Editor note: In Part I and Part II, Jon Boone set the stage for a final analysis of the Sierra Club’s current position in support of wind power. This conclusion to the series provides a discussion on the science, realities, and the unintended consequences that may be the result of current environmental movement thinking, which it typifies.

 Birkenstock Tales

MBA types who wouldn’t know a bat from a bowtie now run the national Sierra Club. Their interest is in gaining membership and revenue. In a critique aptly entitled, Torquemada in Birkenstocks, Jeff St. Clair said this about Carl Pope: “[He] has never had much of a reputation as an environmental activist. He’s a wheeler-dealer, who keeps the Club’s policies in lockstep with its big funders and political patrons. Where Dave Brower scaled mountains, nearly all of Pope’s climbing has been up organizational ladders.”…

 “Are environmentalists cooling to the sun, wind, and water—energy sources they have long touted as ecologically superior to oil, coal, and nuclear power? A report by the National Audubon Society, now attracting considerable attention in Washington, warns that ‘renewable’ energy sources are far from benign.

Observes one startled environmental consultant: ‘Symbolically, it’s like someone in the nuclear industry saying nukes are dangerous. . . . ‘

Some of the side effects the study identified: air and water pollution caused by converting plant matter into energy; urban sprawl from solar collectors, which are best suited to detached, single-family houses; depleted forests from wood burning; and increased chances of earthquakes from hydropower dams.”

– Staff Article, “The Graying of the Green Lobby,” Fortune, February 7, 1983, p. 22.

What happened to environmental criticism of earth-scaring renewable energy?…

Avian mortality is the scientific term applied in environmental assessments of windpower. But there is another term that has gained currency where industrial wind has impacted local bird activity.

This post documents the historical use of the term, which was coined by the Los Angeles representative of the Sierra Club in the late 1980s. The term came back into use when environmentalists challenged a project of Enron Wind Corporation, now a subsidiary of General Electric.

Looking back, if environmentalists and regulatory authorities had cracked down on industrial wind, this artificial government-dependent industry could have been avoided altogether or shut down.

Instead, with Big Environmentalism leading the way, and anti-energy intellectuals welcoming the high cost-low reliability of wind, this inferior power source has been allowed to grow.

And now, grass-roots environmentalists are leading the charge against industrial wind.…

“Citing a dearth of applicable wind-generation modifications, Dick Anderson of the California Energy Commission suspects that current bird fatality levels in the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area (WRA) will mirror those revealed by a 1991 CEC study.  ‘Very little has been done by the wind companies to effectively change the situation,’ Anderson recently said.  Though studies have yielded a ‘better understanding’ of avian causalities, few measures appear to be reducing avian impacts.”

– Staff Article, “Altamont Avian Mortality Continues; Improvements Grounded,” California Energy Markets, January 23, 1998, p. 2.

Last week, my post “Cuisinarts of the Air” (Revisiting an environmentalist term for windpower)” ended with the question and a request for readers:

So what has happened in the last decade regarding industrial wind in bird-sensitive areas? Comments and updates welcome!