Instead of turbinizing the Green Mountains
Written by Paul F. Noel | www.burlingtonfreepress.com 30 July 2012
Written by Paul F. Noel | www.burlingtonfreepress.com 30 July 2012
There’s trouble blowing in the wind these days. Just ask the bull moose that used to call home the high ridge tops of Lowell, Vermont.
The emergence of wind turbines sprouting up in the Kingdom has spawned a lot of controversy and opinion on both sides.
Alas “green energy” is never free and often shows true colors other than green.
To put it succinctly, scattering wind turbines across the wildest parts of Vermont makes as much sense as growing corn down the middle of Church Street.
It is impossible to overstate the impact the turbines have on the ecology, wildlife, and esthetics of the region. Some find them visually pleasing. I actually would find green corn stalks much easier to look at than many other sights I have witnessed on Church Street. It’s a big world out there.
The turbines permanently disrupt important high ridge habitat that species such as bear, moose, and bobcat heavily depend upon along with fragmenting important wildlife travel corridors. And many of us human species value and indeed crave leaving the last roadless, wild areas of Vermont intact. Oh, I’m for wind energy done right. And for me that means laying a few hundred of them down in an area where the environmental, sociological, and scenery impacts are minimized, not maximized.
So next time you are sitting outside enjoying a latte or red wine at a streetside cafe and a jack hammer is fired up five feet away, don’t be alarmed.
We’re putting in some corn.
Welcome to the greening of Vermont.
Paul D. Noel lives in Underhill.
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/07/30/instead-of-turbinizing-the-green-mountains/