When we look at the relentless march of wind turbines we are reminded of H.G. Wells’ iconic 1898 scifi novel War of the Worlds in which the Earth is invaded by vastly smarter and more advanced Martians whose tripod weapons stride through the landscape destroying all obstacles mercilessly with the futuristic energy they create. Others evidently find wind turbines a pleasing alternative to boring old trees, clouds, fields and all that rubbish. But even some of those folks find solar farms a bit unnatural, invasive and generally ghastly. As Canary Media reports, Vermont “needs more clean, cheap power, but Lowell residents – including many who supported a nearby wind farm – tell Austyn Gaffney that the proposed solar array will destroy an invaluable community space. Similar debates are playing out across Vermont, which must balance decarbonization ambitions with concerns about preserving its rural character.” Unless of course you don’t think filling green spaces with industrial products is “decarbonization” or that getting rid of plant food will help anyone with anything. Or that it’s cheap. Or clean. But apart from that, a real dilemma.
The phenomenon of resistance to wind and solar has a tendency to baffle advocates who have long since given up examining their premises in favour of shouting their conclusions. Thus the piece in question takes as a given the desirability of decarbonisation:
“Vermont aims to wean off fossil fuels faster than most of America – but large-scale solar projects are facing resistance from locals across the rural state.”
Wean. As in grow up and stop burning gas and start inhaling wind. A telling metaphor.
As it’s also telling that they can’t really process the contradiction right before their eyes. The email subject line was “Vermont’s surprising solar struggle” but why is it surprising? After all, as they say:
“Doug Manning built his three-story home for the views. Mountain peaks ring the 800-person town of Lowell, and just beyond his back porch stretches a hayfield that the community uses as a kind of public square. The 44-acre open space hosts carnivals, sledders, and snowmobilers in the winter, and hikers and firework displays in the summer. Lowell’s only school and its town clerk’s office sit across the street. Now, that parcel could undergo a transformation, from rolling pasture to nearly 5 megawatts of solar panels.”
Yuck. While we’re on the subject of scifi, have they not seen the cult classic Bruce Dern film Silent Running where he tries to preserve the last plants on or at least from Earth? Or Soylent Green where the farmland has been used up and… but no plot spoilers. Watch it if you haven’t, and contemplate the monstrosity of a future where everything is paved. It’s hideous to contemplate, literally and figuratively.
At this point someone might say yes, well, solar is pretty land-hungry. But as we pointed out last week, h/t the Heartland Institute, a Harvard study found that while it takes 60 square miles of solar panels to replace one conventional power plant, it takes over five times that horrifying amount if you’re going with those Martian three-headed wind turbines. So it would take something like a third of the entire area of the United States to power its existing economy with wind. To say nothing of the growing appetite of data centres. Not even the Martians were planning to do that much damage, at least to nature. So it’s weird to find environmentalists trying.
There is a kind of war of the mental worlds going on here, between those who genuinely love nature and understand tradeoffs and those who love it in the abstract while seeking to destroy it to save it.
P.S. In 1938 Orson Wells did a notorious radio broadcast that portrayed the Martian invasion as happening then in New Jersey and somehow caused widespread panic for which he was obliged to apologize. Though honestly we say that people who fell for what wasn’t even a hoax but a Hallowe’en episode of The Mercury Theatre on the Air fiction program had only themselves to blame. The invasion of the countryside is real, though.
It's ironic that the worst threat to the environment these days is often the so-called environMENTALists!And like Orson Wells almost a hundred years ago,they've fooled a lot of folks.These people need to be stopped.