Big Wind

Updated below...

It was only a matter of time, but I didn't expect the wind power industry to be referred to as "Big Wind" so soon.

For decades, dairy farmers have wrested a living from the Tug -- accepting lives of wind-swept hardship with little prospect of much change...

"Is it worth destroying families, pitting neighbor against neighbor, father against son?" asks John Yancey, whose family has farmed Tug Hill for generations. "Is it worth destroying a whole way of life?"

Similar questions are being asked across the country as more small towns grapple with big money and big wind...


So there you have it. Evil Corporate Big Wind preying on poor desperate farm families, tricking them into signing away the air rights over their land. Where have you gone Woody Guthrie? We need you more than ever.

Update

Found via Instapundit, a related story from the New York Times

But in town after town, some residents say, the [wind] companies have delivered something else: an epidemic of corruption and intimidation, as they rush to acquire enough land to make the wind farms a reality.

Those photos have been more effective in black and white. What are they teaching in j-school these days?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe I missed it, but the reporter didn't ask whether John Yancey (aka Whiny Boy) paid his father for the right to live in the farmhouse where he was raised.

I'm betting he's also set to inherit the land, and at 48 years of age, has never had to strike out on his own and earn his own living, independent of the farming business his family has built up for him.

It's his father's land. The Old Man can do whatever he wants with it. If Mr. Yancey Sr. needs any ideas as to how to spend the inheritance, I have a number of good registered charities I can suggest (CARE, Heifer, Doctors Without Borders...).

This is a spoiled kid. Why are we giving him press?

Sign me - Farmer's Daughter who didn't sit around and wait for the inheritance to drop into my lap...

Anonymous said...

A 48 year old son is complaining that his father puts up a wind turbine on the father's land? Isn't it about time he moved out on his own? Another is complaining that he can't fly his glider off his father's land? It sounds to me like the complaints of some spoiled brats who never grew up. These sons need to get their own homes and land and leave the fathers alone. The fathers should take their sons over their knees and give them a good spanking. What a couple of whiners.

Anonymous said...

Ok, these guys also are probably whining about how much gas cost to fill up their trucks. It is all about change and so many don't like to change. Well TOUGH the world is changing and we need to diversify the way we get our energy. Oil is OLD SCHOOL!!!

Now as far as the farther goes it would be a good idea to cut this whiny bitch boy loose from the apron strings.

Anonymous said...

Even the "save the Earth" people whine about the turbines. Here we are harnessing the wind for waste free energy and they moan about the poor birds and bugs that get killed by the blades of the windmills. You just can't please these weasels!

Anonymous said...

How appropriate ... the whiners with their snowmobiles and "roaring engines" complaining about wind power and "their way of life." Just exactly how selfish can they get? It appears there is no limit.

Anonymous said...

They could have just faught and put them up anyway. Thats a nice hunk of change. And what would he rather they do? Go cut down more forest thay we can't afford to lose? Everyone want's a chang for for the better, but doesn't want to be the one to help. "I's blocking my view of the ocean" "I'ts standing in my field" Stop whining, and be grateful your even being compensated for it. Your getting paid for helping save the planet, which everyone should be doing for free. If I were your father, I would have slapped you!