Prove that wind power will reduce greenhouse gases
The News (New Glasgow), www.ngnews.ca 20 August 2010
The News (New Glasgow), www.ngnews.ca 20 August 2010
The only reason that Nova Scotia should be rushing into the construction of any industrial wind power project is to reduce the burning of fossil fuels that create greenhouse gases.
While industrial wind power plants have political appeal and government support in Nova Scotia, after two decades of extensive, industrial wind turbine deployment around the world, no government nor any wind industry proponent has provided any actual operational data or independent, scientific proof that wind power will reduce greenhouse gases.
We currently have a double standard in Nova Scotia. At the recent Utility & Review Board hearing on the proposed NewPage Port Hawkesbury biomass project, stakeholders successfully argued that the ruling be put on hold until “a full and proper comparison” of biomass is made to “available alternatives.”
Yet no “full and proper comparison” has been made in the case of industrial wind power plants, and no critical thinking has been applied to industrial wind power by the government of Nova Scotia. Since government, businessmen and profiteers are proposing that wind power is a partial solution to global warming, then they should be required to prove wind power’s efficacy before we accept it as a legitimate solution.
Charles Cirtwill, president of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, responded to the recent “drop of millions in offshore [gas] revenue” by stating, “These are the kind of artificial crises that we create for ourselves when government goes around picking winners and losers and saying things like: ‘Renewables are going to be the saviour of Nova Scotia.’ It’s unrealistic, it’s unnecessary, and it’s not how a real economy functions.”
We should not be moving forward on any wind project until a thorough and critical examination of all the facts is undertaken. Otherwise, we may be sacrificing the unique and irreplaceable landscape of Nova Scotia along with any possibility of an economic future for rural Nova Scotian’s based on that landscape.
Once the environmental damage has been done, it’s gone for good, and we will not be able to recover what we have lost.
Susan Overmyer
Bailey’s Brook
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2010/08/24/prove-that-wind-power-will-reduce-greenhouse-gases/