Globe and Mail Article: Wind Power

From Globe and Mail article The answer's blowing in the wind, but not all of us want to hear it
Roy MacGregor
Monday, Jun. 08, 2009 12:00AM EDT


"Michael Lansbury is just one of many cottagers in the Upper Ottawa Valley attempting to block a wind farm that could mean as many as 60 of the giant windmills going up in the heart of what could be described as a Group-of-Seven postcard.

Mr. Lansbury at first didn't like the idea of going down to the dock with a morning coffee and having to stare at a horizon that would look more like a bad science-fiction set than dawn slipping over the high hills of the Canadian Shield.

That is undeniably a Not-In-My-Back-Yard response and Mr. Lansbury concedes the point easily, saying he is "motivated by selfishness to the extent that I don't want the countryside ruined."

But he also considers himself an environmentalist, living simply on the lake, believing in solar panels and even personal windmills - but not these behemoths."


Personally, I believe in getting away from coal fired power plants, and nuclear plants, and I am also in favour of diversifying our energy sources with some green non-polluting energy.

But there is a campaign being waged against wind power, that as this article mentions, is "undeniably a Not-In-My-Back-Yard" response. The anti-wind power campaign actually goes far beyond the NIMBY attitude, and also insists that there should be no wind turbines anywhere in Canada. There are further arguments about sickness from the noise of the blades and from the "dirty" electricity. Wind turbines kill birds and may block their migrations. They could lower property values. They may cause erosion of shorelines. They don't produce enough electrical power most of the time, because the wind is too low or too high. And the Government is stealing money out of our pockets to fund them.

If that was not enough, and apparently it isn't, consider this. The wind turbines in Europe are claimed by some anti-wind advocates to have never saved any CO2 emissions to this day. And now apparently some of the Europeans are rebelling against wind power too.

I hope I have not left anything out of the multi-fronted argument against wind power. At this moment I am not trying to debunk those arguments, although I have in the past looked into them and I think some might be weak arguments that are just put in there to help boost the anti-wind power cause. But for me, adding in weak arguments does not help, it just wastes my time while getting at the truth, and just reduces my patience with the rest of the arguments.

But I really want to examine the comment that wind farms destroy the countryside - specifically the "heart of the Group of Seven postcard countryside" where Michael Lansbury has located his cottage.

A group of seven postcard typically will be a few evergreen trees and some rocky landscape. Now I don't mean to put down the evergreen trees on rocks as an artistic vision, but I was born and raised in the Canadian Shield, and basically you have about 8 million square kilometers of that type of postcard "countryside" in Canada. Most of it is "inhospitable" as they say, and therefore sparsely populated. I highly doubt if Mr. Lansbury lives in the heart of this landscape. More like the fringes.

Most of the population of Canada lives huddled for warmth and comfort within 200 km of the American border. When they do travel north from the border area, they are shocked to discover this strange boreal forest with thin soil over bedrock. So they build cottages on it, especially beside one of the millions of lakes, and come back to admire the view every weekend. We have a freeway north of Toronto that gets jammed up every summer weekend with cars heading north.

I wonder if we have over a million cottages in the Canadian shield yet, if not it must be close. I have to admit that I do not find the cottages as attractive as the cottagers do. I am not bashing cottagers here, but just trying to put some balance in this argument against wind turbines. The most ugly aspect, in my opinion, of the cottages are the "Do not trespass" "Private property" "Keep out" signs you see around them. Some may be legitimate, and I suspect others are posted on public land, just because the cottagers can get away with it and they don't want the public anywhere near their property.

It's not just the cottages, of course, but the outboard motor boats screaming along trailing fumes behind. Now again, I like boats as much as anyone. But it's obvious that the wind turbines make less noise, cause less pollution, cause less erosion, kill less fish, kill fewer people, and - yes - look better than the boats. Motor boats have been banned from a few Canadian parks and lakes, which is probably a good idea. But they are allowed on most.

As for Mr. Lansbury's self-proclaimed environmentalism, was it just the Globe and Mail writer who made him sound phony? But let me just go with the statements made in the article as if they applied to any cottager. I would prefer if he had mentioned some real environmentalist's concerns. What does he do with his waste, personal and otherwise? Does he believe in air conditioners, outboard motor boats, big SUV's? Does he like bears and wolves living nearby? Does he have a lawn sprayed with pesticides? These are some environmental issues. Come to think of it, does Mr. Lansbury actually have any solar panels or does he just believe in them?

Anyhow, it's just to say that cottagers and I do not have the same sense of what is spoiling the countryside. And how about this for a compromise? Only put up the wind turbines in or near places where you allow motor boats to operate.