I watched Polarbear's video and I suggest everyone else does.
The problem isn't wind in and of itself, it's the corporate greed hitting poor communities and individuals with promises of big money, then replacing the promises with a terrible, unworkable reality.
Who the **** needs 170 450-foot towers in their town? As the video points out, the damn things cost $3million each. But what if the residents could get grants and tax credits to put up small, individual home-sized windmills? What if the vertical windmills coud be developed?
A lot of people are very enthusiastic about using natural gas. Obviously there's no drilling near them. In the commercials they say that they go UNDER water wells. Bullshit. They go THROUGH them. The "protection" they offer is two different diameter steel pipes with concrete poured between them. Steel oxidizes. Concrete shatters in earthquakes. Earthquakes happen when the "water" shoots through. The "water" is millions and millions of gallons of what should be drinking water diverted to each well, where chemicals like toluene are added.
The same thing that happened with the wind turbines happened with the fracking, big oil and gas companies came into small, poor towns and offered up chump change for a project that will go off-peak within 3 years of production startup. The streets get ripped up with heavy equipment coming in, the water supply gets diverted to the drilling company, the earthquakes start, the pipes break, the aquifers get destroyed, and expensive houses get knocked off their foundations.
I already outlined coal.
Why do multinational corporations get to be the ones dictating what gets done? Why do we have no choice?
What can we do to stop the greedy multinationals from exploiting a good idea and turning to into a nightmare?
What will your choice of elected official do?
Thanks for helping out "Grandma". The $3 Million that`s only the cost to install one of these and does not include the actual price of the entire wind mill, + generator + the power lines +operating costs. The really outrageous part is the finance mechanism which has been as usual, (!!) custom tailored by Goldman Sachs. Again G.S. has positioned itself to be (
not quite yet, but almost !!!) the sole conduit for every $ for that highly lucrative business...not just in the U.S. but also in Europe. It works almost the same as the housing derivative swindle which landed the U.S. in the almost fatal financial crisis which to this date still lingers. Each and every wind mill farm can be and is completely "written off" within 4 Years and the tax breaks that Goldman Sachs and the participating hedge funds then get from the U.S. or European Government exceed by far the amount of money that was put up by "private investors"...and in the end, as usual the tax payer gets to foot the entire bill. Germans found out...my friend Stephan who sent me that nice birthday greeting video where he drives his vintage Mustang explained that to me about 5 years ago..and he made a fortune as such an investor...thank God, since then his conscience got the better of him and he + most of my (rich) neighbors who invested their $$ with him are "out".
Now he helps finance less well to do people who can`t afford the same expensive solar setups as You can see in my old neighborhood to get their own and does so at the same "LIBOR" %interest rates that only Governments pay when they borrow money.
In Canada we have besides our Federal (now "right wing") Government "Provincial" Governments , same as Yours, only we call our provincial leaders "Premiers" . Ontario was once thee richest Province in Canada and after a few terms of left wing Liberals, (same as Your democrats) it has the biggest debt of all our provinces.... The Premier Brian Mc. Guinty has done exactly what Angela Merkel did in Germany to foist these wind farms on Germans in exactly the same way what rail-roaded Meredith NY.
Finally...only just last week it became public to what extent he and his Cabinet Ministers were involved and how far their conflict of interest extended into the Provincial Government bureaucracy regarding these wind mill farms in Ontario.
He resigned in short order citing "personal, health and family" reasons,...well You know how spin doctors work.
I was one of these who uncorked a bottle of champagne when the United States proved it`s haters wrong and elected a black President...but I fear that he is in the same conflict of interest as our ex- Ontario Premier and as the ex- town supervisors of Meredith NY...not because he is a deliberate crook, but a rather naive, well meaning human being as the people in Meredith who signed these contracts were....and now are caught and trapped. About Your views on American coal,...there is nothing stopping Americans to use it the same way we are in Canada. You would be surprised how clean our coal industry is since over a decade and a half. The "fracking" I totally agree and if Obama would not stop every pipeline that comes from Canada + the new ones, not just the Keystone for oil, but also the additional ones which can bring the entire U.S. need for natural gas from Nunavut and the NWT then there would be no need for fracking.
But big $ ("high") finance, like the Rockefellers etc have almost from the beginning infiltrated each & every "Global warming" activist group and till very recently with impunity violated every foreign lobby group law we have in Canada and You guys have as well in the U.S.:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFqIS8hDV0o&list=UUvj7dbOY14kt_MFIR1Y1iwA&index=29&feature=plcp]Northern pipelines.wmv - YouTube[/ame]
As it stands the Chinese thought they can be the laughing 3rd party and were trying to outright buy some of our Oil and Natural Gas Companies.
But a huge public outcry stopped that dead in it`s tracks. Canadians have no objections if American Companies come in here as the Chinese were trying to do, but why should You guys have to come to (neighboring) Canada to get Natural Gas & Oil with tankers, like the Chinese...??...Obama made it so by blocking the pipeline projects...!!!...And in Canada we know full well why he is doing it..!
