Sensible clean energy future

PS, The Natural Resources Council of Maine, who Dr. Jennings says he agrees with, is wrong on this issue as well.  They sully their reputation for advocating for protection of Maine's natural resources with their stance on encouraging industrial wind sprawl.  NRCM, since when is blasting away 350 miles of Maine ridgelines, permanently clearcutting more than 50,000 acreas, and creating a spiderweb of hundreds of miles of new powerlines protecting Maine's natural resources?  Ditto for DEP and LURC.  Shame on you all!

First of all, xyz, this is not NIMBY, it is about issues that impact all of the state, all taxpayers, and all ratepayers.   The beauty and natural resources being destroyed by the development of wind turbines is everybody's yard and it is everybody's wallet.  This is an extremely important public policy issue and I have to strongly disagree with Dr. Jennings.

It is unfortunate that Dr. Jennings, in his well intentioned concern for public health  related to air pollution, embraces sprawling industrial wind turbine sites across the rural landscape of Maine.  That wind turbines are seen as the be-all panacea to air pollution, climate change, and energy issues is a result of the masterful propaganda of Big Wind/Big Lie.  I would like to believe that people like Dr. Jennings and Dr. Dora Mills, intelligent enough to earn the MD degree, would also be intelligent enough to fully research this scam.  They would realize that massive wind turbine proliferation ends up creating so many other negative impacts that their development does virtually nothing that their idealism envisions and extracts a huge, untenable, and unwarrented price.

Dr. Jennings, Please step down from your lofty perch and try to understand how electricity generation and dispatch works. The simplistic concept of 1kwh wind displaces 1kwh fossil is simply not accurate. In fact, it is quite likely that wind in Maine is displacing other renewables. And in the case of Stetson Wind, it competes directly with renewables. Regarding health effects, until Dr. Mills has taken it upon herself -- as the State's medical officer -- to speak with the residents of Mars Hill and Vinalhaven and evaluate the veracity of their situation, her opinion (and for that matter, yours) adds nothing to the public debate other than to selectively recite the comments of others. 

--Lisa Linowes

Watch THE JACKSON VIDEO about wind in Maine --If you want to get a quick education - from first hand experience - about the debacle that ensues when big wind comes to a town in Maine, watch "The Jackson Video". It's two parts, each about nine minutes. Send it to all whom you know.

See: http://www.windtaskforce.org/video

There are many reasons to oppose industrial wind turbines: noise, habitat fragmentation, erosion and sedimentation of streams and wetlands, aesthetics, property devaluation, loss of quality of life, killing birds and bats, impacts to wildlife, flora and fauna, etc., but mainly that they are a highly subsidized scam that will produce only an intermittent, unreliable, insignificant source of power that will do nothing to solve our energy needs no matter where they are sited.
This project is more about playing on peoples fear and greed in order for wind developers like First Wind/UPC and their hedge fund and Wall St. investors to collect subsidies, grants, tax credits, double accelerated depreciation, etc than about producing "clean & green" electricity. The promises of "green" jobs and the linkage to energy independence, global warming, clean air, and imported oil by proponents and pandering corrupt politicians are vague, doubtful, unverifiable, and untrue.
The social injustice of politically connected corporations like First Wind/UPC and other big wind developers hiding behind the "green" mantel and destroying rural communties for the sake of greed is immoral. Unfortunately, today corporations seem to have more rights than citizens.
Currently there is a glut of generation in New England and wholesale prices for electricity are lower than they've been in years. We don't need environmentally destructive industrial scale wind turbines in the mountains or offshore. Industrial wind turbines are nothing more than a symbolic cure for non existant global warming.

Lil says sarcastically we should wait for our kids.

Lil, as we keep throwing money into so called sustainable energy that is in fact only sustainable by unsustainable subsidies, we mortgage our kids' future. The wind turbines offset virtually no CO2. But they do raise the price of electricity, create massive transmission infrastructure which costs the ratepayer a seprate fortune, they increase our nation al debt at a time we are going broke and they cost us jobs. Just look to the Europena experience and you will see we lose jobs for every "green job" created.

I can also tell you that if you knew even the first thing about the tourism industry in Maine, you would know that the 350 miles of ridgelines marked for turbines and their requisite mammoth transmission structure from Bangor to Kittery will hurt the tourism industry. Have you ever heard of something called "Quality of Place"?

Lil, maybe get a little background on this stuff before you spew.

Destroying our forests here in Maine causes great amounts of CO2 to be released

into the atmosphere. If the con artists have their way, 50 thousand acres will need

to be clearcut to support the turbines, access roads, substations, and high voltage transmission lines.

Tourism is Maine's bigest industry. Kiss that goodby if we "destroy the village in order to save the village."

Maybe those for Industrial wind can afford to see their light bills triple but most small businesses can't and most householders can't.

Also, remember this: Those promoting Industrial wind power are blocking cheap, renewable hydro power from Canada. Why? It will compete with their expensive, feckless, environmentally damaging plans to erect turbines on every rdigeline, hilltop and mountain top as far as the eye can see.

Follow the money.

you might be a NIMBY, if you love the silence bestowed you from living in Maine.

you might be a NIMBY, if you don't like higher electric costs.

you might be a NIMBY, if you are skeptical of men offering piles of cash.

Some people just can't understand this: "Every kilowatt hour of wind power replaces one from fossil fuels, making our air cleaner." So, let's wait and let our kids do it?

Unlike the doctor who seems to think we must plunge rapidly into placing wind turbines all over our mountains and thus saving the planent for our children, my belief is in our youth, who will realize there are better ideas to energy management through advanced technology while saving our precious areas of Maine. And if you think capturing wind is an advanced idea, perhaps think of Christopher Columbus and the days he spent cursing the wind when he didn't sail for lack of and watched the wind ravage his ships when there was too much.

Doctor, wind turbines are not going to save this earth for your children. As they rot away from the landscape, our children will ponder upon what a silly notion it was.

Here they come I can hear them now........ yep I knew they were close by I could hear their whinning from a mile away. It is worse than any noise a wind turbine could ever generate. Listen to it, NIMBY NIMBY NIMBY.