Global warming is occurring and human activity is contributing to the warming. This warming trend is not a catastrophic event as political rhetoric would have you believe, but we should develop the most promising technologies to reduce these emissions while simultaneously creating new business opportunities. [“Renewable-energy program growing greener for PUD,” Local News, Jan. 24].
Commercial wind-power generation is neither an effective greenhouse gas mitigation technology nor a significant energy producer. Wind power has appropriate uses, but as a base load generation source, it fails dismally.
With the passage of I-937 mandating the use of wind power, taxpayer funded corporate welfare incentives, and Gov. Christine Gregoire’s executive order to reduce Washington state’s greenhouse gas emissions; the scenic areas in our state will come under increasing pressure to be developed. As the best judges of the public interest, local land use permitting authorities assure that what is left of our rural areas will be preserved. Since there is no public emergency, local land use decisions should not be pre-empted by any State or Federal authority under the guise of “saving the planet.”
Future generations will not forgive us for allowing the wholesale industrialization of our unique Washington landscapes.
— Mike Robertson, Cle Elum
17 February 2007
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2007/02/17/be-kind-to-the-environment/