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from Natural Life Magazine, July/August 2007 Q: What is your opinion of wind energy’s environmental and health effects? A: First let us say that we very much favor wind power and all other sources of environmentally friendly, renewable energy. They are crucial alternatives to fossil fuels, which are major contributors to global warming, and to nuclear reactors, which, among other problems like heavy water usage, have an unsolved dangerous waste hazard. We have found that many of the criticisms of wind energy are inflated. And a much greater threat to birds, animals and humans comes from allowing climate change to create floods, drought, forest fires, severe storms and other catastrophic occurrences. The controversy that sometimes surrounds wind energy often relates to scale. As in many situations, small is often better. For the past few decades, there have been many research studies about the effects of wind farms on bird mortality and the quality of life for nearby residents. In the U.S., these studies were prompted by the relatively high number of raptors that were found dead at the Altamont Pass Wind Farms near San Francisco – a situation that even prompted an unsuccessful lawsuit by the Center for Biological Diversity in 2004. The Altamont Pass site was one of the first locations in the U.S. to be developed for commercial wind energy generation. Recent research indicates that the large-scale bird kills at that site are an unusual and possibly unique phenomenon caused by a number of factors, including bad siting and the particular wind turbine and tower technology used when it was built in the early 1980s. The wind farm consists of lattice-like towers, which provide attractive perches for birds, supporting 4,800 small turbines, as opposed to newer farms consisting of larger turbines constructed on taller tubular towers. Properly sited, today’s wind farms seem to present much less danger to bird populations. Nevertheless, studies show that in the U.S., turbines kill between 40,000 and 70,000 birds per year. However, these numbers must be put into perspective with the generally far greater hazards posed by land clearing due to residential sprawl, road traffic, large buildings, power lines, traffic, hunting and agricultural pesticides, which together account for... To read the rest of this article, subscribe to Natural Life's digital edition, which includes access to this and other back issues. Wendy Priesnitz is the Editor of Natural Life Magazine and a journalist with 30 years of experience. She has also authored nine books. Read her blog. |
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