Opinion: Counting the cost of pollution and climate change, wind energy is much cheaper than burning fossil fuels

To the editor: Dirty energy apologist Robert Bryce claims wind energy has a larger “physical footprint” than natural gas. He misleads the reader with his use of the term “physical footprint,” since the full footprint of his preferred energy source, natural gas, is significantly larger. (“Wind power is an attack on rural America,” Opinion, Feb. 27)

Carbon dioxide from burning natural gas and methane that leaks from gas wells are, according to climate scientists, increasing the energy content of our atmosphere such that property damage measured in trillions of dollars and millions of lives is increasingly likely in our not-too-distant future. On the other hand, some people don’t like the way wind towers look.

Dirty energy has had its time, but wind and solar are now cheaper when all costs are accounted for. Society needs to transition to cleaner, non-harmful sources of energy.

Paul Scott, Santa Monica

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To the editor: Wind energy boosts rural American economies in unmatched ways, although you wouldn’t know that from Bryce’s commentary.

Ninety nine percent of wind farms and their economic benefits go to rural areas, often among the country’s lowest-income counties. Farmers and ranchers get $245 million a year in lease payments for hosting turbines, and wind has attracted more than $140 billion of private investment in the last decade. The taxes wind projects pay help rural towns fix roads, pay teachers and buy ambulances while reducing other citizens’ taxes.

“It’s helping us survive and maintain services,” as Iowa farmer Michael Nolte told a Bloomberg reporter last year. A 2016 Pew poll found 83% of Americans support more wind.

That means Nolte’s view isn’t the exception, it’s the rule.

Tom Kiernan, Washington

The writer is chief executive of the American Wind Energy Assn.

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To the editor: What good is an industry that, in order to produce a nominal amount of power, has to consume vast amounts of land, kills avian life and creates a large-scale blinking blight on the landscape?

One landowner should not have the right to ruin another landowner’s views, property values and life. Wind turbines are visual pollution on the largest scale that destroy rural life, pit neighbor against neighbor and turn pastoral landscapes into industrialized slums.

Les Starks, Whitewater, Calif.

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To the editor: Bryce’s hit piece on wind power furthers the interests of the fossil fuel industry, which underwrites him and the Manhattan Institute.

The opposition to wind that Bryce highlights has too often been driven or enabled by those same fossil fuel interests. Don’t be fooled — there is a well-funded effort to undermine the case for clean energy. Bryce ignores the many instances where wind turbines have benefited farmers and ranchers and supplied welcome revenue to rural counties.

The Sierra Club and the wind industry don’t agree on everything. We don’t need to. We do, however, agree that wind power is an essential part of how we will reduce and one day end our use of fossil fuels that harm people and foul our air, land and water while stoking ruinous climate disruption.

Bill Corcoran, Los Angeles

The writer is the western campaign director for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.

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