California Construction Trucking Association (CCTA)

Who can’t recall that old RnR musical from 1963 with the same name where the rock singer travels to a small Ohio town to make his “farewell” television performance and kiss his biggest fan before he is drafted and sent to war? The metaphor here is about propaganda, and the losers and winners that will come out of the environmental war movement—and of course the real losers of the wind power scam: birds and us taxpayers.

I wrote in last month’s magazine about a recent day at the Capitol and hearing about a bill in a legislative committee that would require Meteorological Evaluation Towers, which are used for determining the best locations for commercial wind turbines, to be marked and clearly lit because of the danger to crop-dusters and other low-flying aircraft.

This bill was aggressively opposed by the wind-farm industry because of the costs of installing safety lighting, which I found disturbing.

Now I have read about an even more challenging problem. Nineteen energy developers in this country have petitioned for a permit that would allow them to place wind turbines (300 feet tall) and power transmission lines within a 200-mile wide corridor from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Unfortunately, this same strip of land is also home to and a migratory path for the whooping crane, whose population now is at 280 strong, up from just 16 in 1930. And while the whooping crane can live up to 20-plus years, their leading cause of death now is crashing into power lines.

Perhaps not a good mix with the many transmission lines which must accompany the wind turbine farms along this 1,200 mile route. And while we may feel all warm and fuzzy when we see these blades and turbines turning, so proud of ourselves for “going green” with renewable energy, the sad fact is that some of the very birds that had been declared “endangered” are now evidently considered “expendable.” And, as I have learned, wind energy is very expensive, loud and does next to nothing for our energy and economic future.

Unfortunately, it is not just the poor whooping crane that continues to get whacked, but also eagles – even golden eagles. It is estimated that 67 eagles were killed last year just in the Altamont Pass by wind turbines (an area between the Bay Area and Sacramento) plus thousands of other types of birds. This would certainly seem to be in conflict with the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act of 1940, which reads: “It is unlawful to ‘take’ and this includes to pursue, shoot, shoot at, poison, wound, kill, capture, trap, collect, molest or disturb…these types of birds.” See 16 U.S.C. 668c; 50 CFR 22.3.

In 1972, amendments were added to the Act that increased civil penalties for violating its provisions to a maximum fine of $5,000 or 1 year of imprisonment, with $10,000 or not more than 2 years in prison for a second conviction. Felony convictions carry a maximum fine of $250,000 or 2 years of imprisonment. The fine doubles for an organization. Rewards are provided for information leading to arrest and conviction for violation of the Act.

It seems to me that if we are to abide by this law as written, some of these wind-farms should be paying huge fines and perhaps their owners could even face jail time for the killing of these eagles. However, we know that won’t happen. Our environmental practices change with the wind (no pun intended) by whatever feel-good measures we decide to take. Just remember the most important rule of environmentalism: Humans are last in the list of importance.

This is all one more example of good intentions gone bad. May I remind you all of the spotted owl? The bird that enviros (with government agencies’ help) and the Endangered Species Act used to kill off 60% of the logging mills, and 90% of the wood harvesting on federal lands. Real unemployment in these areas from Washington to Northern California is now in excess of 20%. Sadly, I must report that I turned the other cheek like most of us when this was going on, although I did have some distant relatives who lost their jobs in sawmills at the time. This was another perfect example of “it doesn't affect me, so I’m not interested.” We all have to stop thinking like this.

It turns out that, despite all the naturalists’ and enviros’ lawsuits, all the government funding and regulation, and the thousands of lumber industry jobs that have been sacraficed to protect the “important” spotted owl, these poor birds now are once again being decimated by none other than another bird: the barred owl. Yes, the barred owls are killing the spotted owls. Now the endangered species folks are in a terrible quandary. It appears that the only solution is for the enviros to take up arms and head to the forests to “shoot” the barred owls! And of course they want to expand the forest habitat a few more million acres to boot. As if the present 6 million acres isn’t enough.

Robin Brown of the Department of U.S. Fish and Wildlife released the following message concerning the new plan to save this owl: “This fall, our agency will lay out a plan to eliminate barred owls from a handful of spotted owl territories to study whether the spotted owls rebound.” But there’s a catch as usual with these government agencies, as she went on to say, “One of the potential removal methods involves the on-site lethal removal of the barred owls.”

In scientific parlance, “on-site lethal removal” means shooting. Oh, by the way, the cost estimates for this final solution is only $127 million. I just can’t wait until the SPCA folks send out the troops to save the barred owls when all this goes down.

So you are probably like me, wondering what does scientific parlance really mean. It must be the same as sugarcoating or using only politically correct language. And doesn’t “on-site lethal removal” sound so much nicer than “going in and blasting the hell out of these owls and hoping the stupid, weak, and dysfunctional spotted owls get it all and succeeds!” I believe that Darwin referred to this all as natural selection, survival of the fittest. It now appears that the F&W department will be disrupting all of this natural occurring selection. Just more examples of why government and especially environmental portions of our government should be terminated.

Yes my friends, this is how they do things in the new age of green and protected species regulations and a wise government. If an oil company should have a spill which in turn should kill any birds, they will be fined hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars, but if a wind turbine does it…well, it’s for Gaia.

When the economic factors are considered for all this spotted owl BS, it’s likely that billions of dollars have been spent, thousands of jobs have been lost, and industries destroyed in order to save these owls whose time was number by nature anyway. I sadly predict the same end for the wind-farms that are all built on a foundation of lies and deception too.

I say all of this not because I am particularly fond of birds; in fact, I have never felt the same about them since 1963 when Alfred Hitchcock released his epic classic The Birds. What I am most opposed to is government waste, which we have all witnessed recently with our nation’s $15-trillion debt crisis. Wind power as we know it today is a tremendous waste of money and resources.

Just as I was writing this article, I received a comprehensive report by Kimball Rasmussan titled “A Rational Look at Renewable Energy,” and frankly it does not appear that there is anything rational about wind energy whatsoever. I must confess that deciphering scientific jargon is difficult if not impossible for me, but this report explained it all so well that even those with limited capabilities (such as I) can understand it.

So what did I learn?

I finally know that it takes 1,000 kilowatts to make a megawatt, but most importantly, I know that if the private sector believed in this new clean energy technology, it would not have to be funded by huge amounts of government subsidies. In my opinion, this is all unsustainable. Wind power does not and cannot replace power plants that run on fossil fuels (gas, oil and coal) and nuclear, because there must be back-up electricity when there is no wind. And that is another problem. Wind power is generated mostly at night, when peak demand for electricity is down, and it cannot be stored.

After a call to the Cal ISO (Independent Systems Operator) whose job it is to monitor and disperse electrical power throughout the state through the interconnected power lines, I was told that folks are “working night and day to develop batteries that can store wind power, but the technology is not there yet.” It’s kind of like putting the cart before the horse.

Then, wondering if things couldn’t get any worse, I read in this new report that subsidies for the wind sector are more than 200 times as great as those given to the oil and gas sector, on the basis of dollars per unit of energy produced. If those fat subsidies go away, then the U.S. wind sector will be stopped dead in its tracks. And for power consumers, that should be welcomed.

I leave you with the following quote from Robert Bryce, which appeared in Forbes Magazine on July 19, 2011:

“The wind energy business is the electric sector’s equivalent of the corn ethanol scam. It’s an over-subsidized industry that depends wholly on taxpayer dollars to remain solvent while providing an inferior product to consumers that does little, if anything, to reduce our need for hydrocarbons or cut carbon dioxide emissions.”

So bye bye birdie, hello subsidy. The energy consumers—us—get screwed again, just like the logging industry. If we have learned anything from the spotted owl and wind energy, it is that if government controls it, it virtually guarantees failure!