Renewable Wind Energy Conflict
A company called Cape Wind Associates has proposed building 170 wind turbines to generate 420 Megawatts of power 6 miles off the coast of Cape Cod Massachusetts. The first step is to build a 200-foot-tall test data tower in Nantucket Sound.
Opponents have gone to court to block the building of a test tower. Opponents such as Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, Ocean Conservancy, the Earth Institute, the International Fund for Animals, and the International Wildlife Coalition claim the structure will damage Nantucket Sound and want to block not only the test structure but the entire project.
These environmentalists again have shown their inability to think straight. They want use of renewable energy sources, but want the renewable resources to some how be invisible. No renewable energy resource, given the current technology, can be built and NOT take up acres upon acres of open space in order to generate a realistic level of energy in the hundred to thousands of megawatts. They don't want the renewable sites on land or at sea as it will 'blight' their view. These are the same environmentalists whose mantra was "split wood not atoms" when using wood as a source of energy would have quickly resulted in every tree on the US continent being cut down and burnt - including the old growth redwood forests! Trees may be renewable, but not at the rate they would have been used as a replacement energy source.
It is time environmentalist get real! No replacement for our current coal, oil burning and nuclear power plants will ever be 'invisible'. Wherever they are built, they will take acres if not square miles of land or sea and cannot be made invisible. If we want clean, renewable energy sources, we will all have to get used to seeing those power generating plants off shore and on large undeveloped tracks of land. As someone once said, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
10/09/02 ( 362 )
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