has made an important contribution to a debate about wind turbines that should be conducted not between champions and opponents of renewable energy, but within the community of those who want this country to behave in an environmentally responsible way. That we can and should do.
Sunday, 2 August 2009
All new technologies carry risk. That is true of benign new technologies as well as the old industrial sort. This paper's report on the potential health hazards of wind turbines, generators of eco-friendly wind power, will be unwelcome for many environmentalists and indeed for the Government, which for entirely creditable reasons is committed to a great increase in their number. But a new book by a New York paediatrician, Dr Nina Pierpont, on which our report is based and which draws on international studies, ought not to be ignored.
This paper is in favour of wind turbines. But Dr Pierpont suggests that the vibrations and low-level subsonic noise that is emitted can cause a range of health problems, including sleep disorders, and may aggravate more serious underlying conditions. She attributes this to the fact that the human ear is far more sensitive to vibrations, not merely audible noise, than we have assumed. And the disruption to the ear's vestibular system – directly linked to our sense of balance – caused by vibrations and low-level noise from turbines is a factor that the British Government has not, so far, taken into account in assessing whether to commission wind farms. For the sake of public reassurance, it should.
Related articles
Are wind farms a health risk? US scientist identifies 'wind turbine syndrome'
This newspaper believes that Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy, ought to study these findings, as indeed should the Department for Health. And we do so as firm supporters of the principle that Britain must take its environmental responsibilities seriously, and as a supporter of Mr Miliband's radical White Paper on energy. It is not incompatible with support for green issues to suggest that the move towards renewable energy sources should take account of human health concerns. Indeed, the Government stands a far greater chance of winning public support for reducing carbon emissions if it shows it is receptive to new scientific findings. Public health issues and eco-sensitivity must not be mutually exclusive if people are to be won over to the larger project of changing our patterns of energy consumption.
We hope, therefore, that Mr Miliband will not simply dismiss Dr Pierpont's book, which will be published in October, simply as ammunition for what he describes as "socially unacceptable" opposition to wind power. Dr Pierpont's research was self-funded, and she is not personally opposed to wind turbines. Only last week, we saw the consequences of a cavalier attitude to health in the decommissioning of the steelworks at Corby, which resulted in some children conceived at the time being born with deformities. If the Government were to continue to commission and site wind farms without regard for these new scientific findings, ministers, or their successors, may be laying the taxpayer open to the possibility of large claims for compensation. More importantly, they may be exposing innocent members of the public, including children, to avoidable health problems.
The obvious recommendations that flow from the new research about the effects of wind turbines on a range of health issues – effects that also flow, to a lesser extent, from reflected light off the blades – are actually relatively modest. Foremost, there is an urgent need for credible official research into the health effects of the turbines. Then there is a prudential argument for postponing the commissioning of land-based wind farms until they are shown to be safe. At the very least, they should be treated like electricity pylons, and houses should not be built close by – the French government allows a radius of 1.5km for residential developments near wind turbines, while Dr Pierpont recommends a radius of 2km.
This approach may seem contrary to a vigorous commitment to greener energy, but it need not be. Additionally, wind power is just one of several good options. It may seem perverse just now, given the weather, to argue for solar energy, but the German government has made huge strides in the past decade in promoting the production and use of solar energy panels. It has set a useful example, which the White Paper seeks to emulate, in encouraging citizens to generate solar energy for sale to the national grid. Japan too, has embraced solar energy. There is also wave power, a potentially vast source of energy, which should be explored further.
In any event, Dr Pierpont has made an important contribution to a debate about wind turbines that should be conducted not between champions and opponents of renewable energy, but within the community of those who want this country to behave in an environmentally responsible way. That we can and should do.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Friday Deadline
From: Tom Haynes-Paton
Date: 8/4/2009 11:06:36 AM
Subject: FRIDAY DEADLINE: Eight Reasons the Digby Wind Power Project is a bad fit for Digby Neck
Tom's note: I favor wind energy. But because of the serious potential health threats to residents, not when located in the midst of a residential community like Digby Neck.
And also for economic/environmental reasons not on Digby Neck, because it will seriously disrupt and damage our area's primary eco-tourism destination. My business dropped 50% for a 4-week period while they merely resurfaced the Digby Neck highway. Many tourists, told about the disruptions, went via the South Shore instead. The wind farm construction is to take more than a year. And worse, with permanent industrial wind installations, "The best kept eco-tourism secret Digby Neck" will become industrial-park Digby Neck.
Skypower Inc. is now trying to flood Nova Scotia Environment Minister Sterling Belliveau with a "I support the Digby Neck wind farm" form letter.
Please mail or email EA@gov.ns.ca your own concerns by this Friday's postmarked deadline to:
Environmental Assessment Branch
Nova Scotia Environment
PO Box 442
Halifax, NS B3J 2P8 Or phone the Review Manager at 902-424-7630
For further background information, see the helpful summation article below.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: fntp1@ns.sympatico.ca
To: fntp1@ns.sympatico.ca
Subject: Eight Reasons the Digby Wind Power Project is a bad fit for Digby Neck
Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2009 11:42:01 -0300
Digby Neck needs your help again if it is to remain unmolested by thoughtless industrialization.
Perhaps you have heard that a 20 turbine wind farm, "Digby Wind Park", is proposed for the Gulliver's Cove/Rossway area of Digby Neck. Construction is scheduled to begin in September with an April 2010 "in service" date for the 30 megawatt facility.
The proponent is a partnership of Scotian WindFields Inc. of Nova Scotia and SkyPower Corp. of Toronto.
The project is currently undergoing a provincial Environmental Assessment (EA).
SkyPower's EA, prepared by Jacques Whitford Stantec Ltd., was filed on April 30, 2009. On June 19, the Deputy Minister of the Environment found it lacking and gave the proponent a year to come up with additional information.
Two weeks later on July 3, SkyPower filed their Addendum with most of the additional information in the form of a new turbine layout.
The deadline for comments on the Addendum, which can include comments on the original EA, is next Saturday August 8. All documents are available for review on the Department of Environment website www.gov.ns.ca/nse/ea
Please take the time to send your comments on this proposed project to the NS Department of Environment. Contact information is at the end of this email.
-------------------------------------------------
Regardless of how you feel about the benefits of wind power, the Digby Wind Power Project should not be allowed to go ahead for the environmental and health reasons summarized below:
1) According to the Addendum, there are 113 residences within 2 km of a proposed turbine. Of these, 39 are within 1 km of a turbine - several are 600 to 700 metres away from a turbine even in the latest turbine layout.
There is peer-reviewed medical evidence that there are likely to be health effects among some of these residents. Current knowledge indicates that these health effects are caused by the low frequency noise (LFN) created by the 77 metre diameter rotors (rotating blades) slicing through the air, not from the mechanical noise of the gears in the nacelle. Dr. Nina Pierpont, a medical doctor in private practice in upstate New York has studied cases of people affected by large turbines. She suggests turbines be located a minimum of 2.4 km (1.5 miles) from occupied buildings.
Though the Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA) cites the opinions of acousticians to dispute Dr. Pierpont’s work, we know of no medical doctor who has reviewed her work and found her methods or conclusions to be unscientific. See www.windturbinesyndrome.com for more on Dr. Pierpont's work.
With the Addendum, the proponent submitted a paper prepared by CanWEA that "reiterates that peer-reviewed scientific literature have consistently found no evidence linking wind turbines to human health concerns."
2) Health Canada, in their submission on the EA, asked the proponent to Please ensure that the environmental assessment contains a discussion regarding the audibility of the turbines and it is advisable to also develop a communication strategy to accurately disclose the potential noise related to the project to nearby residents prior to project construction....Please provide a discussion of the potential for low frequency noise at the nearest residential receptors, and provide an assessment of whether or not monitoring for low frequency noise is warranted.
In the Addendum, the proponent responded there is no evidence that the wind turbine technology proposed for the Project presents any potential problems related to the generation of infrasound energy. Infrasound is generally accepted to be frequencies ranging from 0 to 20 cycles per second (Hz). Low frequency noise (LFN) is 20 to 200 cycles per second (Hz). They are clearly avoiding the question.
3) If any residents in the local communities of Gulliver's Cove, Rossway and Waterford do end up being affected by the 118 metre tall machines, the 35.4 kilovolt overhead connector lines running between them, the substation, or the new 69 kilovolt transmission line to be built to connect to the grid at Digby, the proponents offer no mitigation other than creating a registry for complaints.
4) If residents wish to sell their homes and move away, rather than live with the noise and annoyance of the machines, or the drastic change in their landscape, the proponents offer no guarantee that their homes won't have lost most of their current value by being within a wind farm. Many people will have no option but to continue living in what may become a very undesirable and disturbing place. Many local families have lived in the area for generations.
5) The proponent states that the project will have no significant negative effect on tourism in the area. NS Tourism, Culture and Heritage in their submission on the EA stated that the general area does have an extensive history and natural beauty which gives it tourism appeal and potential. The department has several concerns about the impact of the project on the area and its people. These concerns about the impact of the project on tourism in the area are not addressed in the Addendum as they were not specifically spelled out in the Deputy Minister's decision.
6) The new turbine layout creates a row of ten turbines along approximately 2500 metres of the ridge of the North Mountain, west of the village of Gulliver's Cove.
Digby Neck in this area is about 3 km wide and the turbines would occupy the northern half of the width for a distance of 2.5 km along the Neck. Digby Neck is a known bird migration corridor, particularly during the fall migration (flying north to south). Nearby Brier Island has the international designation "Important Bird Area".
There is no discussion in the Addendum of the impact of the latest turbine configuration on migrating birds or bats. The conclusions in the EA are that Although Digby Neck itself is considered to be an important bird migration corridor, no such importance has been identified for the Project area itself. The mitigation proposed, in the event of bird or bat fatalities, is that "it is likely" they will count the bodies for two years after construction.
7) Ecology Action Centre which, like many environmental groups, supports the development of this type of wind project expects that municipal land use by-laws will make sure they are sited in locally appropriate places.
In Digby Municipality, a draft by-law was developed over the past year by the Planning Advisory Committee with input from concerned residents. This by-law was then rejected by Council on July 20, after the proponent strongly voiced their objections to it during the final hearing on June 29. Incredible as it may seem, three of the four councillors who voted against the draft by-law also sit on the Planning Advisory Committee which developed it.
Though we participated in the municipal planning process in good faith we remain without any protection from a local land use by-law to regulate wind development in Digby Municipality.
8) Lease agreements for the lands to be used for the wind farm were negotiated in secret. There was no public consultation about the project by the proponent until months later.
Two members of council were informed of the proposal at a secret meeting in July 2007, reportedly after key lands had been secured through lease options. The ill-fated by-law process was begun the following spring as additional Lease Options were being signed.
The first public meeting, in open house format, was held by the proponent in November 2008. Between the Deputy Minister's decision on June 19, 2009 and the upcoming deadline for comments on the Addendum, August 8, there will have been three additional open houses.
Repeated requests from concerned residents for a formal, recordable public meeting to answer our questions have been rejected by the proponent. This lack of true public consultation during the planning stages of the project is unacceptable to us.
--------------------------------------------
We urge you to submit a short comment to the Department of Environment on or before the Saturday, August 8, 2009 deadline.
Please email your comments to EA@gov.ns.ca, phone the Review Manager at 902-424-7630, or mail them to Environmental Assessment Branch, Nova Scotia Environment, PO Box 442, Halifax, NS B3J 2P8 postmarked on or before August 8.
Thank you!
A Growing Number of Concerned Residents of Digby Municipality
Date: 8/4/2009 11:06:36 AM
Subject: FRIDAY DEADLINE: Eight Reasons the Digby Wind Power Project is a bad fit for Digby Neck
Tom's note: I favor wind energy. But because of the serious potential health threats to residents, not when located in the midst of a residential community like Digby Neck.
And also for economic/environmental reasons not on Digby Neck, because it will seriously disrupt and damage our area's primary eco-tourism destination. My business dropped 50% for a 4-week period while they merely resurfaced the Digby Neck highway. Many tourists, told about the disruptions, went via the South Shore instead. The wind farm construction is to take more than a year. And worse, with permanent industrial wind installations, "The best kept eco-tourism secret Digby Neck" will become industrial-park Digby Neck.
Skypower Inc. is now trying to flood Nova Scotia Environment Minister Sterling Belliveau with a "I support the Digby Neck wind farm" form letter.
Please mail or email EA@gov.ns.ca your own concerns by this Friday's postmarked deadline to:
Environmental Assessment Branch
Nova Scotia Environment
PO Box 442
Halifax, NS B3J 2P8 Or phone the Review Manager at 902-424-7630
For further background information, see the helpful summation article below.
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From: fntp1@ns.sympatico.ca
To: fntp1@ns.sympatico.ca
Subject: Eight Reasons the Digby Wind Power Project is a bad fit for Digby Neck
Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2009 11:42:01 -0300
Digby Neck needs your help again if it is to remain unmolested by thoughtless industrialization.
Perhaps you have heard that a 20 turbine wind farm, "Digby Wind Park", is proposed for the Gulliver's Cove/Rossway area of Digby Neck. Construction is scheduled to begin in September with an April 2010 "in service" date for the 30 megawatt facility.
The proponent is a partnership of Scotian WindFields Inc. of Nova Scotia and SkyPower Corp. of Toronto.
The project is currently undergoing a provincial Environmental Assessment (EA).
SkyPower's EA, prepared by Jacques Whitford Stantec Ltd., was filed on April 30, 2009. On June 19, the Deputy Minister of the Environment found it lacking and gave the proponent a year to come up with additional information.
Two weeks later on July 3, SkyPower filed their Addendum with most of the additional information in the form of a new turbine layout.
The deadline for comments on the Addendum, which can include comments on the original EA, is next Saturday August 8. All documents are available for review on the Department of Environment website www.gov.ns.ca/nse/ea
Please take the time to send your comments on this proposed project to the NS Department of Environment. Contact information is at the end of this email.
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Regardless of how you feel about the benefits of wind power, the Digby Wind Power Project should not be allowed to go ahead for the environmental and health reasons summarized below:
1) According to the Addendum, there are 113 residences within 2 km of a proposed turbine. Of these, 39 are within 1 km of a turbine - several are 600 to 700 metres away from a turbine even in the latest turbine layout.
There is peer-reviewed medical evidence that there are likely to be health effects among some of these residents. Current knowledge indicates that these health effects are caused by the low frequency noise (LFN) created by the 77 metre diameter rotors (rotating blades) slicing through the air, not from the mechanical noise of the gears in the nacelle. Dr. Nina Pierpont, a medical doctor in private practice in upstate New York has studied cases of people affected by large turbines. She suggests turbines be located a minimum of 2.4 km (1.5 miles) from occupied buildings.
Though the Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA) cites the opinions of acousticians to dispute Dr. Pierpont’s work, we know of no medical doctor who has reviewed her work and found her methods or conclusions to be unscientific. See www.windturbinesyndrome.com for more on Dr. Pierpont's work.
With the Addendum, the proponent submitted a paper prepared by CanWEA that "reiterates that peer-reviewed scientific literature have consistently found no evidence linking wind turbines to human health concerns."
2) Health Canada, in their submission on the EA, asked the proponent to Please ensure that the environmental assessment contains a discussion regarding the audibility of the turbines and it is advisable to also develop a communication strategy to accurately disclose the potential noise related to the project to nearby residents prior to project construction....Please provide a discussion of the potential for low frequency noise at the nearest residential receptors, and provide an assessment of whether or not monitoring for low frequency noise is warranted.
In the Addendum, the proponent responded there is no evidence that the wind turbine technology proposed for the Project presents any potential problems related to the generation of infrasound energy. Infrasound is generally accepted to be frequencies ranging from 0 to 20 cycles per second (Hz). Low frequency noise (LFN) is 20 to 200 cycles per second (Hz). They are clearly avoiding the question.
3) If any residents in the local communities of Gulliver's Cove, Rossway and Waterford do end up being affected by the 118 metre tall machines, the 35.4 kilovolt overhead connector lines running between them, the substation, or the new 69 kilovolt transmission line to be built to connect to the grid at Digby, the proponents offer no mitigation other than creating a registry for complaints.
4) If residents wish to sell their homes and move away, rather than live with the noise and annoyance of the machines, or the drastic change in their landscape, the proponents offer no guarantee that their homes won't have lost most of their current value by being within a wind farm. Many people will have no option but to continue living in what may become a very undesirable and disturbing place. Many local families have lived in the area for generations.
5) The proponent states that the project will have no significant negative effect on tourism in the area. NS Tourism, Culture and Heritage in their submission on the EA stated that the general area does have an extensive history and natural beauty which gives it tourism appeal and potential. The department has several concerns about the impact of the project on the area and its people. These concerns about the impact of the project on tourism in the area are not addressed in the Addendum as they were not specifically spelled out in the Deputy Minister's decision.
6) The new turbine layout creates a row of ten turbines along approximately 2500 metres of the ridge of the North Mountain, west of the village of Gulliver's Cove.
Digby Neck in this area is about 3 km wide and the turbines would occupy the northern half of the width for a distance of 2.5 km along the Neck. Digby Neck is a known bird migration corridor, particularly during the fall migration (flying north to south). Nearby Brier Island has the international designation "Important Bird Area".
There is no discussion in the Addendum of the impact of the latest turbine configuration on migrating birds or bats. The conclusions in the EA are that Although Digby Neck itself is considered to be an important bird migration corridor, no such importance has been identified for the Project area itself. The mitigation proposed, in the event of bird or bat fatalities, is that "it is likely" they will count the bodies for two years after construction.
7) Ecology Action Centre which, like many environmental groups, supports the development of this type of wind project expects that municipal land use by-laws will make sure they are sited in locally appropriate places.
In Digby Municipality, a draft by-law was developed over the past year by the Planning Advisory Committee with input from concerned residents. This by-law was then rejected by Council on July 20, after the proponent strongly voiced their objections to it during the final hearing on June 29. Incredible as it may seem, three of the four councillors who voted against the draft by-law also sit on the Planning Advisory Committee which developed it.
Though we participated in the municipal planning process in good faith we remain without any protection from a local land use by-law to regulate wind development in Digby Municipality.
8) Lease agreements for the lands to be used for the wind farm were negotiated in secret. There was no public consultation about the project by the proponent until months later.
Two members of council were informed of the proposal at a secret meeting in July 2007, reportedly after key lands had been secured through lease options. The ill-fated by-law process was begun the following spring as additional Lease Options were being signed.
The first public meeting, in open house format, was held by the proponent in November 2008. Between the Deputy Minister's decision on June 19, 2009 and the upcoming deadline for comments on the Addendum, August 8, there will have been three additional open houses.
Repeated requests from concerned residents for a formal, recordable public meeting to answer our questions have been rejected by the proponent. This lack of true public consultation during the planning stages of the project is unacceptable to us.
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We urge you to submit a short comment to the Department of Environment on or before the Saturday, August 8, 2009 deadline.
Please email your comments to EA@gov.ns.ca, phone the Review Manager at 902-424-7630, or mail them to Environmental Assessment Branch, Nova Scotia Environment, PO Box 442, Halifax, NS B3J 2P8 postmarked on or before August 8.
Thank you!
A Growing Number of Concerned Residents of Digby Municipality
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