Wind energy companies bully, threaten, and intimidate those who oppose this monumental fraud

Jun 17, 2013

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turbine-bully2

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How Big Wind blows away its opponents

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—James Delingpole, The Australian (6/18/13)

Since 2007, household electricity prices in Australia have risen by more than 40 per cent and by next year are projected to rise by around about 30 per cent.  If this bothers you then the place you should be today is Canberra, joining the people’s revolution against what Alby Schultz MP says is the “biggest government-sponsored fraud in the history of our country.”

Schultz was speaking to parliament about Big Wind, an industry so rife with “intimidation, manipulation, lies and cover-up” he believes there’s enough evidence “to justify a royal commission.”  So how come, you may be wondering, so many of us have been kept in the dark for so long?

The short answer seems to be that money buys both silence and public ignorance. For just one large-scale wind turbine, a developer can make nearly $500,000 in taxpayer subsidies called Renewable Energy Certificates.  Under current government carbon emissions reduction plans, some $50 billion of these RECs are to be issued, every cent of them funnelled out of your pocket and into the (often offshore) bank account of your friendly neighbourhood Big Wind outfit.  Meanwhile your energy bills (part of which, by government mandate, must come from “renewables”) skyrocket.

With all this free loot, Big Wind has more than enough money to hide its secrets.  It does so in three main ways: first by hiring silver-tongued lobbyists; second with lavish propaganda campaigns ranging from brainwashing programs at schools to misleading claims on their websites about all the wonderful benefits wind farms supposedly bring; third by being able to afford the world’s most expensive lawyers.

I got a taste of what I saw as this legal bullying the last time I wrote about wind farms in The Australian.  A stiff, threatening letter swiftly came winging its way from a high-end Sydney law firm, followed by a complaint to the Press Council.  This complaint was upheld, even though my facts were correct and the supposedly “offensive” phrase came not from me but from a sheep farmer understandably incensed that his little patch of NSW paradise was about to become a Golgotha of bat-chomping, bird-slicing eco crucifixes.

But I got off quite lightly.  Around the world, anyone who dares to take on Big Wind may endure a campaign of smears and character assassination.  It’s bad enough in Australia—just ask Sarah Laurie—but even worse in Canada, where a young environmentalist called Esther Wrightman is being sued by a $32bn wind developer called NextEra energy.  Why?  For creating a website in which she protested against the ugly, noisy 120m-high turbines NextEra planned to erect in her part of Ontario.

At this point some of you may be thinking:  “Oh come on. There’s got to be another side to this.”  And I would concede that on the surface the case for wind looks quite compelling:  it’s “free”; it’s carbon-neutral; it’s eco-friendly; it boosts the economy.

Except when you examine the details you realise that none of these claims stands up.

Being intermittent, unreliable, unpredictable and enormously expensive, wind is a very poor substitute for the cheap fossil fuel in which Australia abounds.  It doesn’t create real jobs just heavily subsidised Potemkin jobs.  (In Britain every wind industry job costs the taxpayer pound stg. 100,000 a year in subsidies.)  And that’s before you get on to the terrible health problems that can be caused by the low-frequency noise of those giant whupping blades; and the devastation they cause wildlife, especially bats and birds of prey.  Tony Abbott’s business adviser Maurice Newman calls wind farms “an obscene wealth transfer from poor to rich” and a “crime against the people” and wants the renewables target scrapped.

He’s dead right, but if anyone has the guts to do it they’re going to face a lot of entrenched resistance from the pollies and big business alike.

The ALP, as I’ve written here before, is heavily involved, not least because of the vast sums of industry super-fund money that have been pumped into it.  And if you think Big Wind’s crony capitalists are going to give up without a fight, you clearly don’t know the kind of people you’ll be dealing with.

God, I wish I could be there at the barricades with the protesters in Canberra today!  If ever a cause was worth fighting for, this is the one.

  1. Comment by Jackie on 06/17/2013 at 10:05 pm

    Slowly—the urbanites are learning . . . Unfortunately, not fast enough. . . .

  2. Comment by Young on 06/18/2013 at 5:07 am

    Great report which I am going to share with others.

    Young Ng
    Hong Kong

  3. Comment by Shellie Correia on 08/16/2013 at 11:37 am

    James Delingpole….he has known about this scam, and has been trying to educate others for what seems like ages. Thank you to all of the people like James, Nina, Calvin, Esther, Carmen, Brett, Sherri, Jane, Parker, Sarah, etc. (Just to name a few.)

    Without the skills, knowledge, and generosity of such heroes, this battle would be insurmountable. But, I believe, we are winning!

    It takes time, but I believe time is on our side!

    Keep fighting everyone!

  4. Comment by anne burke on 08/18/2013 at 9:47 am

    just starting the journey in ireland; same bullies, money and lies

  5. Comment by Ross on 09/30/2013 at 4:12 pm

    Here in Ireland the wind lobby has driven energy policy to such an extent that we now have a national commitment to reaching 37% electricity generation by wind, by 2020. The cost of reaching this target has never been explained to the Irish public.

    Denmark is Europe’s leading nation in the race to expensive wind power, and there domestic electricity already costs 29c per kWhr.

    Expect Ireland’s consumers who do not benefit from Denmark’s interconnection to low-cost Scandinavian hydro power to pay at least 35c for a single kWhr of electricity.

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