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Swipe at green energy uncalled for
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Editor, Manteca Bulletin,

I recently read an article in the Wall Street Journal about the BrightSource Energy plant near the Nevada border.

The article claimed the plant was burning up birds at an alarming rate every few minutes. Now don’t get me wrong, any wildlife that is lost for any reason is something to be concerned about, but after reading the column on Aug 20, (Dennis Wyatt: “It’s OK for greenies to kill Bambi”) I thought maybe things should be put in perspective. I thought the editorial mirrored the article I read a couple of days earlier as far as the burning birds concern but it seemed to attempt to cast all things green, as far as power producing (solar, wind, etc.) in kind of a bad light as far as a danger to the local wildlife. Solar was burning up birds while wind was “slicing and dicing golden eagles with impunity”. All this slaughter without any kind of monetary punishment for the Green energy companies, in fact they were all getting government tax breaks. Of course all this would be dull if we couldn’t somehow blame President Obama, right? After all, didn’t he give the Green Machine wind farms 30 years of immunity from federal prosecution? Actually it was the Fish and Wildlife agency that got that done but it does sound more nefarious if you add Obama’s name to the claim, doesn’t it? I believe the agency reported something like 85 dead eagles on 32 wind-energy facilities in 10 states from 1997 to June 30, 2012. Disturbing but hardly the all-out slaughter, alluded to in the editorial.

The editorial stated something like 140,000 homes being powered by the “Death Ray” machine, OK, now how many homes are powered by the 32 wind-energy facilities? Now imagine how much dirty coal or oil would be required to produce the same power every day. How many millions of tons of pollution would that generate to add to global warming or just general health concerns? How many more dirty oil train derailments would blow up in our cities? What about the local wildlife?

How many more oil spills would happen in the Gulf of Mexico? How much wildlife would be destroyed, not just during the spill but from then on. Remember the BP spill? It’s not over, it’s still going on. The chemicals sprayed on the surface oil didn’t clean it up, it simply made it sink below the surface. It is still killing and doing who knows how much damage to the Gulf. Remember the jobs lost? That was just one spill. You know what they call a spill on a solar power plant? It’s usually called an extra nice day.

I don’t think the Coal and Oil energy industry wants to go mano-a-mano with the Green energy industry as far as comparing government tax incentives,

which by the way, for the Oil & Coal industry, has been going on for eons, even though the Oil Industry has recorded record profits year after year after year. I also don’t think they want to compare their collective collateral damage estimates and they surely don’t want to compare who is “lining their pockets” with the most Green, do you?

 

Larry Baca

Manteca