The American Spectator

TAS Live

A Civil War Between the Greens

By Tom Bethell on 6.16.05 @ 12:06AM

This article appears in the June issue of The American Spectator. To subscribe, click here.

"IN RECENT YEARS WIND POWER has become a national fad," Howard Hayden writes in his new edition of The Solar Fraud: Why Solar Energy Won't Run the World. (The energy from wind usually comes under the rubric of solar.) Wind power doesn't pollute, doesn't contribute to global warming, doesn't quit, doesn't cost, doesn't run out, and so on. In short, it's virtuous.

So I was interested to see that the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group in San Francisco, recently sued a number of wind power companies in California. If you have ever flown to San Francisco, you may have seen the target of the lawsuit. In the East Bay, south of Oakland, you will see rows of wind turbines perched on bare, usually brown hills. The area is known as Altamont Pass.

The first paragraph of the lawsuit is amazing:

This is a complaint to recover restitution from defendants for their past wanton killing of many thousands of protected birds, including thousands of raptors such as Golden Eagles, Red-Tailed Hawks, American Kestrels, falcons and owls. These killings are in flagrant violation of the criminal prohibitions of numerous provisions of the California Fish and Game code, the federal Bald Eagle and Golden Eagle Protection Act, and the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Defendants have killed these magnificent raptors and other birds as a regular and continuing part of the process of generating electricity using thousands of small, obsolete wind turbine generators owned and/or operated by the defendants or entities they control at Altamont Pass in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, California.

Cited in the suit are private corporations with names like Windworks Inc., Altamont Winds, Pacific Winds, and so on. Over 5,000 wind turbines are operating in the Altamont Pass, and, according to the complaint, "they have killed tens of thousands of birds, including between 17,000 and 26,000 raptors -- more than a thousand Golden Eagles, thousands of hawks, and thousands of other raptors."

More than a thousand Golden Eagles! Thousands of hawks! Remember what happened in Manhattan when that cruel co-op removed the nest of just one hawk, Pale Male? And these magnificent birds in California are being killed in the thousands, by private, profit-seeking corporations who take the electricity and sell it to public utilities! Why aren't the guilty parties in San Quentin already?

The suit includes the following warning: "The thousands of eagles, hawks, falcons, owls and other birds killed by defendants are owned in common by the citizens of California. Defendants have never been granted any permit, license or other authorization to kill these birds by any state or federal agency, nor do state or federal law provide for the possibility of such a permit."

SO HERE WE HAVE A SALVO FIRED in a little noted "green" civil war -- a conflict between groups whom one imagined were allies: environmentalists and the lovers of "renewable" sources of energy. Normally counted as renewable are solar, wind, "biomass" (firewood, for you and me), and hydropower. (Well, we already knew the enviros hate hydroelectricity, which involves damming rivers, flooding scenic areas, and obstructing the passage of salmon.)

Howard Hayden puts out a newsletter called the Energy Advocate, and he has been predicting for decades that environmentalists will prove to be the fiercest opponents of renewable energy. The lawsuit is a straw in that wind.

No one seems quite sure why these birds fly into the wind turbines, incidentally. We do know that eagles and other raptors have terrific eyesight. Wouldn't last long if they didn't. Hayden says that the seemingly slow rotation rate of the turbine blades is deceptive.

The tip speed of a wind turbine is approximately six times the wind speed -- 90 mph in a 15-mph wind -- independent of the diameter of the wind turbine. What looks like a big fan making lazy circles in the sky (because of its low rpm) is actually three blades moving at high speed. So raptors see a blade move across their field of view and then disappear. They fly into the void only to be clobbered if they don't pass through the 6-to-10 foot gap by the time the next blade comes by. It gives new meaning to getting whacked.

The suit blames the "obsolete, first generation machines," installed at Altamont Pass between ten and 20 years ago. In contrast, the latest wind turbines have blades much higher off the ground and they also generate more electricity. They are also considered less deadly to birds "on a per kilowatt basis." A single modern turbine can replace 20 or more of the older ones, the suit claims.

So now they are building wind turbines the size of the Statue of Liberty. There's a big project underway five miles off Cape Cod, in the hallowed waters of Nantucket Sound. One hundred thirty turbines (over 400 feet high) will in theory be able to supply 75 percent of Cape Cod's electricity. But the Kennedy family worries the turbines twirling away on the horizon will spoil the view from Hyannis. And Robert Kennedy, Jr. is against the whole new-fangled idea. He imagines that visitors want to see "what the Pilgrims saw when they landed on Plymouth Rock."

But Walter Cronkite, who was initially opposed, has changed his mind, and now thinks that Nantucket Sound "is a waste area, really." It's so shallow that "nobody would sail through it," he says. The early opposition, his own included, was "almost hysterical." (Why did we ever trust this man?)

The Cape Wind Project is not yet under construction but my guess is that its supporters will prevail. My further guess is that maintenance will turn out to be a bigger headache than anticipated and that ever-increasing subsidies will be needed to keep the electricity coming.

I WAS CONTEMPLATING THE THREAT to raptors posed by those old, too-small Altamont-type turbines when I read this Washington Post headline: "Researchers Alarmed by Bat Deaths From Wind Turbines."

Now bats. Aren't they supposed to have pretty good sonar? This was in Appalachia, where giant turbines the size of huge construction cranes rise 350 feet above the West Virginia mountains -- well above the tree canopy. Researchers are said to be "baffled," "uncertain whether bats are attracted to the spinning blades or if their sonar, which allows them to find food and avoid trees and other objects, fails to detect the turbines." Many thousands of dead bats have been found, "some with battered wings and bloodied faces."

The deaths "appear to violate no federal laws," says the man from U.S. Fish and Wildlife, unreassuringly. We do know that bats perform a useful service, gobbling up mosquitoes and other insects. And waiting in the wings there's a group called Bat Conservation International, in Austin, Texas. Its leader is already talking about "unsustainable kill rates," so I'm sure we'll be hearing more from them.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Business, Environment, Global Warming, Books, Law, Energy, Oil