Hot air
The Orleans Record, orleanscountyrecord.com 10 January 2012
Elizabeth Miller, Vermont Department of Public Service commissioner, said recently that when the Lowell wind project is finished, Vermont won’t see or need any more big wind projects.
Her comments would be welcome, if they were credible. They’re neither.
The state and federal governments have worked hard to incent industrial wind projects. The eco-nuts, led by Pete Shumlin and Barack Obama, let the wind monkey out of the cage by promising huge subsidies and tax credits. There’s no getting him back now.
Within days of Miller’s whimsy, a utility company in Castleton applied for a permit to build a wind farm, even larger than Lowell’s. There are at least half a dozen more in the planning or early permit application stage – two of which happen to be local, in Derby and Brighton.
So why the ludicrous PR campaign? For one thing Miller’s boss is a calculating politician. He’s a serious hypocrite, but he’s quite gifted as far plotting politicians go. So as he drives to eco-rallies (in a pair of taxpayer funded Ford Expeditions which get around 13 miles to the gallon) to espouse the view that “climate change is the most important priority we face as human beings,” he probably is noticing a few seriously ticked off Vermonters. These would include: most members of the business community, un-enthralled to be paying higher energy bills for no good reason; anyone who has seen the raped and pillaged Sheffield or Lowell ridgelines for no good reason; the majority of Vermonters who can’t make any sense of his schizophrenic policy on nuclear energy (that is to say, good if it brings no economic benefit to the state, bad if it does… don’t worry, it doesn’t make sense to us either); people generally offended by cronyism.
Clearly, Ms Miller is in thrall to Gov. Shumlin’s oratorical wind power. We certainly aren’t.
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/01/10/hot-air/