Discuss: Hell Yeah, We Want Windmills

Hallelujah. Loretta Lynn was “Proud to be a Coal-Miner’s Daughter,” not because of the coal company, but because of the determination to make something good with what you’ve got. West Virginia is standing up again.

I wonder Mr. Brown, if you could provide me with some information on the studies you referenced about sustainable foretsty initiatives?

Some books:
Ecoforestry: the Art and Science of Sustainable Forestry; Ed Alan Drengson and Duncan Taylor; New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC, 1997.
The Redesigned Forest; Chris Maser; Stoddart Publishing, Toronto, 1990.
Touch Wood: BC Forests at the Crossroads; Ed Ken Drushka, Bob Nixon and Ray Travers; Harbour Publishing, Madeira Park, BC, 1993.

Also: a great survey of global timber markets and trends in same. Published in 1995, but many of the forecasts are coming true.
Logging The Globe; M. Patricia Marchak; McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal, 1995.

And a search for “Sustainable Forest Management” yields millions of results…

But closer to the topic at hand:
It seems ridiculous to me that the coal companies are not restoring the mountains as they go: piling the till behind them in at least hillocks, throwing the soil and organic matter over their shoulders, so to speak, and restoring high value forests with hardwood/softwood/shrub mixes. This would at least slow runoff, mitigating floods, and provide jobs for the future in logging and milling high value lumber.

But that would… er… cost money and time. And that, as we have seen from the actions of the companies involved, would cut into… er… profits.

And it takes it for granted that 1) mountain top removals is necessary, and 2) that we can continue to burn coal, both iffy propositions for lots of reasons.

Cheers.

I find it very strange that environmentalists who quote Wendell Berry endorse industrial wind turbine developments.  Support for big wind is like a religious belief on the part of environmentalists and it is disturbing that people who pride themselves on their thoughtfulness could be so snookered.  Large-scale wind turbines are economically inefficient and our taxes subsidize them. They are just another get-rich-quick scheme for developers, and will NOT lead to the decomissioning of any coal plants. It’s just a fact. Only people who have not lived near a turbine development could see them as a “green” solution.  For an articulate and compelling perspective, please see:  Chris Bolgiano’s Open Letter To President Obama http://www.saveouralleghenyridges.org/component/content/article/39-the-truth-about-industrial-wind/62-chris-bolgianos-open-letter-to-president-obama
 
Solutions to solve the energy crisis that do not destroy our natural world:  1. energy conservation 2. converting conventional agriculture to organic and 3. mini grids.  Here is an article on minigrids: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/137/beyond-the-grid.html

To support wind turbines is like saying, “I love the American profligate way of life and I will do anything to see it continue.”  Isn’t it time we stop finding new ways to rape the earth to run people’s airconditioners, and instead change lifestyles?

To echo some of the above comments, habitat devastation, on all levels, is sustained by underlying socioeconomics.  We, as a nation and a global society, will continue to invent new ways to consume power – at a breathtaking pace.  Once all of the plains and mountaintops are covered with wind turbines and all of the deserts are covered with solar panels: what will we do?  We must consider a future in which we are entirely surrounded by energy extraction devices.  Since behavioral changes seem unlikely, it appears that the most likely path to success lies in new a technological paradigm (high temp superconductors, point of use generation…) that can only come with a huge investment in research.

I do not think that Erik Reece is merely “quoting” Wendell Berry here. The two know each other, and the former’s work is deeply influenced by the latter—which is to say that I’m sure Mr. Reece understands the complexities involved in endorsing industrial wind turbine developments while at the same time referencing Mr. Berry in such an endorsement. One might as well criticize him for driving a pickup truck and quoting Berry, or allowing his work to be published on the Internet and quoting Berry. And one would do just as well to denounce Wendell Berry for using a weed whacker from time to time, while at the same time writing essays about the goodness of scythes. This is something we are all tangled in.

Clearly—from this essay and his other writings—Mr. Reece does not think, or suggest, that wind turbines are The Answer that most everyone seems to be demanding. They may not even be A Temporary Solution. But they at least seem favorable to having mountaintops blown up, and may, in bringing attention to the matter, lead the way to better and more lasting answers after all. Hell yeah.

Is anyone reading and/or writing about this article doing it without electricity?  Modern American life without coal is hypocrisy.  For better or worse, American life as we know it would come to a hault if the coal stopped burning.  Everyone loves electricity until they see a coal mine.  Just like everyone loves meat until they see a stockyard.  Ignorance is bliss.

I think Leo Tolstoy gave as good an answer as has been given to similar hypocrisy charges some time ago: “‘What about you, Lev Nikolayevich, you preach very well, but do you carry out what you preach?’ This is the most natural of questions and one that is always asked of me; it is usually asked victoriously, as though it were a way of stopping my mouth. ‘You preach, but how do you live.’ And I answer that I do not preach, that I am not able to preach, although I passionately wish to. I can preach only through my actions, and my actions are vile… And I answer that I am guilty, and vile, and worthy of contempt for my failure to carry them out…

“Attack me, I do this myself, but attack me rather than the path I follow and which I point out to anyone who asks me where I think it lies. If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side? If it is not the right way, then show me another way; but if I stagger and lose the way, you must help me, you must keep me on the true path, just as I am ready to support you. Do not mislead me, do not be glad that I have got lost, do not shout out joyfully ‘Look at him! He said he was going home, but there he is crawling into a bog!’ No, do not gloat, but give me your help and support.”*

Thoreau likened hypocrisy to “chaff which I find it difficult to separate from my wheat.” Not only difficult, but probably impossible, I’d say.

Or perhaps it is that Thoreau and Tolstoy and all of us concerned with the state of things have greatly misunderstood the nature of hypocrisy. Is it hypocritical to love mountains and at once rely on the forces responsible for blowing them up? Maybe. But then, hypocrisy is the practice of finding of all sorts of faults in others while supposing oneself to be pure. I understand, as many other participants in the conversation on mountaintop removal understand, the degree to which I contribute to the sustenance of things I hate. It deeply troubles me. And I do not think that it is hypocrisy, just as I do not think that Tolstoy, Thoreau, Erik Reece, or any of these online commentators are awash in hypocrisy.

Call it paradox. Call it complexity. Or, as Mr. Reece recently set me to thinking, call it common ground.

(*From one of Leo Tolstoy’s personal letters, as quoted by Philip Yancey in Soul Survivor: How Thirteen Unlikely Mentors Helped My Faith Survive the Church)