Back to Basics

Wind farms are incredibly costly to produce energy. Since they don’t operate all the time, back up generating sources are required — meaning that you have to spend building two generating facilities to produce energy. But there are costs that wind farms impose on the environment that they are also not required to bear, costs that would cause any other operation to be shutdown. From the WSJ:

Last June, the Los Angeles Times reported that about 70 golden eagles are being killed per year by the wind turbines at Altamont Pass, about 20 miles east of Oakland, Calif. A 2008 study funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency estimated that about 2,400 raptors, including burrowing owls, American kestrels, and red-tailed hawks—as well as about 7,500 other birds, nearly all of which are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act—are being killed every year by the turbines at Altamont.

A pernicious double standard is at work here. And it riles Eric Glitzenstein, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer who wrote the petition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He told me, “It’s absolutely clear that there’s been a mandate from the top” echelons of the federal government not to prosecute the wind industry for violating wildlife laws. . . .

the deadly Pine Tree facility, which the Fish and Wildlife Service believes is killing 1,595 birds, or about 12 birds per megawatt of installed capacity, per year. . . . The Pennsylvania Game Commission estimates that wind turbines killed more than 10,000 bats in the state in 2010. . . .

“The Puritan hates fox-hunting, not because it brings pain to the fox, but because it brings pleasure to the hunter.”
- Lord McCauley

“Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone somewhere may be enjoying himself.”
- H.L. Mencken

“You [Sarah Palin] weren’t killing that animal for food or shelter or even fashion, you were killing it for fun.  You enjoy killing animals.  What she did [is] heart-stoppingly disgusting … I don’t have a visceral problem eating meat or wearing a belt … I don’t enjoy the fact that they’re dead and I certainly don’t want to volunteer to be the one to kill them.”
- Aaron Sorkin, in the Huffington Post, reacting to a caribou hunt on “Sarah Palin’s Alaska”

Well, goody for you, Aaron!  A gold star for the little boy with the glasses!  So screenwriter Sorkin prefers the role of Don Barzini to that of Michael Corleone.  Your loyal servant here often found himself on Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect,” surrounded by such people.  Ah, yes, Hollywood: a place where you’re denounced for spearfishing — by the patrons of a sushi bar!  Here was (the late and great actor) James Coburn, along with Tom Green, Florence Henderson, and others, gnawing on buffalo wings and salmon croquettes in the “Politically Incorrect” greenroom, then going on stage to bash me for hunting ducks and spearing fish.

“The difference between you and me, James,” I chuckled at an enraged Coburn, “is the difference between Don Barzini and Mikey Corleone.”  Coburn sat back and glowered.  “Others pulled the triggers, but Barzini put the hit on Don Corleone, remember?  Just like you put a hit on a cute, defenseless creature every time you buy meat.  Now recall McCluskey’s and Sollazo’s fate in that restaurant.  Mikey insisted on carrying out his own hits.  He looked the issue in the face.  He shouldered the responsibility — like hunters.  We do our own dirty work.  Those mallards, deer, and grouper I hunt down, assassinate, then eat are no deader than the chicken and salmon I watched you eat fifteen minutes ago.  And until I whacked them, they lived a much more enjoyable life than the chicken you’re still digesting.  Hunters revel in the role nature handed us: predator — no guilty conscience about it whatsoever.  You hand off the responsibility to a slaughterhouse worker.  Fine, that’s your business.  But don’t get all smug about it.  You’re as culpable for that chicken’s death as I am for the duck’s.  But unlike you — us hunters look nature’s mandates right in the face!”

“This is too damn easy,” I finally told Bill.  “I’m a hunter, for heaven’s sake.  I like a challenge, some sport.  Get me on here with some vegetarians next time.  That’ll make my job harder.”

“‘A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy,’ says PETA,” I raved on another show at (PETA board member) Maher himself.  “Fine, but rats, pigs, and dogs all hunt and kill other animals.  Yet you PETA people want to deny the boy the same role.  You contradict your own doctrine.”

“My dog doesn’t hunt!” shouted former “Talk Soup” host John Henson from beside me.