{"id":26116,"date":"2013-06-14T20:49:10","date_gmt":"2013-06-15T00:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/static\/?p=26116"},"modified":"2013-06-14T21:02:22","modified_gmt":"2013-06-15T01:02:22","slug":"journalist-slams-nextera-for-suing-esther-wrightman-canadas-joan-of-arc-national-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/2013\/journalist-slams-nextera-for-suing-esther-wrightman-canadas-joan-of-arc-national-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Journalist slams NextEra for suing Esther Wrightman, Canada’s Joan of Arc (National Review)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Joan_of_Arc_by_skullsquidattack\"<\/p>\n

“Big Wind SLAPPs Critic”<\/h3>\n

—Robert Bryce, National Review Online<\/a>\u00a0(6\/11\/13)<\/p>\n

The Goliath of the wind-energy business is suing David. The defendant is Esther Wrightman, an activist and mother of two from the tiny town of Kerwood, Ontario, which sits roughly halfway between Detroit and Toronto.<\/p>\n

Wrightman, 32, has angered the Florida-based NextEra Energy (market capitalization: $32 billion) by starting a couple of bare-bones websites, ontariowindresistance.org and mlwindaction.org, as well as a YouTube channel, which she uses to lampoon the company. In its lawsuit, filed on May 1, NextEra claims that Wrightman has misused its logo and libeled the company by calling it \u201cNexTerror\u201d and \u201cNextError.\u201d And while the company doesn\u2019t specify the amount of damages it seeks from Wrightman, it says that it will donate any proceeds from the litigation to United Way.<\/p>\n

NextEra owns some 10,000 megawatts of wind-generation capacity, or about one-sixth of all U.S. capacity. And the company is aggressively developing six new wind projects in Canada, one of which, the Adelaide Wind Energy Centre, aims to put 38 turbines just north of Wrightman\u2019s home. (You can see her property and the surrounding land by going here.)<\/p>\n

NextEra\u2019s filing against Wrightman is a textbook case of a SLAPP suit<\/a>, a strategic lawsuit against public participation. And it\u2019s a particularly loathsome one as NextEra filed it in Ontario, the epicenter of the backlash against the encroaching sprawl of the 150-meter-high, noise-producing, bird-and-bat-killing, subsidy-dependent wind-energy sector.<\/p>\n

Making it yet more loathsome: The suit was filed just before the Ontario legislature began considering a bill that would limit SLAPP suits. SLAPP suits have been common \u2014 and largely successful \u2014 in recent years in several Canadian provinces, including Ontario and British Columbia. Limits are needed, says Ontario\u2019s attorney general, John Gerretsen, because SLAPPs have a \u201cchilling effect\u201d on public debate. Nearly 30 U.S. states have enacted laws to prevent SLAPPs.<\/p>\n

Ontario is home to more than 50 active anti-wind-energy groups. Numerous towns in the province have passed regulations to prevent the construction of turbines in their areas. Last year, Health Canada said it would conduct a study into the health effects of the infrasound and low-frequency noise generated by wind turbines.<\/p>\n

Ontario currently has about 1,500 megawatts of installed capacity. By early 2014, that number is expected to nearly triple, to some 4,300 megawatts. NextEra alone has plans to develop 600 megawatts of wind in Ontario, according to its spokesman Steve Stengel.<\/p>\n

Peter D. Kennedy, an attorney based in Austin, Texas, whose practice focuses on technology and libel law, says NextEra\u2019s suit is an attempt to silence Wrightman. \u201cBesides being almost impossible to win,\u201d he told me, \u201cthese kinds of lawsuits are almost never a good idea. They turn critics into martyrs and make the company look like a bully.\u201d Like Americans, Canadians have the right to, as Kennedy puts it, \u201cexpress their opinions in unpleasant ways, and they can use parody in their criticism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most stunning aspect of NextEra\u2019s lawsuit is its claim that Wrightman \u2014 by merely opposing its wind projects \u2014 is a \u201ccompetitor insofar as she is seeking donations in order to divert business from NextEra to other energy-producing businesses in Ontario.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just for a moment, let\u2019s consider the outrage that might be heard from the Sierra Club or Greenpeace if an oil and gas company were to file a similarly specious lawsuit against one of the many activists who oppose drilling and\/or hydraulic fracturing. What\u2019s to prevent Shell or Chevron from suing Yoko Ono? She\u2019s a leading critic of hydraulic fracturing. On the logic of NextEra\u2019s lawsuit, therefore, she has become a \u201ccompetitor\u201d to Shell and Chevron thanks to her promotion of renewable energy. Or what if Devon Energy sued Josh Fox, the poseur\/auteur behind the film Gasland, which contains numerous false statements about oil and gas production?<\/p>\n

What\u2019s at stake here? For Wrightman and other anti-wind activists, the issue is freedom of speech and their right to fight to protect themselves and the value of their homes from the noise and other issues that come with having 500-foot-tall turbines in their neighborhoods. Regardless of your feelings about wind energy, NextEra\u2019s SLAPP suit against Wrightman should be condemned. She is simply exercising her rights. She should not be harassed just because she has hurt the feelings of someone at NextEra, a company that was named to the 2012 Dow Jones Sustainability Index.<\/p>\n

Sustainable or not, NextEra clearly sees big profits in Canada. The company\u2019s 60-megawatt Adelaide project, the one it plans to build near Wrightman\u2019s home, has been awarded a contract for a lucrative feed-in tariff from the Ontario Power Authority. That contract guarantees the company 11.5 cents (Canadian) for each kilowatt-hour of electricity it generates from the Adelaide project for the next 20 years. That\u2019s an enormous subsidy. In the U.S., wind-energy producers usually get a subsidy of 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour. The Ontario subsidy for wind energy exceeds the average cost of electricity in the U.S., which, according to the Energy Information Administration, is now 9.7 cents per kilowatt-hour<\/p>\n

A back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that with the feed-in tariff, NextEra\u2019s Adelaide project (assuming it operates at full capacity one-third of the time) will produce about $20 million per year in revenue. That will result in a huge return on investment. Installing each megawatt of onshore wind-energy capacity costs about $2.2 million. Therefore, NextEra will likely make back its entire investment in the Adelaide project (about $132 million) in less than seven years. After that, all the revenue will be profit.<\/p>\n

NextEra calls itself \u201ca leader in clean energy.\u201d But the company also has the distinction of being the only company to ever be publicly pressured by a governmental entity over the birds that are killed by its turbines. In 2010, then\u2013attorney general Jerry Brown brokered a $2.5 million settlement with NextEra Energy Resources for the bird kills that were occurring at the company\u2019s Altamont wind project, located about 40 miles east of San Francisco. In 2011, the Los Angeles Times reported that about 70 golden eagles per year are being killed by wind turbines located at Altamont. That finding follows a 2008 study funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency, which estimated that about 2,400 raptors, including burrowing owls, American kestrels, and red-tailed hawks \u2014 as well as about 7,500 other birds \u2014 are being killed every year by the wind turbines at Altamont. (Despite numerous violations of both the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Eagle Protection Act, not a single wind-energy company has ever been prosecuted by the U.S. government under those laws.)<\/p>\n

Wrightman has put a spotlight on NextEra\u2019s bird policies in Canada. In January, she filmed the company\u2019s workers as they cut down a bald-eagle nest in Haldimand County in southern Ontario and posted the video on YouTube. (NextEra did have permission from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources to remove the nest, which was located close to one of the company\u2019s wind-turbine projects.)<\/p>\n

In picking a fight with Wrightman, NextEra has acquired a feisty foe. When I spoke to her by phone last week, Wrightman made it clear she won\u2019t alter her website or quit speaking out. Of the 100 wind turbines planned for her county, more than a dozen are slated to be built within a couple of miles of her home, and one could be built just 1,600 meters away. \u201cI was born and raised here,\u201d she told me. \u201cYou know every tree. Every animal. You know the sky. And for that sky to be industrialized and to have absolutely no say in the process infuriates me.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an e-mailed statement, NextEra \u2014 which is represented in the litigation by McCarthy T\u00e9trault, the fourth-largest law firm in Canada, with 590 lawyers \u2014 told me its lawsuit against Wrightman is \u201cnot a SLAPP suit\u201d and that its litigation is \u201ca measured response to protect the goodwill associated with NextEra\u2019s name.\u201d The company said it sued because Wrightman is \u201cdistorting, mutilating or otherwise modifying NextEra\u2019s corporate names and logos.\u201d<\/p>\n

What if NextEra wins in court? Wrightman, who can\u2019t afford to hire a lawyer and wrote her own defense (and has asked the court in Toronto to waive the $144 filing fee), says she\u2019s not overly worried. \u201cWe have nothing,\u201d Wrightman told me. She works part time for her parents in their small mail-order nursery business, Wrightman Alpines. Her husband is on disability. They rent the house they live in, for $825 per month. They transport their two children, Thomas, ten, and Clara, seven, in their one car, a silver 2001 Toyota Echo, which has over 200,000 miles on it.<\/p>\n

If NextEra wins the lawsuit against her and \u201cthey want that car, go for it,\u201d Wrightman told me with a gentle laugh. \u201cWhat else can they take?\u201d<\/p>\n

.<\/span>
\nRobert Bryce<\/a>, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is the author, most recently, of Power Hungry: The Myths of \u201cGreen\u201d Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Big Wind SLAPPs Critic” —Robert Bryce, National Review Online\u00a0(6\/11\/13) The Goliath of the wind-energy business is suing David. The defendant is Esther Wrightman, an activist and mother of two from the tiny town of Kerwood, Ontario, which sits roughly halfway between Detroit and Toronto. Wrightman, 32, has angered the Florida-based NextEra Energy (market capitalization: $32 billion) by starting a couple of bare-bones websites, ontariowindresistance.org and mlwindaction.org, as well as a YouTube channel, which she uses to lampoon the company. In its lawsuit, filed on May 1, NextEra claims that Wrightman has misused its logo and libeled the company by calling it \u201cNexTerror\u201d and \u201cNextError.\u201d And while the company doesn\u2019t specify the amount of damages it seeks from Wrightman, it says that it will donate any proceeds from the litigation to United Way. NextEra owns some 10,000 megawatts of wind-generation capacity, or about one-sixth of all U.S. capacity. And the company is aggressively developing six new wind projects in Canada, one of which, the Adelaide Wind Energy Centre, aims to put 38 turbines just north of Wrightman\u2019s home. (You can see her property and the surrounding land by going here.) NextEra\u2019s filing against Wrightman is a textbook case of a SLAPP suit, a strategic lawsuit against public participation. And it\u2019s a particularly loathsome one as NextEra filed it in Ontario, the epicenter of the backlash against the encroaching sprawl of the 150-meter-high, noise-producing, bird-and-bat-killing, subsidy-dependent wind-energy sector. Making it yet more loathsome: The suit was filed just before the Ontario legislature began considering a bill that would limit SLAPP suits. SLAPP suits have been common \u2014 and largely successful \u2014 in recent years in several Canadian provinces, including Ontario and British Columbia. Limits are needed, says Ontario\u2019s attorney general, John Gerretsen, because SLAPPs have a \u201cchilling effect\u201d on public debate. NearlyRead More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[171,157,16,170],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26116"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}