Windmills in your mind: are you doing right?

Windmills are now set up all over the world. The electricity generated is very expensive and is likely to remain so, the cost of these projects are heavily subsidized and the mills are a pain in the eye. They make sounds also: whirring, knocking when the blades pass the mast, constant movement disturbing you. Some places the windmills even kill birds.

New York City will have a windmill park that you can see from everywhere – are we supposed to be delighted at the prospect? And one on top of a hospital? It will be iconic – everybody can see it. Nature is already gone in the cities, but the visual aspect will not be likable long term – these things make sounds and disturb your view.

The risk associated with windmills has not been properly evaluated – a few have lost a blade, there have been structural collapse, and they have caused fires.

Windmills require invasion of nature – the nature is no longer untouched when windmills have been built, roads and power lines must be built or or underwater cables installed, the fish or the birds may be troubled. Urban planning: how many would you like or how many can you tolerate?

So where is the logic behind all this: We harm the environment visually and physically, even in the cities, the economics are bad and likely to remain so. This is true even when the costs of environmental harm have not been added. It all depends on subsidies, politics and lobbying. The interested parties get their money and the politicians their moment of glory.

So this is clearly not a sustainable proposition and huge windmill parks will eventually disappear – when the subsidies stop.

Let us instead see this as a learning process on our way to a sustainable society and ecological thinking: power must be sustainable, visually and physically acceptable, environmental costs must be accounted for, animals and plants should live, power generation must preferably be local to avoid power lines: all these factors at the same time. Windmills will  not be with us for long – have one or many near you and you will understand.

It surely takes time – but we will learn.

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