Remember Scene’s cover story a little while back about the prospect of wind turbines in Lake Erie? There’s the initial plan for five off the coast of Northeast Ohio and debate and hopes and fears about more coming after that, with plenty of folks wondering why Cleveland is pursuing wind farms when everyone else is setting aside the idea. We explained how they spin fast, look sleek and big, and cause heated debate among many groups who want to talk about more than the fact that they spin fast.
Well, those initial first five turbines were supposed to be installed and operational by next year. That’s not the case anymore. WKYC reports:
This article appears in Jun 22-28, 2011.
We need Wind Turbines that will bring thousands of jobs in manufacturing and maintaining them and the taxes they will provide to our area! Plus, they are pollution free and there is no waste to get rid of!
We need Wind Turbines and the thousands of jobs they will provide in manufacturing and maintaining the Wind Turbines and the taxes they will provide too. Plus they are pollution free and waste free as well! A win win situation for all of us!
General Electric just came out with a p.r. that says solar will be cheaper than coal power in 3-5 years and started building the biggest solar pv plant in the nation. Solar and wind power complement each other well, as when the sun isn’t shining the wind may well provide. Coal power is highly subsidized by taxpayers and outright kills tens of thousands of Americans per year, and they pay nothing for those deaths. Coal contributes much to asthma cases, and burning it releases mercury which poisons a child’s brain while he is still in his mother’s womb. Coal receives massive tax breaks, giveaways and loopholes. It has devastated the biggest walleye fishery in the world for decades on Lake Erie. Coal use has prompted coal companies to blow the tops off of 500 mountains in the Appalachian mountain range, a blight on an otherwise beautiful landscape for which they pay nothing. Per the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which specializes in nuclear research, burning coal releases so much radioactive Thorium and Uranium that it would viable to commercially harvest it. But instead it goes into the air. Expect Cadmium Telluride solar panels to be putting out 3 to 5 times the power that current panels produce, within 3-5 years per General Electrics recent press release. G.E. cites innovation as the reason for optimism, as they spend half a billion to buy related startup companies. Solar will need wind as it’s partner for at least 2 decades if we are to stop the death and blight of coal. Coal has the outdated privilege of being allowed to kill and cause sickness and major negative economic impacts through environmental devastation. The coal utility’s privilege includes not paying for any of these horrific impacts. Science has given us alternatives that make solar and wind , the right moral choice, and the right economic choice. Transfer the subsidies and breaks that coal has received for many decades, transfer all those benefits to wind and solar. Coal will disappear in ten years if you do.