We are living in the era of stupid energy projects, but offshore wind must be the worst. If there is a dumber way to generate electricity, I don’t know what it might be. The environmental impacts are obvious, which is why well-connected liberals like the Kennedys nix offshore wind projects near where they live. And one can only wonder what will happen as more offshore wind turbines are erected off the Atlantic coast, and a hurricane comes along.
Meanwhile, wind turbines reportedly are killing whales. Remember when “Save the Whales” was a slogan? So do I. Now, apparently, the liberals’ slogan is “Who Cares About the Whales?”
Beachgoers in Atlantic City on Saturday looked on as a single-propeller plane carried a message waving from a banner — “SAVE-WHALES-STOP-WINDMILLS.ORG” — and drivers heading out of town saw a billboard with the same message and a picture of a dead whale washed ashore.
The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and the Heartland Institute sponsored the ads to highlight the potential threat wind turbine development poses to whales, dolphins and other aquatic life.
The Heartland Institute, along with Center of the American Experiment, is a top source of information on energy and the environment.
The campaign comes after a ProPublica report last week found federal regulators in the Biden administration have downplayed environmental risks to greenlight “an unprecedented expansion for offshore wind” projects — including tax incentives through the president’s Inflation Reduction Act for renewable energy developers.
Steve Milloy, a senior fellow at the Energy and Environment Legal Institute who sits on Heartland’s board of directors, told The Post the ad campaign reveals how “Orwellian” government action on the environment has become.
“As the Biden administration is literally permitting the offshore wind industry to kill endangered whales under the guise of ‘saving the planet,’ Earth Day has gone 180 degrees from where it started and has become truly Orwellian,” Milloy said.
ProPublica? This is the kind of odd coupling we are seeing more often these days. Those few liberals who actually care about the environment are shocked at the willingness of “green” energy advocates and the Left generally to throw the environment overboard in a mad dash for the money and power represented by wind and solar energy.
Within the next month or so, my organization will release a major report on the environmental devastation caused by wind and solar energy. Watch for it. My own opinion is that killing whales and other marine life is a minor defect, compared to other environmental ills. And the environmental issues, in turn, are less important than the economic and personal devastation that will be caused by the absurd cost of “green” energy, and the inherent unreliability of weather-dependent energy sources.
Still, there is a definite irony in the fact that it is now the advocates for oil and gas who want to save the whales.