Broken Like the Wind

I received a press release this morning from Wind Watch, a group dedicated to opposing the menace of the wind. With windchill-adjusted temperatures in the single digits last week, I can see where they’re coming from. In any case, they’re reporting on yet another inconvenient truth related to climate change: whatever the problem might be, wind power is not the answer.

Wind power will not help in the fight against global warming, says National Wind Watch, a coalition of individuals and grass-roots groups from around the country. Although many environmentalists look favorably towards large-scale wind power, it has proven to be ineffective and counterproductive.

Wind generated only 0.36 percent of the total electricity produced in the U.S. in 2005, according to the 2007 “Annual Energy Outlook” from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. They project that wind’s share will be only 0.89 percent in 2030. A determined push could increase that number, but with many undesirable consequences for the environment, wildlife, and human health — as documented on the National Wind Watch web site: www.wind-watch.org.

“Even just five percent by 2030 would require 160,000 megawatts of wind, almost ten million acres — most of it rural and wild — turned over to 400-foot-high machines and their motion, noise, and lights,” says Lloyd Crawford, a director of National Wind Watch. “That’s not a green solution, but a huge disaster any way you look at it.”

I’m sure Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. would approve.