Aldo Leopold would be aghast at disruptive wind farms
The Cap Times, host.madison.com 15 February 2012
The Cap Times, host.madison.com 15 February 2012
In environmental studies courses I taught in my 31 years as a public educator, I introduced my students to the writings of the late Aldo Leopold, a Wisconsin environmental scientist, hailed as “the father of modern ecology.” Leopold promoted the need for America to develop a culture that emphasized land stewardship. To use his own words, “That land is a community, is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.”
Wisconsin’s push for industrial wind turbine systems is the antithesis of what Leopold believed. He would be aghast at the thousands of acres of rural Wisconsin ecosystems disrupted by the audible noise and shadow flicker that turbines generate. Growing evidence from Wisconsin wind facilities indicates significant human health problems related to low-frequency noise, infrasound, and electrical pollution, and unresolved issues of high bird and bat mortality. Numerous studies are available at www.betterplan.squarespace.com. Contact your legislators before March 15 to share your concerns.
Environmental organizations have turned a deaf ear or stand with the wind corporations in discrediting wind facility opponents as kooks or NIMBYs. I have communicated these problems to CEOs of the National Audubon Society, the Nature Conservancy, and the National Wildlife Federation, with no response. Why are they all silent? Why are environmentalists failing to do their homework? Is it feared that epidemiological and environmental impact studies will yield inconvenient truths about the downside of wind as the solution to energy and climate change dilemmas?
Carl Johnson
Greenleaf
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/02/15/aldo-leopold-would-be-aghast-at-disruptive-wind-farms/