Green Double Standards

The act itself seems to just prohibit hunting, capturing, or possessing migratory birds. http://alaska.fws.gov/ambcc/ambcc/treaty_act.htm

I'm guessing that regulators have extended this act to protect wild birds from human-caused harm. In practice, the oil industry puts up nets around structures. The wind industry has no easy way to provide protection from whirling blades.

I was going to say that we live in a land of laws and that there was no exemptions to anyone,green or not, but then I remembered where I was.

Wouldn't this be a good case of equal protection under the law? Or would the oil companies just get trashed in the media for even defending themselves?

Want to talk about double standards? Why is Obama lending $2 billion to a South American country for offshore drilling when we can't do it off our own shores? Doesn't anyone see the hypocrisy in this or has the message gotten lost in the healthcare debate.

Windmills don't spill.

Windmills may not spill, but they do fall into disrepair. They get quite ugly. A hundred years from now, people will be appalled at what we found acceptable vis-a-vis windmills.

We ought to stop calling it green energy, and instead start calling it red energy... as in blood red. Start the protests... "No blood for wind!"

Amazing what special interests, PR, and the Government can get away with when they work together eh?

Wind turbines pose very little threat to birds these days.

It's true that one of the first farms (Altamont, CA) killed birds. The area has a unique topography of rolling hills, old turbines (faster spin and lower to ground), and a high population of raptors. It was a perfect storm that has never been repeated anywhere else. And they did address the issue in concrete ways: they determined which turbines did the most damage, and removed those units (among many other things).

Because of conditions at this wind farm, all wind energy development has to include studies of the habitat, species, migratory patterns, etc. Studies are done before and after construction.

No such requirements are made for extraction industries (coal, gas, oil) even though they certainly have the capacity to cause bird fatalities as well.

Is it a little unfair that wind energy, through good faith scientific studies and cooperation with regulatory bodies has so far gotten a waiver? Maybe.

What I find more unfair are the myriad ways extraction industries externalize (that is, take shortcuts that cost other people money and health) costs in detrimental ways, yet are given passes with price-tags that make $600K look like pocket change.

Didn't sound like those bird nets worked too well for Exxon, eh? Could it be that their negligence had something to do with the penalty? Power line companies have known about line designs that are dangerous for birds for decades now. Wanna bet that that $1.4 million Pacificorp paid out actually saved them money? Wind energy hasn't killed two hundred eagles in it's history, and these guys do two hundred in two years?

This has nothing to do with birds. It's all part of the big scam that the government runs. The bureaucrats just need a way to confiscate some money so they can look good enough on their next review to get a promotion. Whether it's the EPA, the IRS, or your local police department, it's all the same thing. The government wants more revenue, but they can't look bad by raising taxes - so they fine you for something.
They don't care if you speed or run a stop sign; they don't care about the birds; they just want to get the money and they look for the easiest targets.

$600k for 85 freaking birds, are you kidding? Almost $8k per bird. We have birds fly into our house and die all the time, hope they don't come after me. Maybe they will go after all those terrible cat owners, there could be some serious money there. What a joke.

Another obvious case of "do as I say not as I do," apparently the status quo. May God, in Whom we trust, help our country.

The oil and coal companies don't get fined for burning pollutants into the air, which kills god knows what. Yet they should come after the wind energy people for giving birds the ability to fly into the wind mill?

I would call this a double standard alright, they look the other way for most of the problems caused by oil and coal pollution, then charge them what is basically a couple cents to them, to try and make it look like they got punished for doing something wrong.

The way I look at this is, either people will finally learn that clean energy is a solution we all need to find. Or at one point in the future, we're going to be without energy, and maybe human life.

The sad part about all of this is that finding solutions to clean energy isn't all that hard, the problem is that so many people fight against it, either because they want their current profit, or because they don't want to believe in global warming.

it's impossible to mix logic w/ law...

Come on. You have to be running out of topics. This is a joke that's not worth discussing.

Well, Norm, there ARE many things more important to me too, but then, the ruling class politicians and bureaucrats(you know - "public servants") know very well that everyday humans like you and I don't really care about this kind of stuff. At this point with so many things to worry about - like survival of the planet and things like that, this present matter shouldn't even be discussed.

In case you check back, wake-up, if windmills are so great (and they aren't; research how many you need to generate electricity), then why was Kennedy and his elite friends trying to stop a windmill farm off of Martha's Vineyard?

Only one wind turbine is required to generate electricity. Who knows why Kennedy (who doesn't have a first name) was trying to stop a wind farm, but it's unlikely they believed they didn't generate electricity.

http://www.thecollegianur.com/2009/09/24/reality-rears-its-ugly-head/

Daniel, read the above post. To generate 20% of our electricity needs, you need an area the size of West VA. And look at the size of the turbines needed. Yet, we have Boxer in California thwarted solar farms in the desert and the elites fighting windmill farms off their coast. Here's an older news story about the Nantucket fight:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/953527/posts

You can Google and find more, but the hypocrisy is amazing. If they truly think natural gas, coal, and nuclear are bad; if it is that important to them, well, then they need to give a little.