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[tom <tom AT honeychrome.com>]

The industrial wind development debate is one that has seriously  
damaged some communities near us, and there is much more to it than  
the easy to dismiss issue of NIMBYism.  How could anyone reasonably  
object to harnessing a 'clean,' renewable energy source like wind?   
Seems like a no-brainer... until you look into the details.  In my  
part of the country many of these proposed industrial-scale  
developments are a scam to grab generous subsidy money, with payouts  
formulated on calculations of 'potential' energy generation based on  
ideal (ie. nonexistent) conditions, the maximum output specs of the  
turbine and regional wind densities rather than site-specific ones.   
Situations exist where a developer may never produce any useable  
energy and will still see a profit through subsidy income.  Where I  
live the developers have targeted poor communities with struggling  
land-owners, with fast talking representatives and lawyers swooping  
in with promises of fast, easy money and clean power, but the fine  
print of the contracts 'externalizes' long-term access maintenance,  
accident liability, decommissioning, runoff management, etc. etc.  
onto local services.  Often the turbines being installed are older,  
discontinued models from Europe (ie. cheap).  And why, when a lease  
is signed on a 100, 200, whatever acre plot of land are turbines  
located close to neighbors' houses?  Not because the wind density is  
ideal there, but because it is nearest the road and the developer  
spends less on infrastructure and access.  And as for 'oil'  
companies- while oil may yet be the flagship product of BP,  
ExxonMobil, etc. etc., these corporations position themselves as  
'energy' companies and have their fingers in everything- including  
industrial wind development.  I'm not anti-wind- on a homestead  
scale, even a community scale with locally owned generation for local  
usage, surplus, if any, going to the grid at large, I think it makes  
great sense.  Eventually I'd like to have a small turbine at my  
place.  But large scale, destructive industrial developments built  
largely as either greenwashing PR stunts by a subsidiary of a 'dirty'  
energy company or as a 'financially innovative' means of funneling  
tax money to corporate coffers via subsidies with nothing real to  
show for it... no thanks.

Wind is not the answer.  Solar isn't the answer.  Nuclear isn't the  
answer, biofuels aren't, hydrogen isn't.  Combined, these sources of  
energy don't come close to replacing the bang-for-buck (otherwise  
known as EROEI) oil has provided and we've become accustomed to.   
Nothing does, and the idea that something will come along, some nerdy  
genius will come up with something clever or that it is all just a  
matter of tinkering with 'efficiency' and business as usual can  
continue is a desperate fantasy.  The odds are far, far more likely  
that nothing to replace oil will be found- not as a single source of  
energy or any combination of sources.  Less- less of everything is  
the only answer that adds up, and it will be imposed upon us whether  
we want it or not.  There is no free lunch when it comes to energy.   
Oil was the planet's energy savings account, accrued over a couple  
billion years, and we've been spending out of it like there is no  
tomorrow, and now maybe there won't be.