So, I’ve a historical past with anti-wind nuts of all kinds. A protracted historical past. I turned Margaret Atwood’s — sure, the Handmaid’s Story Margaret Atwood — inexperienced know-how professional bono marketing consultant after debating with Ontario’s anti-wind nuts on her weblog. The American Wind Vitality Affiliation, when it existed and was a optimistic power within the nation, used to examine my Barnard on Wind weblog to see if I’d written about one thing earlier than they bothered to start out debunking. I used to be drawn into fights towards anti-wind nuttery globally, together with on tiny King Island between Tasmania and Australia.

That’s a part of what led to me being Senior Fellow – Wind Vitality for the Washington-based Vitality and Coverage Institute. My wind vitality assessments have been included in half a dozen textual content books. And anti-wind nuts globally used to curse my identify fairly publicly. Heck, one anti-wind nut Australian politician threatened to deliver me up in Australia’s parliament. I had a prolonged on-line dialogue with an occupational well being con artist whose observe was attempting to make vibro acoustical illness a payable well being illness, and would just about say and do something to perpetuate the rip-off.

So it’s important to perceive that on the subject of anti-wind nuttery, I’ve heard just about all of it at one level or one other. Or, at the very least, I assumed I had.

A bit extra context. Offshore wind vitality is lastly beginning to get going within the USA. There’s a tiny, tiny 30 MW wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island. There’s a good tinier 12 MW wind farm off the coast of Virginia. In the meantime Europe constructed 2.5 GW of offshore wind in 2022 alone. China constructed as a lot offshore wind in 2022, about 6.8 GW, as the remainder of the world mixed within the earlier 5 years.

So what the heck is occurring within the USA? Is it that they don’t have good wind or websites? Nope. Plenty of nice Atlantic wind with shallow continental cabinets excellent for wind vitality. Is it that the USA can’t construct wind vitality? Nope, plenty of wind vitality among the many inexperienced oceans of wheat and corn on the Nice Plains.

So what is definitely occurring? Effectively, as a wee trace, the very best wind farm areas near shore may be seen from very rich People’ seaside enclaves. You’ll bear in mind an allegedly rich former President had a protracted historical past of attacking wind farms which may have been seen from his much-hated Scottish golf course, and unfold notions that wind generators precipitated most cancers.

That is the place the unholy matrimony of growing older privileged wealthy individuals throughout political divides begins to essentially present its dyed roots. One of many Koch brothers has a spot on the northeastern coast, not that removed from the Kennedy’s long-standing and storied expanse. Guess what they agree on? “There shall be no wind generators seen from our hallowed seaside retreats!” Effectively, one of many Kennedy clan is outwardly agreeing on much more with the Koch klan today, however that’s not what this piece is about.

No, whereas the Koch brother and most the Kennedy household have lengthy been disunited of their views on, effectively, the whole lot about how the world ought to function and the worth of human lives, they’re united in stopping modifications to their privileged existences domestically.

This can be a theme. The American Fowl Conservancy is all for wind vitality as an answer to local weather change. However its siting restriction necessities and native advocates make it clear that there aren’t any applicable websites for wind vitality. The Sierra Membership is stronger on wind vitality’s worth. However its native organizations combat tooth and nail towards native wind farm development. In any case, there should be different individuals whose treasured native wildlife preserves and vistas may be interrupted with low affect wind vitality as a substitute of theirs.

So many occasions I’ve run throughout this benighted nonsense the place individuals whose coronary heart is in any other case in the best place finds that their native circumstances simply couldn’t presumably allow institution of any of the answer applied sciences. And the extra prosperous and privileged they’re, the extra they make it clear that the issue should be solved, so long as they aren’t inconvenienced in any manner by the answer, or that their rural fantasy lands be requested to vary within the slightest, apart from new golf programs in fact.

In fact, on the best of the US political spectrum today, environmental conservation appears to have shrunk to privately owned searching and fishing preserves restricted to their very own entry, preserved in amber. A River Runs By way of It, however just for wealthy individuals on their very own land or the land of their oligarch buddies.

Anyplace there are prosperous and privileged individuals who reject native change, there are effectively funded disinformation campaigns which exploit native ‘environmentalists’.

And so to the purpose of this piece. Immediately I noticed some egregious nonsense about offshore wind and whales I had by no means seen earlier than. Was I stunned? No, under no circumstances.

As per John Prepare dinner’s steering on coping with disinformation, let’s begin with the truth.

Does NOAA Fisheries authorize the dying of whales because it pertains to offshore wind growth?
NOAA Fisheries doesn’t anticipate and has not approved — or proposed to authorize — mortality or severe damage of whales for any wind-related motion. Offshore wind builders haven’t utilized for, and NOAA Fisheries has not authorised, authorization to kill any marine mammals incidental to offshore wind website characterization surveys or development actions. Marine mammals might reply to publicity to those surveys, for instance, by avoiding the speedy space.

That’s from the FAQ of the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a division of the US Division of Commerce. It’s attention-grabbing in and of itself. Why would they really feel compelled to spell out that they don’t do that?

Effectively, due to nonsense like this.

An Offshore Wind Farm In US Will get Allow To Kill Upto [sic] 20 Proper Whales

That’s the headline of a wee article in a website misleadingly referred to as I Am Renew, which seems to be an Indian sub-continent website with deeply insufficient fact-checking. Naturally, it’s being amplified by ‘environmentalists’.

Naturally the individual selling this piece of nonsense is a New Yorker who’s a white ‘freelance’ examine journalist and standup comic who cares deeply in regards to the oceans and animals. Hates the know-how that may protect life within the oceans when it’s coming to oceans close to them, however hey. It reeks of privilege. Nothing screams “I’ve a belief fund, however it’s not, like, enormous” like being a flakey freelance investigative journalist and failed comic who lives in New York.

To be clear, when this nonsense crossed my display screen, it took about 20 seconds to search out the NOAA assertion. Any precise investigative journalist and even simply an precise journalist would have been capable of Google it too. That is simply affirmation bias nonsense for somebody who hates offshore wind that’s wherever close to the place they may be.

These sort of individuals, whose thoughts is so open that their brains have fallen out, are straightforward pickings for prosperous and privileged oligarchs with waterfront compounds and the funds to pay the identical slick PR corporations which have been profiled so vividly in Thank You for Smoking. I hold stumbling throughout their venal and putrid leavings, most just lately with the astroturf pro-oil sands group the Maple Leaf Institute, 4 of whose administrators are just lately departed executives of the Canadian Affiliation of Petroleum Producers.

Within the King Island instance, the place the choice native financial growth alternative was — watch for it — a few golf programs over 200 kilometers by aircraft from Melbourne, it was straightforward to hint again the slick-ish marketing campaign to a PR group that fronted for Australian coal and right-wing politics within the nation. Within the case of Ontario, the ‘environmentalists’ against wind farms in Prince Edward County have been aghast on the despoliation of the farm land that was a large munitions manufacturing and struggle video games website throughout World Warfare II, however now featured fully synthetic farmers’ fields and wealthy individuals’s retirement villas and gradual meals eateries. The prosperous individuals have been suing wind farms kilometers from their manses to forestall change to their rural agrarian fantasy retirement plans, and screwed individuals whose hearts have been really in the best locations however who lacked a couple of mind cells proper into the bottom, together with native sustainable growth.

Prosperous and privileged individuals hold discovering methods to take advantage of individuals who really feel much more than they suppose to forestall native motion. Pondering globally and stopping motion domestically is the rallying cry of soulful NIMBYs.

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Sadly, the media enterprise continues to be a troublesome, cut-throat enterprise with tiny margins. It is a unending Olympic problem to remain above water and even maybe — gasp — develop. So …