U.S. hopes for offshore wind and the silly nimby challenge
Wired.com has a story today talking about two of the first major offshore wind power projects in the United States and the challenges they face from the usual crew of SUV-driving environmentalists — including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who want everything as long as it’s not in their backyard. It’s funny, this group usually cites the danger to birds and marine habitat — which studies have shown is minimal. Posing as environmentalists, what they really don’t like is the aesthetics of wind turbines. To be fair, many environmental groups support these projects because they realize the alternatives — nuclear, coal, and even natural gas — are much worse and that it’s silly to argue about a subjective thing like aesthetics when you’ve got issues like climate change and global warming to deal with.
Again, the R.F. Kennedy Jr. clan would rather talk about the small local impact on birds rather than tackle the larger impact that global warming is having on wildlife and marine life everywhere on the planet. The hypocrisy is amazing. David Suzuki articulated his frustration with these people in a magazine article back in April. See this earlier post.
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca