The July 24, 2016 print edition of national flagship daily Die Welt wrote a feature story on how German citizens are becoming fed up with the widespread crony capitalism of the wind energy business and are thus now mobilizing a fierce rebellion. The German daily writes of health issues for people living in their vicinity.
The article starts by featuring technology fan Volker Tschischke, who was once an ardent proponent of renewable energy – until wind turbines were built close to his residence and encircled his home village of Etteln. Now he leads a citizens initiative against the construction of wind parkc. The turbines “have driven him to resistance“, Die Welt writes.
Local politicians are no longer serving the interests of the local people, but rather “are rolling out the red carpet for wind power companies” and appear to be “no longer listening to the people and about the concerns of their everyday lives,” the national German daily writes.
A “destructive force”
Die Welt describes an Energiewende (transition to renewable energies) that is “dividing the people“, where those who live in big cities and thus not effected by the blight are open to wind parks, while those living in the countryside are fed up and fiercely resisting them. Die Welt reports that people across rural Germany “no longer view the Energiewende as a necessary national project, but as a destructive force.”
Now, ever so gradually, it even appears that Berlin is getting the message as leading parties see their poll numbers dropping. Die Welt writes that Berlin is now throttling the expansion of wind parks and working to “deescalate the conflict“.
“Ruined and destroyed for generations”
As an example of blight and destruction, Die Welt cites the area surrounding the central city of Paderborn, quoting a local resident who is thinking about packing up and leaving: “Here the living area is being ruined and destroyed for generations.”
Even though Berlin is scrambling to put the brakes on the uncontrolled spread of wind turbine littering across the rural landscape, local residents often remain powerless against the mighty wind industrialists and projects that have already been proposed. And even when local political leaders side up with their residents against the parks, Die Welt describes a David versus Goliath fight:
On one side there’s the mayor of the town and some of his staff, and on the other side there are corporation-like companies that hire staffs of lawyers.”
In such cases the big wind companies have an easy time pile-driving their projects through, Die Welt writes.
Opponents resort to sabotage
Also wind park developers often promise towns and villages cash-flow from wind projects, But as Die Welt reports, most never end up seeing any money. “The promise of business tax revenue is a ‘large fairy tale’.”
Die Welt also adds that wind park opponents are often labeled “grumblers“, “troublemakers” or “Energiewende blockers who use ludicrous ways to try to stop the success of the Energiewende.”
The conflict has even escalated to the point where opponents have even sabotaged a wind measurement instrument used to check the feasibility of a possible future project. Farmers are even blocking deforestation equipment with their tractors, Die Welt reports.
Lawless, Wild West conditions
In other locations it seems that wind energy development resembles the Wild West where there is a complete lack of law and order. Town have corrupted the planning, permitting and building process. Die Welt writes sometimes sleazy towns act as planner, permitting authority, builder and operator all in one. Nothing stands in the way. There are no checks and balances. Only a few profiteers. The German daily writes:
The county of Aurich is a stakeholder in wind park projects. For the investor that is totally practical. He is thus practically the funder, impact study conductor and project approver all in one.”
Whether its solar power or wind energy, there’s a common thread: A very select few are profiting hugely while the rest of society are left to clean up a huge industrial, financial and environmental mess.
Of course reader sod will deny anything is wrong, and insist everything is just fine with wind energy.
Yes, that is exactly my opinion. The article can be found here and i would ask everyone to read it:
http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article157308299/In-Deutschland-dreht-sich-der-Wind-gegen-die-Windkraft.html
Daniel Wetzel has written another anti-wind piece in the ultra conservative paper “Die Welt”. So no surprise.
The article does not include the position of a single person supporting wind power. It is a useless hit piece.
And the graphs are all utterly horrible. Who would add such misleading data to an article?
“ultra conservative”?
You’re making things up. Die Welt may be centre right, but there is nothing “ultra conservative” about it. Wetzel is merely telling readers the reality on the ground, which is one you are obviously having great difficulty coping with.
I am having big difficulties with the failure to present the options.
So Etteln also has the option to become a storing facility for nuclear waste for the next 10000 years. Or we could just dig up some coal beneath the village and offer them an alternative living place 30 km away?
and if you want to see criminal intend in choice of placing power plants, you should look at Datteln 4 before you even think about a wind turbine.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraftwerk_Datteln#Neubau_Kraftwerksblock_Datteln_4_ab_2007
Alternative energy is giving us independence from Russia and the oil states. It is utterly impossible to overestimate the benefits that these technologies bring to our future and our countries.
“The article does not include the position of a single person supporting wind power.”
Heh. I know quite a few. They support it, alright. It’s just that they don’t want wind turbines near their houses. Most “progressives” are like Ted “but don’t you realize that’s where I sail” Kennedy.
A few minutes with Google Earth (GE) will show wind towers just east of Etteln, on a hill top, and extending along, and east of, a transmission line that runs north-south.
The village center (red dot on GE) is 1.95 km from the transmission line on the road labeled Etteiner-Höhenweg. Towers are just 0.2 km. past that set of lines.
Where we live, the nearest towers are 18 km away, although transmission towers are about 2 km – and have been there many years.
I suggest a visit to a wind tower for anyone who has not been. A major owner of the one mentioned (at 18 km) has a visitor’s center and nice displays. You can go into the base of a nearby tower, walk under the rotating blades, and get up close and personal with a blade on the ground (damaged in transit, so not used). Also, walk under a major cross-country transmission line.
These things are not a bother to us at their current distances but as close as Germany has allowed them to be erected to homes seems stupendously stupid. Could be that is my bias showing because I see no need for such intermittent energy sources for grid-scale utilities.
i’d like to register my objection to the term ‘crony capitalism’
this is more orwellian manipulation of language to corrupt the process of thinking.
taxation is not capitalism; subisdies are not capitalism; a gang of thieves is not a capitalist economy; stealing is not a capitalist principle.
in short, there’s nothing capitalist about ‘crony capitalism’.
Of course you are 100% correct about the nature of that beast. BUT, the term “capitalism” is used because that is what it masquerades as. To the untutored eye it appears no different, so calling it something else would probably be as confusing. So, simply adding the modifier “crony” to it tells one who knows the difference exactly what it is. To someone who doesn’t know, it hints that if you don’t know, you should find out. To someone like sod and his ilk, it wouldn’t matter what you called, it, they wouldn’t be able to figure it out, even if they could parrot the distinction back to you. …IMO.
But, otherwise, yes to all you wrote.
+1!
Capitalism is what capitalists do.. and what they do (especially in the degenerative phase of capitalism) is use the state to do the dirty work of entrenching rent seeking, monopolistic policies…
The fervent believers in “pure capitalism” are as deluded as “pure Communists” who denounced Stalin and Mao as distoring the “authentic, pure religion” of Karl Marx.
A “degenerative phase of capitalism”? Would that be Lenin’s “imperialism as the last stage”, his “decaying moribund capitalism”? I guess we must be close to the victory of the proletariat over bourgeoisie. *)
Other than that, I would agree that fervent believers in “pure capitalism” are deluded except I don’t know anybody who believes in such a thing. I do know plenty of “progressive” fools fantasizing about pure, unspoiled communism, though. They are usually the same clowns who think that the highly regulated system we have is a ruthless and completely unrestricted market.
———-
*) https://www.marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/pe/pe-ch20.htm
Degenerative as in”collapsing real incomes, standard of living, infrastructure, trade, capex, R&D, food stamp dependence etc”
Several posts on this blog alone venture to separate “pure capitalism” from the “crony” version: “BUT, the term “capitalism” is used because that is what it masquerades as. To the untutored eye it appears no different, so calling it something else would probably be as confusing. So, simply adding the modifier “crony” to it tells one who knows the difference exactly what it is.”
“I guess we must be close to the victory of the proletariat over bourgeoisie.” – Colorado Wellington
All TOO close, and desperately trying to get closer.
“Ottmar Edenhofer, who co-chaired the IPCC working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015, has conceded that the climate crusade is an effort to shackle capitalism and establish a global welfare state.”
http://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/global-warming-one-more-official-exposes-real-goal-of-climate-scare/
And if they succeed? Well, here’s just one of the many disgusting things they would force us to do.
http://dailycaller.com/2015/05/04/kofi-annan-eat-bugs-to-stop-global-warming/
posa 3. August 2016 at 2:36 PM | Permalink | Reply
“Capitalism is what capitalists do.. and what they do (especially in the degenerative phase of capitalism) is use the state to do the dirty work of entrenching rent seeking, monopolistic policies… ”
Yoou just gave the definition for fascism, so like all good little leftists you say there’s no distinction between capitalism and fascism.
Now, the funny thing is that the inventor of fascism, Mussolini, started his career as a socialist , not as a capitalist – and that the term capitalism is an invention by Karl Marx – in fact it is not an -ism at all – it is simply the free trade between individuals. None of us needs an ideology to interact voluntarily in economic exchange. It is what we do. It is division of labor.
See, when Marx coined the slur capitalism, there WAS no fascism. It was about 70 years before fascism. Fascism is a consequence of Marxism.
History, my little leftist. Study the history of your idols.
No. I’m saying that when capitalism enters into a breakdown phase it often veers into fascism… that’s happening right under our eyes in the West.
This is not a particularly “leftist” idea… certain flavors of libertarians have similar observations.
Well you say something quite different now – because you said “Capitalism is what capitalists do.. and what they do (especially in the degenerative phase of capitalism)”
Notice the ESPECIALLY; so you were of the opinion that corporatism or fascism is a defining characteristic of capitalism, before you weaseled back. And, you think that capitalism is DEGENERATING now; now where have we read that before, well in Das Kapital that’s where.
So *I* don’t know where you got this but it’s all boring old Marxism.
What *IS* degenerating, my unwittingly-Marxist friend, is the fiat currency system, and it would behoof you well to read some von Mises about that… We have an ordinary debt crisis.
“when capitalism enters into a breakdown phase…” – posa
The only way to come to such a conclusion would be to have historical examples of it. Do you have any?
The actual process, as I understand it, is where Western governments get hijacked by socialist/fascist parasites. That goes hand in hand with the use of their power of regulation and bribery to ruin and corrupt the free market by showing favoritism to those who helped them gain power. The e.g.s of that are all around us, and increasing daily. THAT and not “capitalism” is the real threat.
Note that the process occurs the fastest where a society has lost it’s ‘moral compass’. In order to see where it all leads, all we have to do is look at countries ruled by Islame, where free markets and good governance can’t be “ruined,” because they don’t exist.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/islam-compatible-capitalism-13392.html
Right on! Capitalism is virtuous so stop linking it to naughty stuff.
I try not to mention “Crony Capitalism”. I prefer to talk about the “Reverse Robin Hood Principle” by which the poor are robbed to benefit the rich.
It would be hard to find a better example of the RRHP than wind turbines. The owners make out like bandits as long as us poor people subsidize them via taxes and higher electricity prices.
“rolling out the red carpet” and lets be frank, Germany is rolling out the “red carpet” for something other than merely the “wind power companies”.
Emphasis on “RED?”
El Hierro just ran over 3 full days on wind and a tiny bit of hydro alone.
http://euanmearns.com/el-hierro-completes-a-year-of-full-operation/#comment-21713
And there was no reason to end this, as there was still strong wind and the end at exactly 9 o’clock shows, that this was a test that ended.
Give it another couple of years and El Hierro will simply stop buying diesel.
El Hierro has a population of 50,000, in other words, a small town; has wind turbines, and a pumped hydro system that has been financed by all European taxpayers, and is therefore the proof for the utter impossibility of running a civilisation on renewables: It is the very opposite of sustainable as it can only be created and maintained by outside financing.
El Hierro becomes the symbol for the collapse of the West. Who will pay for our energy infrastructure? The Chinese?
Dirk, the population of El Hierro is barely 10,000. If you want to know about the ongoing GdV saga but were afraid to ask,
http://euanmearns.com/
is a terrific resource on this and on other highly relevant energy subjects.
Roger Andrews has done a heroic amount of work in assembling information on GdV and his verdict of a ‘fail’ of the installation is massively backed up by hard facts and numbers.
Sod shows up occasionally on ‘energy matters’, mostly as an ignorant and highly opinionated ‘drive by’ shooter, bringing nothing to the party.
your analysis is interesting. The facts are simple: El Hierro is constantly increasing the times that it runs on 100% renewables (now over 3 full days). And the data shows: there is a huge potential for more.
So keep updated and see the impossible thing happen over and over again…
“…keep updated see the impossible thing happen over and over again.” – sod in a fog
I’ll settle for sod making sense just once. It hasn’t happened yet, but maybe someday it might.
If it’s so good, why do they stop?
I’ve seen comments over there by you saying 65% diesel replacement is the practical limit. What’s changed to make it 100% in your OPINION?
The change does of course happen at small places first.
This demonstrates, what is possible. Bigger places will follow as we can see everywhere in the world:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2016/0517/How-Portugal-went-107-hours-on-only-renewable-energy-video
and Portugal is only now moving into solar PV:
http://www.renewablesinternational.net/is-portugal-finally-going-solar/150/537/96838/
I checked K. van der Pool’s population assessment, and fount that to be order-of-magnitude correct (actually 11,000, so it’s close enough). Also, as an aside, since they sit atop an active volcano, why didn’t anyone think of using geothermal?
Now, about the article the little sot references by directing us to one of his own idiotic comments, the very same article I quoted from above, and which contradicts him at every turn. Well, here’s another quote from the same article that would have been of interest to sod, if he/she/it had a brain to think with.
And that’s from the article sod is using to “prove” his point, that (un)renewable energy production, a la El Heirro model, is worthy of emulating.
sod has his head so far up his colon, he can almost see daylight.
“Give it another couple of years and El Hierro will simply stop buying diesel.” –
“If GdV is to succeed in supplying El Hierro with 100% renewable energy for 100% of the time, which is the ultimate project goal, it must meet the following criteria [SEE ARTICLE FOR LIST (there are 4)]:
. . . . .
. . . . .
As outlined in the point-by-point discussion below, however, the GdV plant meets none of these criteria.”
http://euanmearns.com/el-hierro-renewable-energy-project-end-2015-performance-review-and-summary/
But don’t worry, because sod has an answer for when the diesel is gone and the wind doesn’t blow. Right, sod?
Um, well, maybe there are still a few technical difficulties that need attending to…
please look at July 2015:
http://s17.postimg.org/ey19n5in3/temp.png
you can see, that wind alone is pretty close to demand for most of the time. And this is with wind curtailed at 7MW (of 10.5 MW capacity) and with basically no hydro storage use.
look at wind output today: there is no reason to run the diesel at all!
https://demanda.ree.es/movil/canarias/el_hierro/acumulada/2016-08-04
There are no “technical difficulties that need attending to”. the system is not used properly.
As i said, a few years from now, the percentage of renewables will rise so fast, that buying new diesel will be unnecessary. (at 80% renewables a one year diesel supply will last 5 years and over 5 years, the percentage will increase again, lengthening the period again).
Sod, before you make any more ignorant remarks regarding GdV, take out some time from spouting nonsense and read this:
http://www.euanmearns.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/HFlocardGDV.pdf
sod 4. August 2016 at 8:34 AM | Permalink | Reply
“you can see, that wind alone is pretty close to demand for most of the time. And this is with wind curtailed at 7MW (of 10.5 MW capacity) and with basically no hydro storage use. ”
Mmeaning the EU squandered our taxes to build an infrastructure on the Hippie and bartender island that sits idle most of the year.
Exactly what I am saying for years now: The need for multiple redundant infrastructures drives cost for a renewable solution into the stratosphere, making the entire exercise of building it pointless as the EROEI drops towards zero – we’d be BETTER off with a SLAVE society.
Latest e.g.s of “global warming” that MUST be stopped! //s//
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/08/breaking-muslims-firebomb-bus-paris-video/
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/08/breaking-terrorism-suspected-london-knife-attack-one-killed-several-wounded-suspect-arrested/
Sophisticated sociopath Western “leaders” haven’t a clue what the real problems in the world are, because they are too focused on issues that they think will bring them more wealth and power. What’s happening, though, is that while they are preoccupied with silliness, their world is being brought down around them by primitive sociopaths who believe that by destroying civilization they will become richer and more powerful.