Against the wind: The pursuit of clean energy has relegated ordinary people to the status of ‘collateral damage’

National Wind Watch has reproduced an article by Maurice Newman that first appeared in The Spectator, in Australia (and was referenced, on this site, here)
Against the wind: The pursuit of clean energy has relegated ordinary people to the status of ‘collateral damage’ | Wind Watch

Even before they threatened my property, I was opposed to wind farms.

They fail on all counts. They are grossly inefficient, extremely expensive, socially inequitable, a danger to human health, environmentally harmful, divisive for communities, a blot on the landscape, and don’t even achieve the purpose for which they were designed, namely the reliable generation of electricity and the reduction of CO2 emissions.

Even if you buy the anthropogenic global warming case, experience shows that wind energy is not the answer. How is it, then, that governments around the world have embraced this technology with abandon, in the process spending hundreds of billions of dollars of other people’s money in a shameless wealth transfer from the poor to the rich? Surely the economic effect of taxing hardest those who can least afford it was thoroughly examined ahead of politically motivated empty gestures designed to placate climate change alarmists?

Apparently not.

I am not a conspiracy theorist, but we have witnessed the birth of an extraordinary, universal and self-reinforcing movement among the political and executive arms of government, their academic consultants, the mainstream media and vested private sector interests (such as investment banks and the renewables industry), held together by the promise of unlimited government money. It may not be a conspiracy, but long-term, government-underwritten annuities have certainly created one gigantic and powerful oligopoly which must coerce taxpayers and penalise energy consumers to survive.

Not even independent UK research which shows 3.7 jobs in the broader economy are lost for every ‘green’ job created has engendered any real sense of concern within this politically protected and publicly funded class. After all, those who are crowded out by ever-more-costly green schemes are simply, as one bureaucrat informed me, ‘collateral damage’ and victims of ‘the greater good’. But to whom do the ‘damaged’ now turn? All political parties to a greater or lesser degree follow the same irrational policies, mindlessly repeating slogans about renewable energy targets and CO2 reductions plans, lest they be labelled climate change deniers.
Yet nowhere is there evidence that these policies work. Even Europe, with its huge investment in wind energy as well as an ETS, has not reduced emissions. ..

Read the full article at National Wind Watch