The Post & Email by Paul Driessen 10/31/2024
Rural and coastal little guys delay and block massive ‘green’ energy projects Environmentalists insist they love “little guys.” At least in the abstract, until those folks get in the way, raise inconvenient questions, or try to block “renewable energy” projects intended to “save the planet” from “manmade climate cataclysms.”
Then the little folks learn the environmentalists are really working with (and for) Big Wind, Big Solar, Big Utilities, Big Finance, powerful politicians and crony bureaucrats – the Climate Industrial Complex. Stand in its way, and farm families, small rural communities and even Native American groups can face protracted, expensive battles. But they often emerge victorious.
Energy analyst and journalist Robert Bryce reports that these little guys have rejected or restricted 735 US wind and solar projects since 2015, including 58 solar and 35 wind proposals so far this year. Transmission line, grid-scale battery and other plans also face growing resistance.
Rural Americans don’t want these huge installations destroying traditional ways of life, hurting property values, raising electricity rates, wrecking vital croplands and habitats, ruining scenic vistas, killing birds, bats and other wildlife – and creating serious fire and toxic gas risks from lithium-ion electricity storage batteries.
They don’t want their countryside dotted with huge landfills, piled high with billions of tons of broken, storm-destroyed and obsolete solar panels, wind turbine blades and other renewables trash.
The number and scale of many proposed projects is daunting – and the Complex’s dream of “transitioning” the entire United States from fossil fuels to an all-electric energy, transportation and industrial system would require vastly more.
Before being scaled back in a failed effort to reduce local and state opposition, the Lava Ridge Wind Project would have installed 400 huge turbines on some 200,000 acres of federal land in Idaho. That’s 310 square miles; 5.5 times Washington, DC. Most of its output would go to California, which already imports nearly one-third of its electricity.
More:
https://www.thepostemail.com/2024/10/31/greens-detest-little-guys-who-get-in-their-way/
