Every time another industrial wind energy facility is constructed, another valuable piece of Maine’s essence is destroyed. While my “special places” and memories in Maine are dominated by remembrances focused on Maine’s pristine lakes, I know others are just as devastated every time a mountain top is blasted, a previously unbroken area of wildlife or bird habitat is fragmented, or some other equally important reason. I could get lengthy here throwing out a slew of adjectives, superlatives, emotions, and other means of describing why these places are important to me, but I think the Brooking Institute study on Maine’s most important assets for the future of this state summed all these words and emotions up into three common words …. “Quality of Place”.
It is Maine’s “Quality of Place” that distinguishes it from any other state in the greater northeastern United States. It frustrates me to no end to be unable to understand why more Mainers (natives and transplants) don’t understand the long term damage these projects are doing and aren’t actively involved in stopping the wanton damage from these projects that will still be discernable 50 or 100 years from now. And if that’s not bad enough …… for Christ sakes, they’re doing it with our tax dollars! I can only conclude that the problem lies in a lack of education on the subject.
We all have things we need to be doing over the balance of this year to fight our own pet proposed projects, and to help others with their fight, but I’m going to propose that we all do one more thing for the remainder of the year. It should be everyone’s goal to educate others on the fallacies of wind power as a grid scale energy source each and every day. What if each one of us made it a goal to educate a minimum of one new person every day for the rest of the year. You won’t make a “convert” of everyone you talk with, but every person we educate that does understand the ramifications of these projects means that they’ll likely convert a handful of others simply because they will have the educational ‘ammunition’ to do so.
I have a thought about a way to initiate these conversations in a very non-combative way that I’m checking into. In the meantime, let’s start educating the general public. It is imperative that we start to grow our ranks by educating others. Take up the challenge and take the pledge to educate one person a day starting tomorrow!
Best regards,
Kevin G.
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Thanks for posting, David. I feel strongly that an educational outreach effort may be one of the most impactful strategies we can have over the long term to start changing some minds in Augusta. And don’t forget folks, it isn’t just those in your local area that may be embroiled in the discussions of a nearby project that you want to educate, it’s also important to educate those in the more populous portions of the state who typically only know what they read in the developers sound bite PR campaigns in the newspapers and on TV.
amen
Great idea, Kevin, especially for those who have been sitting back, doing little to nothing, while the rest of us have been the heavy lifting.
Great idea, Kevin, especially for those who have been sitting back, doing little to nothing, while the rest of us have been doing the heavy lifting.
We all feel more folks should naturally oppose these un- Mainelike structures. It seems threats to guns, trapping, and hunting bring the protesters out in force. I wonder why more of these same people are not helping stop the biggest threat to the Maine outdoors and quality of place? Some crossovers are very active, but several I have spoken to are indifferent. Having “The Maine Sportsman” and George Smith , the former editor and outdoor activist, SUPPORTING windsprawl is appalling. The “Northwoods Sporting Journal”is on our side thankully. I wish we could gather support from organizations who are not afraid to speak up. This has been going on long enough that fence sitters must see there is NO END IN SIGHT for these developers. The obvious question to me is “WHY DO THE DEVELOPERS NOT CARE WHAT THEY RUIN?” These wind turbines are never in the developers’ back yards and even some Maine residents are all too quick to afflict other Mainers with their quick money scheme as the Beckfords found out on Pisgah Mtn. Mainers should know better and value what we have in Maine.
Kevin’s idea is good and I am still hoping somehow “Windfall” will make it to TV.
Good post, Mike. George Smith cares about two things: killing as much of Maine’s wildlife as he can get away with and money.