Monday, June 3, 2013

Wind power: NIMBY-ism (Not In My Backyard) VS. WARYDU rhetoric (We Are Right; You Don't Understand)

Because it reads so nice, I am just going to copy-paste this paragraph from the "Acoustic Ecology Institute" (don't ask me what it is, I've never before heard of it) (Source: this here link):
 
From another page: link.
Modern wind turbines are massive structures, hundreds of feet tall, and often constructed in large wind farms that in effect industrialize rural landscapes, from the rolling grassy hills of California, to the vast rangeland of Texas, to ancient ridgelines in the Appalachians, to the commons in rural England. While the trade-offs may be worth it in some areas, the downsides have become more apparent. Resistance to wind farms is often belittled as NIMBY-ism (Not In My Backyard); but at the same time, proponents often slip into oversimplifeid WARYDU rhetoric (We Are Right; You Don't Understand). In most cases, industrial wind farms are complying with local noise limits; the issue has become whether these noise limits are sufficient to protect rural residents from irrevocable changes in the soundscapes of their homes and farms. If we are to forge a reliable energy future that is respectful of both the environment and the rights of neighbors, we'll need to move past knee-jerk reactions on both sides, and develop best practices that can ensure that the landscape and local residents don't become long-term casualties of today's "Klondike Wind Rush."
 

 
 
This caption is from the first site as well <link>:
How big are modern wind turbines? The ones on the left are 60m and 125m; the one on the right is 95m, with blades sweeping an area the size of a 747.
 

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