Editor:
I want to personally thank all those who have fought the fight since the beginning. Without the dedication of those people, against extreme odds, there would be no chance of stopping the degradation of rural Ontario, or any other rural area. Wind farms are all about power. Not electrical power – but the power of Govt. and Corporations over the population.
The wind industry is a typical example of what democracy, removed, looks like.
Never forget – Democracy is not a right. If you want to live in a democratic country you must demand and defend it.
The media as whole is closed to you and me. It has become a mere tool, used to push govt. and corporate agendas, with no regard for the public.
The time has come for every citizen to wake up and become a participant in their democracy.
You need to make demands on your govt. and the media. Change only comes from pressure.
It is time we all proved our worth as citizens and apply the pressure required. You, own your country.
It does not belong to the govt. or the corporations.
It belongs to you and your children. Take the opportunity to prove to yourself and your children that you intend to live in a true democracy.
What other choice do you really have. Roll up your democratic sleeves and get to work.
Write your govt. and demand changes. Even more important, write your local and national media outlets and tell them in no uncertain terms that you intend to boycott them until they start reporting the truth.
Every wind farm in Ontario has had negative affects on the people and their property.
NOW!
Canadian Free Press
The list of environmental costs imposed on wildlife and people are now being recognized
By Online Monday, July 28, 2008
By: Dr. Brian L. Horejsi, Dr. Barrie K. Gilbert, George Wuerthner
People are barking up the wrong tree by promoting, or succumbing to,
wind turbine construction regardless of where it is proposed and how
many there might be. Many North Americans are infected with tunnel
vision and erroneously appear to believe that turbine generated energy
is somehow linked to reversing the growth in and impact of Green House
Gas (GHG) emissions.
There exists NO evidence anywhere that Turbine energy is
substituting for or displacing fossil fuel dependence, nor is there any
evidence that it is in any material way slowing the rate of GHG
emission growth. Turbine energy is a non factor in the never ending
growth agenda of the fossil fuel industry, and it is not a factor in
the agenda of governments promoting growth in and dependence on oil and gas consumption. There can be no better example than North America of the failure of turbine energy to slow growth in anything.
People have been hoodwinked into promoting wind turbine energy as
some sort of Nirvana all while human population growth and per capita
energy consumption continue to spiral upward. Turbine energy generation
is fueling growth in human population and energy consumption and growth
in a false “economy”. It is NOT doing the opposite.
Matching the folly of the energy replacement misunderstanding is denial by governments and promoters of the ecological impacts and health effects of turbines; the ugly reality is that they are a serious addition to the industrialization of quiet rural landscapes that people have long valued for quality of life, retirement, and recreation.
The list of environmental costs imposed on wildlife and people are
now being recognized; they are far from meaningless, but they have been
trivialized by turbine promoters and politicians that have systematically tilted the deck sharply in the developers favor.
Environmental costs have been systematically ignored by a political and
regulatory system that has corrupted individual and societal freedom
and environmental integrity by relegating these values to some distant
offshoot of economic growth. These costs, and those who stand by them,
are treated with contempt; how dare they influence the decision to
grant some landowner a chance to make a buck by carving your backyard
and your space into fragments with giant chopping machines?
Wind turbines are an assault on human well being and act to degrade
the human “gestalt”. Promotion of wind turbine energy is a case of
serious misjudgment by those who fraudulently use green wash to promote
their commercial aspirations.
Buried deep within the human genome is an innate recognition and
suspicion of monsters – large objects – looming on the horizon. Wind
turbines are todays versions of a threatening monster, jammed down the
throats of neighbors and localities. 30% of the human cortex occupies
itself with processing visual information, far more than any other
sense, and nothing delivers a more intrusive and intense visual picture
than the tower and blades of wind turbines. Turbines erode freedom of
the human mind hour after hour, night after day, virtually forever,
like a cell phone ringing incessantly and yet no one is able to turn it
off. To many people this intrusion into their physical and physiological space is an insidious form of torment. The mental effect is analogous to the physical effects of a heavy smoker sitting next to you essentially for life!
We do not subscribe to the managerial / market approach to democracy
or conservation with its deeply entrenched bias against human values
such as an unadulterated horizon. This largely corporate view denigrates the value of freedom of the human spirit – the very pedestal upon which human dignity, character and strength are built.
In an honest and fair regulatory and political environment, local
citizens and communities would bury turbine projects long before they
get to the serious implementation stage. Once again, however, citizens
are being forced to try and employ the very tools that degrade our
quality of life and humiliate us as mere pawns of some corporate
created market economy. That being the case, it occurs to us that wind
turbines wearing eternally on the human psyche, constituting a “taking”
by corporate promoters and biased government collaborators; a taking
that damages the well being of all residents. We asked ourselves if
$1000 payment per person would compensate for the damages imposed on
the ever day life of hundreds and thousands of affected citizens? Not
even close. Perhaps then, $3000, or $8000? Would that kind of money
make up for the forced collapse of part of your quality of life, your
loss of right to space, loss of privacy, loss of political power, curbs
on your freedom, and the mental and physical costs imposed on you by
stress associated with constant angst, irritation and distraction? For
some, we suspect yes would be the answer. For others, like those who
have lost a child to negligent corporate behavior, been strangled
slowly by nicotine, or been poisoned by toxic emissions or effluent, no
amount of money can compensate for the deprivation and harm they have
and will suffer. Regardless of the compensatory damages you might place
on that part of your life lost because of turbine industrialization,
should you not be compensated for this taking?
The commercial private sector is forcing itself into your life, and
that constitutes a taking of your rights, benefits and well being. We
propose that each person impacted by a turbine receive, as a starting
point for negotiations, $3000 annually, to be paid by the developer for
the loss of private and citizen rights, a very large portion of which
includes peace and satisfaction, a critical part of your state of mind.
We all know that is a significant part of personal, social and democratic well being. The concept is simple; if the developer and some uncaring land owners want to destroy your rights and those of other citizens, inflicting on you suffering and mental distress, the good old “free” enterprise system developers and local governments love to hide behind, comes into play; they pay to destroy part of your life. There has to be pain and resistance in the system for those who knowingly exploit the public and individual vulnerability, a now institutionalized vulnerability which commercial and private sector interests worked hard to establish.
The recent proliferation of wind turbine farms is just one more case
of the serious aggression and destruction that reflects the continuing
expansion of an extremist private property and commercialism agenda.
This socially, legally and politically defective agenda and process is being exploited by corporations, some local residents, and local governments. Ladies and gentlemen, this is not freedom and it is not democracy; it is vandalism and oppression in the name of commercialism.
As citizens we have the right, and we say the obligation, and we must
marshal the courage, to reject wind turbine invasions as a corruption
of our well being that is cached “in our spirit rather than in our wallet”.
Dr. Brian L. Horejsi
Behavioral scientist and citizen advocate for democratic process
Box 84006, PO Market Mall
Calgary, Alberta, T3A 5C4
403-246-9328
And
Dr. Barrie K. Gilbert
Wildlife Ecologist and conservation activist
Box 252
Wolfe Island, Ontario KOH 2HO
613-385-2289
And
George Wuerthner,
Ecologist and writer.
POB 719, Richmond,
Vermont 05477
802-434-3948
28 July 2008
Canadian Truths 