Wind Energy & the Environment
Wind energy works, is increasingly cost-effective, has a net positive environmental impact, and is compatible with most existing land uses. The links below touch on the topic of wind’s environmental benefits and impacts.
Wind Mortality Statistics Needs Updates
By
Paul Gipe
Note that the article below is out of date. See the most current database for the number of fatal accidents in the wind industry. Below is a summary table from the spreadsheet. Note that there are four other tabs not reproduced here.
Damian Carrington: Why there’s only one honest objection to wind farms
By
The daft claim that wind subsidies have driven 50,000 people into fuel poverty exemplifies the dishonesty of most objections . . .
The Independent: Wind farms ‘have major economic benefit’
By
Onshore wind farms, recently under attack from leading conservationists for damaging the countryside, can bring significant economic benefits locally and nationally, as well as contributing to the fight against climate change, a new study claims. . .
Britain’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds Plans Large Wind Turbine
By
Paul Gipe
Britian’s principal bird-protection society has announced plans to install a large wind turbine. The move may be unique in the English-speaking world where anti-wind lobbyists have argued that wind turbines are bird-dicing mega-machines and bird lovers oppose the use of wind energy. . .
Guardian: Conservative thinktanks step up attacks against clean energy
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A confidential strategy memo seen by the Guardian advises using “subversion” to build a national movement of wind farm protesters. The strategy proposal was prepared by a fellow of the American Tradition Institute (ATI) – although the thinktank has formally disavowed the project. The proposal was discussed at a meeting of self-styled ‘wind warriors’ from across the country in Washington DC last February. “These documents show for the first time that local Nimby anti-wind groups are co-ordinating and working with national fossil-fuel funded advocacy groups to wreck the wind industry,” said Gabe Elsner, a co-director of the Checks and Balances, the accountability group which unearthed the proposal and other documents. Among its main recommendations, the proposal calls for a national PR campaign aimed at causing “subversion in message of industry so that it effectively because so bad that no one wants to admit in public they are for it.”. .
