“Altamont Pass has been a black eye on the entire wind industry since its construction.” (National Audubon Society, below)

“… the need for renewable energy is not an excuse to … wipe out local populations of wildlife. Wind companies are making billions and can afford to ensure projects are responsibly sited and include adequate mitigations to reduce impacts to sensitive species.” (Ariana Rickard, Mount Diablo Audubon Society, below)

Altamont Pass again? Back in 1997, my Policy Analysis for the Cato Institute, “Renewable Energy: Not Cheap, Not ‘Green’,” included a section, “The ‘Avian Mortality’ Problem,” that focused on Altamont Pass, then the nation’s largest wind farm and a documented killing field for protected birds.

That 625-MW project was just a short car ride away from the San Francisco headquarters of the Natural Resources Defense Council.…

“Which source of mortality kills more or less birds is somewhat irrelevant…. the threat posed by wind turbines grows with each facility constructed in a high-risk area for birds.”

– Joel Merriman, American Bird Conservancy

The “avian mortality problem” has long been an issue for industrial wind turbines, as chronicled over the years at MasterResource. Even fossil fuel critics, such as Paul Gipe (and Christopher Flavin) in Wind Energy Comes of Age (1995), have lamented the by-products of industrial wind. And who can forget the characterization used by the Los Angeles head of the Sierra Club in a 1989 hearing? “Cuisinarts of the Air’.

The problem persists. At the anti-wind site, Stop These Things, one author wrote this week: “Cars, cats and skyscrapers don’t kill Eagles – like the critically endangered Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle, but 60m wind turbine blades with their tips travelling at 350Kph routinely smash them out of existence.”…

It began early. In a candidate questionnaire in March 2016, Trump answered two key questions presented by the free-market American Energy Alliance:

“8). Do you support a carbon tax? Do you support the Obama administration’s use of the social cost of carbon in rulemakings?

A. No and No.

 9). Do you think federal agencies have abused the cost-benefit process to suit their political agenda? Would your administration end the process of underestimating costs and inflating benefits of agency regulations?

A. Yes and Yes.”

And in his first energy speech in May 2016, Trump stated:

“And if Crooked Hillary can shut down the mines, she can shut down your business too.”

“These actions have denied millions of Americans access to the energy wealth sitting under our feet. This is your treasure, and you – the American People – are entitled to share in the riches.”

“The people who build wind farms are not environmentalists. . . .  Business is a delicate balancing act, and chief executives are always walking a tightrope between the needs of the community, their employees, and the marketplace.” [Paul Gipe, Wind Energy Comes of Age (1995), p. 454.]

“Planet of the Humans‘ expose is long overdue.” [below]

Big Green, Inc. has been challenged by Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs’s “Planet of the Humans.” Importantly, the multi-million-view documentary brought together the inconvenient truths of (politically correct) renewable energies, as well as batteries for electric vehicles.

In a recent post for the Institute for Energy Research (IER), “Long-standing Eco-warnings Against Renewables Reinforce ‘Planet of the Humans’,” I documented how many mainstream eco-authors forthrightly talked about these problems. I noted:

Moore/Gibbs memorialized what had long been recognized by the environmental intelligentsia.