THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIV, Issue # 11, January 18, 2012
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
CHARLES MANSION ENERGY:
It's Time to Apply Endangered Species, Wildlife,
& Economic Laws Fairly & Equitably
By Paul K. Driessen
WIND TURBINES & WIND ENERGY: THE FUTURE OF THIS EXPENSIVE, ENVIRONMENTALLY HARMFUL, & UNSUSTAINABLE ENERGY TECHNOLOGY -- THE
FOLLY OF WIND-BASED ENERGY POLICY -- THE HYPOCRITICAL & INEQUITABLE WAYS IN WHICH OUR WILDLIFE & ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS ARE TOO OFTEN
APPLIED
FULL STORY:
Forbes, January 16, 2012: “… gleaming white wind turbines generating carbon-free electricity carpet chaparral-covered ridges and march down into valleys
of Joshua trees.” This is “the future” of American energy – not “the oil rigs planted helter-skelter in [nearby] citrus groves,” nor the “smoggy San Joaquin Valley”
a few miles away.
The Forbes article’s poetic paean to Aeolian energy, nevertheless, voiced consternation that a 300-megawatt “green” turbine project might kill some of the
magnificent California condors that are just coming back from the edge of extinction – and the project might be cancelled as a result.
Indeed, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) has asked Kern County to “exercise extreme caution” in approving projects in the Tehapachi area, because of
potential threats to condors. The “conundrum will force some hard choices about the balance we are willing to strike between obtaining clean energy and
preserving wild things,” the article suggested. Hopefully, it concluded, new “avian radar units” will be able to detect condors and automatically shut down
turbines when one approaches.
All Americans hope condors will not be sliced and diced by giant Cuisinarts. But most of us are puzzled that so few “environmentalists” and FWS “caretakers”
express concern about the countless bald and golden eagles, hawks, falcons, vultures, ducks, geese, bats, and other rare, threatened, endangered, and common
flying creatures imperiled by turbine blades.
And many of us get downright angry at the selective, indeed hypocritical ways in which endangered species and other wildlife laws are applied – leaving wind
turbine operators free to exact their carnage, while harassing and punishing oil companies and citizens.
In 2011, following an intensive million-dollar, 45-day helicopter search for dead birds in North Dakota oil fields by FWS officials, U.S. Attorney Timothy Purdon
prosecuted seven oil and gas companies for inadvertently killing 28 mallard ducks, flycatchers, and other common birds that were found dead in or near uncovered
waste pits. Under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the companies and their executive officers faced fines of up to $15,000 per bird, plus six months in prison. (They
eventually agreed to plead guilty and pay $1,000 per bird.)
Also in 2011, an FWS agent charged an 11-year-old Virginia girl with illegally “taking” a baby woodpecker that the girl had rescued from a housecat, even though
she intended to release the bird after ensuring it was OK. The threatened $535 fine was finally dropped, after the FWS was deservedly ridiculed in the media.
The mere possession of an eagle feather by a non-Indian can result in fines and imprisonment, even if the feather came from a bird butchered by a wind turbine: up
to $100,000, a year in prison or both for a first offense. Poisoning or otherwise killing common bats that have nested in one’s attic can cost homeowners thousands
of dollars in fines.
Wind turbine companies, officers and employees, however, are immune from prosecution, fines or imprisonment, regardless of how many rare, threatened,
endangered, or migratory birds and bats they kill. In fact, FWS data show that wind turbines slaughter some 400,000 birds every year. If “helter-skelter” applies to
any energy source, it is wind turbines, reflecting their Charles Manson effect on birds.
The hypocritical Obama-Purdon-FWS policy certainly protects, promotes and advances an anti-hydrocarbon, catastrophic global warming agenda that is
increasingly at odds with environmental, scientific, economic, job-creation, and public opinion reality. It also safeguards wind turbines that survive solely because
of government mandates, taxpayer subsidies, and exemptions from laws that penalize and terrorize the rest of us.
It may be true that housecats and reflective windows kill more songbirds than turbines do. However, that oft-cited defense of wind energy Cuisinarts is irrelevant to
the birds and bats discussed here.
Even if avian radar and turbine shutdown systems do eventually work, and can actually and abruptly stop turbine blades before they butcher an approaching bird,
should they be limited to condors? Shouldn’t they be required for eagles and falcons – and for hawks, ducks, flycatchers, bats, and other protected species? Geese,
for example, to prevent a repeat of the December 7, 2011, massacre of numerous snow geese by wind turbines along upstate New York Route 190, as reported by a
motorist?
Why aren’t wind developers and permitting authorities required to consider the lost economic benefits of butchered birds and bats, which do so much to control
rats and insects that carry diseases and destroy crops? Shouldn’t that analysis be made mandatory, as more wind projects are proposed, thereby posing an
ever-increasing threat to numerous species – and even to the survival of some?
Of course, even condor protection alone could reduce affected turbine electricity output to 20 or even 10% of rated capacity, instead of their current 30% average.
Adding other protected species would drive nearly all actual wind turbine electricity output down below 5% – making the turbines virtually worthless, and driving
the exorbitant cost of wind energy even higher.
But why should wind turbines be above the law? In fact, why should we even worry about reducing their electricity output?
America’s environmentalists, legislators, judges, and bureaucrats have already made hundreds of millions of acres of resource-rich land off limits – and rendered
centuries of oil, gas, coal, uranium, geothermal, and other energy unavailable. The Environmental Protection Agency’s anti-coal zero-pollution rules, intense
opposition to the Keystone pipeline, and looming restrictions on hydraulic fracturing for natural gas are already further impairing electricity and other energy
availability and reliability.
This government-imposed energy deprivation is already driving families into energy poverty and sending more jobs overseas.
Put bluntly, wind energy is unsustainable. It kills unconscionable numbers of bats, raptors, and other birds. It requires billions in perpetual subsidies – and
billions more for (mostly) gas-fired backup generators. It impacts millions of acres of scenic, wildlife, and agricultural land – and depends on vast amounts of raw
materials, whose extraction and processing further impairs global land, air, and water quality. Its expensive, unreliable electricity kills two jobs for every one
supposedly created.
A far more rational public policy would cut out the costly, unreliable middleman. It would forget about wind turbines, simply build more gas, coal and nuclear
generators, to generate reliable, affordable, sustainable electricity – and apply the same laws fairly and equitably to all energy sources.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Political Economy -- Philosophies, Systems, & Public Policies:
Government, the Economy, & Economic Prosperity
Conservative columnist and political commentator and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death,
Paul K. Driessen is Senior Policy Advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), the Congress Of
Racial Equality (CORE), the Center For The Defense Of Free Enterprise (CDFE), and the Atlas Economic Research
Foundation. Driessen has served on the Staffs of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Department of Interior, as well as on that of
an energy trade association. He has often spoken and written on such topics as environmentalism, global climate change,
global warming alarmism, corporate social responsibility, and public policies relating to energy, the environment, and
economic development.
Driessen earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Geology and Field Ecology at Lawrence University, Appleton,
Wisconsin, and his Juris Doctor (JD) at the University of Denver College of Law. He received accreditation in Public
Relations from the Public Relations Society of America, New York, N.Y.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity