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Grievances
Energy
Wind Farms not fined for bird deaths
Bird deaths present problem at wind farmFor years, a huge wind farm in California's San Joaquin Valley was slaughtering thousands of birds, including golden eagles, red-tailed hawks and burrowing owls. The raptors would get sliced up by the blades on the 5,400 turbines in Altamont Pass, or electrocuted by the wind farm's power lines. Scientists, wildlife agencies and turbine experts came together in an attempt to solve the problem. The result? Protective measures put in place in an effort to reduce deaths by 50% failed. Deaths in fact soared for three of four bird species studied, said the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area Bird Fatality Study. The slaughter at Altamont Pass is being raised by avian scientists who say the drive among environmentalists to rapidly boost U.S. wind-farm power 20 times could lead to massive bird losses and even extinctions. |  |
New wind projects "have the potential of killing a lot of migratory birds," said Michael Fry, director of conservation advocacy at the American Bird Conservancy in Washington.
Wind projects are being proposed for the Texas Gulf, the Atlantic Coast, the Great Plains and Upper Midwest. President Obama said in April that he would allow turbines along the Atlantic as one way to help meet a goal by environmentalists and the industry of generating 20% of the nation's electricity through wind by 2030. Currently about 1% of U.S. power comes from wind, according to the American Wind Energy Association.
"There's concern because of the scale of what we're talking about," said Shawn Smallwood, a Davis, Calif., ecologist and researcher. "Just the sheer numbers of turbines … we're going to be killing so many raptors until there are no more raptors."
Working on the problem
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is aware of the problem and says the administration is working with energy companies and wildlife groups to help lessen the deaths.
"I think we will be able to minimize the number of birds being killed, just in terms of sheer numbers," Salazar said. "The fact that some birds will be killed is a reality."
Officials in the wind-energy industry say migratory birds and birds of prey, including eagles, are killed each year at some of the nation's biggest wind farms, but they say the concerns are overstated.
Laurie Jodziewicz, manager of siting policy for the American Wind Energy Association, said the industry has taken steps to reduce bird deaths.
"We have hundreds and hundreds of projects all over the country that are not having those impacts," she said, referring to Altamont.
Bird deaths cannot be completely eliminated, Jodziewicz said. "There will be some birds that are killed because they do collide with so many structures," Jodziewicz said.
Salazar said new technology in the design of turbines and more careful placement, such as outside of migratory paths and away from ridgelines, can reduce bird deaths.
Fry says other methods include using radar to detect and shut down turbines when migratory birds approach, building towers higher and with more space between them, and placing them away from areas where raptors hunt for small animals.
"Technology has evolved over the last several decades in significant ways," Salazar said. "We know how to do wind farms in ways that minimize and mitigate the effect on birds."
Non-wind utilities fined heavily
Some see a double standard for wind farms.
ExxonMobil pleaded guilty in federal court in August to the deaths of 85 birds at its operations in several states, according to the Department of Justice. The birds were protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and Exxon agreed to pay $600,000 in fines and fees. In July, the PacifiCorp utility of Oregon had to pay $10.5 million in fines, restitution and improvements to their equipment after 232 eagles were killed by running into power lines in Wyoming, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
That is far fewer than the estimated 10,000 birds (nearly all protected by the migratory bird law) that are being killed every year at Altamont, according to Robert Bryce, author of Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of "Energy Independence." Bryce says that follows a decades-long double-standard where oil and gas companies face prosecution, but "politically popular" forms of energy get a pass.
Salazar said his department's Fish and Wildlife Service task force will recommend guidelines for wind farms that are friendlier to birds.
Bird advocates raise doubts about the impact, because the guidelines are voluntary.
"It's still entirely up to power companies where to place towers," said Gavin Shire, spokesman for the American Bird Conservancy.
Obama to the World: Come and Take Our Oil
From NewsRealBlog.com
August 25 2009
by Claude Cartaginese
According to reports from Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, President Barack Obama has generously agreed to lend $2 billion to the oil industry for the purpose of offshore drilling. Those of you who have been proponents of this for some time now are probably thinking that the president has finally come to his senses and has taken the first of many concrete steps required in order to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil.
Not so fast.
Like everything else coming out of the Obama administration, there’s more to this than meets the eye. The government is not lending the money (your money, actually) so that our domestic oil industry can drill offshore and in oil-rich areas with proven reserves such as the Gulf of Mexico. Rather, the government is lending the money to Brazil, so that they can drill offshore and in the Gulf of Mexico.
The recipient of this great act of generosity is Brazil’s quasi-public national oil company, Petrobras, which will use the money for the exploration and drilling of 270 sites in the Gulf of Mexico and over 200 more off the coast of Brazil itself.
For those not knowing much about Petrobras, here are a few interesting facts:
• The Company has been run since 2005 by José Sergio Gabrielli, a firebrand socialist member of Brazil’s leftist Workers’ Party.
• Brazil’s socialist government holds 40% of Petrobras’ shares. The Communist Chinese–who have been guaranteed a supply of 200,000 barrels of oil a day for ten years by the Brazilians in exchange for a $10 billion loan from China’s government earlier this year–also own a significant stake in Petrobras.
• Petrobras’ largest individual shareholder, by far, is none other than leftist billionaire George Soros, whose hedge fund, by some remarkable coincidence, increased its holdings in Petrobras just prior to Obama’s loan announcement.
• Petrobras is currently under investigation by Brazil’s Congress amid allegations that it has padded contracts and paid off politicians.
So the Brazilians will soon be taking oil from the Gulf of Mexico, one of the richest oil fields in the world (and where, until recently, environmentalist protestations have thwarted any drilling attempts by our own government). And, it seems, they will have plenty of company. China, India, Norway, Spain and Russia, to name a few, have all signed agreements with countries bordering the Gulf, such as Cuba and the Bahamas, enabling them to initiate exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico as well.
Within the next two years, when rigs proudly displaying the flags of Brazil, China, Russia, Cuba and other countries are extracting oil right off our coast in order to fuel their economies, take note of the fact that the one flag you won’t be seeing is the Stars and Stripes. For that, you may have to visit a wind farm.
Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling
Too bad it's not in U.S. waters.
The Wall Street Journal
AUGUST 18, 2009, 1:45 P.M. ET
You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil.
The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.
The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a "preliminary commitment" letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas.
But look on the bright side. If President Obama has embraced offshore drilling in Brazil, why not in the old U.S.A.? The land of the sorta free and the home of the heavily indebted has enormous offshore oil deposits, and last year ahead of the November elections, with gasoline at $4 a gallon, Congress let a ban on offshore drilling expire.
The Bush Administration's five-year plan (2007-2012) to open the outer continental shelf to oil exploration included new lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico. But in 2007 environmentalists went to court to block drilling in Alaska and in April a federal court ruled in their favor. In May, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said his department was unsure whether that ruling applied only to Alaska or all offshore drilling. So it asked an appeals court for clarification. Late last month the court said the earlier decision applied only to Alaska, opening the way for the sale of leases in the Gulf. Mr. Salazar now says the sales will go forward on August 19.
This is progress, however slow. But it still doesn't allow the U.S. to explore in Alaska or along the East and West Coasts, which could be our equivalent of the Tupi oil fields, which are set to make Brazil a leading oil exporter. Americans are right to wonder why Mr. Obama is underwriting in Brazil what he won't allow at home.
Submit Your Energy Opinion
The Department of Interior, which decides when and where we drill for oil and gas, has been holding a "notice and comment" period. This is when they solicit input from the public as to whether we should drill or not.
This is one way that the anti-energy interest groups have been able to successfully block any common sense development for decades.
Well the deadline for submissions is on Monday, and we need your help to overwhelm the Interior Department with comments in favor of drilling.
Please take 1 minute to submit your comments right now at YourEnergyOpinion.com.
If you don't have time to write anything, don't worry - it is already taken care of it for you.
Once you submit your comment, please forward YourEnergyOpinion.com to anyone else that you think would be willing to help out.
This is an opportunity that we must seize.