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View uncluttered by wind farms? Priceless

Winnipeg Free Press|John Beckham|August 20, 2007
CanadaImpact on Landscape

The mad excess in the consumption of energy that characterizes what increasingly appears to be a dying way of life, if not civilization, now desires to replace the humanity that used to fill the countryside, with these great, ugly, threshing monstrosities, assaulting our sight wherever we turn. Our government, led by gregarious, grinning Gary Doer, who never saw an open field he didn't think would be improved by a power-generating windmill, wants to make our province into a powerhouse, largely for American consumption.


A couple of years ago I received a phone call. On the other end of the line was a real estate agent in Calgary. The purpose of his call, he explained, was to inform me that he was assembling parcels of land adjacent to land that I own in southwestern Manitoba, with a view to testing for wind velocity, and if suitable, to establishing a wind farm for the generation of electricity.
I told him, after thoughtfully considering his proposition for all of five seconds, that there would be no windmills on my property while I was above the sod. He seemed genuinely astonished at my attitude and promised to check back with me later. He never did.

I have driven through the St. Leon area, and I have driven through Alberta where there are wind …

... more [truncated due to possible copyright]

A couple of years ago I received a phone call. On the other end of the line was a real estate agent in Calgary. The purpose of his call, he explained, was to inform me that he was assembling parcels of land adjacent to land that I own in southwestern Manitoba, with a view to testing for wind velocity, and if suitable, to establishing a wind farm for the generation of electricity.
I told him, after thoughtfully considering his proposition for all of five seconds, that there would be no windmills on my property while I was above the sod. He seemed genuinely astonished at my attitude and promised to check back with me later. He never did.

I have driven through the St. Leon area, and I have driven through Alberta where there are wind farms. In both places there is no possibility of viewing anything in the countryside that is not dominated by these monstrous things.

In my view, they are the final insult to a beautiful and increasingly empty land. Over the last 70 years, the efforts of politicians, economists and bankers have pretty well emptied the countryside of the western provinces. In a mad orgy of destruction, railroads have been torn up, elevators knocked down and farmsteads abandoned.

The term "family farm" is so far removed from its original meaning that I doubt that whoever first coined the term would claim ownership of it now.

The mad excess in the consumption of energy that characterizes what increasingly appears to be a dying way of life, if not civilization, now desires to replace the humanity that used to fill the countryside, with these great, ugly, threshing monstrosities, assaulting our sight wherever we turn.

Our government, led by gregarious, grinning Gary Doer, who never saw an open field he didn't think would be improved by a power-generating windmill, wants to make our province into a powerhouse, largely for American consumption. It's not enough that our own greed, coupled with that of the Americans, is doing more than our share to pollute the air we breathe and the water we drink. Now, we must have visual pollution as well.

And it's being done by throwing what amounts to crusts to desperate farmers, grasping at any lifeline that will allow them to stay on the land.

If someone came to me and offered me $20,000 a year if I would agree to a windmill, I would still turn it down, but to be offered $4,000 or less a year for what is both above and below ground with these ugly brutes is, to me, an outright insult.

Besides, in the event that technology renders such installations obsolete, who has the responsibility to remove them? What do we know of the impact of these things on humans, on wildlife, on the air, the soil?

To this citizen of Manitoba, who was born, raised and has spent an increasingly long life in this beautiful province, the placing of these ugly brutes on prime agricultural land is nothing short of an obscenity.

I am convinced that time will make those who have succumbed and allowed these things on their farms to bitterly regret their decision.

From the highest point of my highest quarter, I can look away to the southwest, to the town of Killarney 40 kilometres away, and beyond that to the blue outline of the Turtle Mountains.

The thought of that magnificent sweep of land filled with the stack of ugliness of these things fills me with dismay. Is there no end to what we will do to make a few dollars?

 


Source:http://www.winnipegfreepress.…

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