Breaking Wind(mills)

Like Don Quixote, we spend a lot of time tilting windmills, especially in this neck of the woods.

First let me say that windmills are certainly a component of any alternative energy program, and they will probably have a place in any energy plan developed over the really long haul. Their principal shortcomings are these: they are currently expensive energy sources, and their power production is intermittent rather than continuous, and so other electrical power sources whose production is controllable and stable will be needed, or a wide array of windmills, tidal energy sources, and so forth will have to be hooked together in a very sophisticated grid system which rapidly shifts the origin of power in the power grid to the particular energy sources that are currently producing. There are probably some other ways to somewhat alleviate the problem, as well, which sound “Buck Rogerish,” but even with current technology would be somewhat feasible, though also very costly. For example, the domestic consumers could easily have an array of batteries as components of electrical equipment, which would turn on when the power was low and turn off when it was normal, recharging themselves automatically during the powered- up intervals.

The Western European experience with windmills is instructive to a point. Windmills are obviously proliferating there, and apparently are a commercial success; just as nuclear power plants are and have been in France for years. But bear in mind that Western Europe is largely devoid of fossil energy sources, and almost any oil or coal they use for electrical power production must be imported, and is increasingly expensive. They also, generally speaking, don't have to worry about air-conditioning the way the United States does. Their economic payoff for switching to alternative energy now is different from most of America’s. There is an economic component to the switch to windmills and other alternative energy sources that is very rewarding in Western Europe. America’s situation is different in the sense that we have no shortage of coal whatsoever,(nor oil if we were willing to let the market develop it when economic factors dictate), and coal and eventually oil could supply most of our electrical power far into the future much more cheaply than any current alternative energy source except, perhaps, nuclear power currently could now, or likely ever could. In addition, we have a carbon-based energy system built and operating quite admirably, and there would be no difficulty in attracting private investment to enlarge and improve that system, provided that government action did not threaten the economics of the current American electrical energy production and delivery system.

This is what the windmill argument really boils down to: do we need and want so-called green energy sources now or soon. If we do, we can have them. Their inefficiencies currently are so profound that only government subsidies and concessions of various sorts, including some hammerlocks on the arms and shoulders of the electric companies in order to compel them to accept expensive electrical output from alternative energy sources when it is available. Without introduction of artificial factors into the economics of energy production in the United States, there would be virtually no interest on the part of private investors in most current alternative energy sources and therefore no arguments hereabouts over windmills. Would any nationally prominent politician, however, step forward and plainly state the truth: you can only have green energy if we take taxpayer money to create it and defeat the (tax-paying) competition by taxing them and you taxpayers, or both, to do so.

Personally, I have no particular objection to the presence of windmills on the horizons. Mankind has been tinkering with landscapes since time immemorial. Sometimes a Taj Mahal or an Exeter Cathedral is created; sometimes a dismal slum is the result. Indeed, most of West Virginia was clear-cut a hundred years ago, in arguably by mankind, and probably would be again if there were enough money in it to make the option interesting. (So much for ridge line or view scape integrity).

Are the windmills inevitable? If you believe Al Gore and all the proponents of global warming who blame energy production for a good bit of that problem, windmills are inevitable and so are nuclear power plants and hydroelectric plants, etc. because those who favor alternative energy and want to eliminate most or all carbon-based electrical energy production evidently have the predisposition and the votes to force that position on everyone else. If the people like Gore say you can’t use coal, even though it is plentiful and cheap, and they have a majority of even one, you don’t get much choice but accept the windmills now or later, and in all probability accept, also, an array of government regulations on the energy efficiency of your appliances, and probably eventually the rationing of the amount of electrical energy you can use in your household, or at the least, self-rationing, brought about by the enormous growth of your electrical bill as various alternative energy sources, derived not from competitive market action but rather government subsidy and regulation, replace current efficient and effective systems of electrical energy production.

“To green, or not to green”; that is the real question in this purported land of the fuzzy and ever jolly green government giant. The question really is not specifically about windmills on the ridge lines of Mineral and adjacent counties at all. Argue as we may around here locally about windmills, what we decide doesn’t matter much unless it coincides with what the federal government decides. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people perishes at the local level bit by bit any time local interests conflict with what those politicians who seldom or never come around here decide to do to us in cases such as windmills. That’s not what the Constitution provides for, but after all, the Constitution’s just a document, a socially-constructed reality which can be ignored by anyone who doesn’t have any compunction about doing so. It’s just a baseline isn’t it; something the political class can look at so they can deviate from it to show that they are avant garde, politically savvy, hip, and all that sort of ballyhoo. Unless, of course, we’ve got people with spine enough to stand up for the kind of governance of, by and for the people that we and they really believe in and value.

Don Quixote was either a pathetic fool, or a sort of Everyman. He was inspiring although he was usually ineffectual. He always stood up for what he believed in. My inclination would normally be to favor windmills hereabouts in order to give important new technology a chance, but the Don Quixote in me says oppose them in the extreme in order to put big government in the position of having to roll on over once more we local people in pursuit of their current “flavor-of-the-month” on the ultra-liberal policy wonk circuit. That would underscore the way it really is: West Virginians must pay again for some sort of sins we didn’t commit or didn’t knowingly commit, while those who benefited ignore their own culpability in the creation of the alleged carbon crisis and global warming, and are allowed to seemingly solve the problems they created by abusing their country cousins in new and satisfying ways at least one more time. If you buy windmills, wait until you see...(whatever is your worst nightmare)? that the feds have got for you next.