Wind

by Suzanna Jones / Counterpunch Walden, Vermont– In his 2008 book Deep Economy, Bill McKibben concludes that economic growth is the source of the ecological crises we face today. He explains that when the economy grows larger than necessary to meet our basic needs – when it grows for the sake of growth, automatically striving for “more” – its social and environmental costs greatly outweigh any benefits it may provide. Unfortunately, McKibben seems to have forgotten what he so passionately argued just five years ago. Today he is an advocate of industrial wind turbines on our ridgelines: he wants to industrialize our last wild spaces to feed the very economy he fingered as the source of our environmental problems. ...

Two passionate environmentalists discuss the merits and issues of “Alternative Energy” technologies. They argue that it is not the path to a secure and sustainable future, that it threatens human rights, and that it is the wrong path for morally-conscious environmentalists. Topics discussed include the alternative energy industry, community-scale implementation, environmental complications of alternative technologies, and more. This talk was given at PIELC (Public Interest Environmental Law Conference) in 2014 in Eugene, OR. ...