We were taught in grade school that war is a last resort.
We were not taught that war is a huge financial boost to manufacturers of airplanes, ammo and uniforms. We were taught that we were right and those who opposed us were not.
We’re not at war in Carroll County, but our words are red hot and stinging over these proposed wind turbines across a wide swath of this county.
Hawaii erected huge fan blades on Maui’s mountains to generate electricity. Some birds, deer, cows and chickens were confused and simply died. Some humans left because they couldn’t sleep. Drinking water soured.
But the windfarms did provide 26 percent of Maui’s energy last year. Another 23 percent of the island’s renewable energy came from individual home solar panels, and 32 percent of renewable energy came from commercial solar panels. Biofuels contributed 0.1 percent.
So, the island got a big chunk of its electricity from renewable sources, enough to share. A fair trade?
A month or so ago, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote that he wanted “transmission lines to bring wind energy from the middle of the country to the coasts.”
Middle of the country includes us, Arkansas, the watchpocket of this country. We have mountain tops where the wind is not too strong, not too weak, and not too expensive. It’s just right.
Hazards of wind turbines include constant noise from spinning blades, country roads turned into “real roads” with pavement, speed limits and load-bearing capacity signs. Wildlife has no one to speak for it, but bats, hawks, eagles, cardinals, all of them, are forced to learn by dying that giant spinning oars in the sky are to be avoided.
Yet we must do something. Maybe the earth is undergoing big changes that are out of our hands, but maybe not.
We have seen Standing Rock’s pipeline, Arctic drilling and Oklahoma fracking turn communities into terrestrial nightmares. Fracking is where drillers force water, sand, and chemicals into rock so it will split open and release oil. It’s a cruel way to treat the kind old lady who lets us live on her.
This tug-of-war between corporations that trade properties as though they’re baseball cards are looking to make as much money in as little time as possible. They strolled in here quietly and assessed us as affordable, sparsely populated, and unlikely to get riled.
The windfarm isn’t just about us and our cows and birds. It is designed to take Mr. Bret Stephens and his eight-and-a-half million neighbors in NYC cheap electricity.
This would be a good time to negotiate. The wind blades are already manufactured and a pain in the huckleberries to transport and erect, but we might consider saying yes to that if we get our way about it.
We could insist on paid officials to inspect the new roads and health of the herds, count the bird carcasses, and monitor the attention span of our school kids every single week. These companies must stand behind their theory that this business is good for us, not just for people thousands of miles away. Give the citizens of Carroll County specialist health services. Provide the coasts with what we can, but get something in return besides 13 or 25 thousand dollars for some individuals.
This is not an ideal situation for anybody, but if we trade our land and way of life so others benefit, they in turn should see to it that we are treated generously, not dismissively, deceptively or threateningly.
Lifetime healthcare should be free and available to any of us as long as we live here, funded by those who benefit from our sacrifice.
Negotiate. Quibble. We don’t have to go to war. War is life and death. Negotiation is bragging rights.
We can’t stop hurricanes or ice storms or wildfires or student debt, all we can do is clean up the mess afterwards. Maybe we can’t stop companies from buying our land without justice, but we can make them reckon with our needs and views.
Every month, 17,000 houses in the UK add solar panels. The UK is not known for sunlight. China installed more solar panels in 2023 than the U.S. has in the past three decades.
Our cars spend 95% of their time parked.
We really must do something.