Long rant about anti-wind turbine idiots
People that claim to love animals and nature but then turn out to only love how it looks piss me off so much. They don't want to preserve it. They don't give a shit.
They don't want wind turbines because it "destroys the scenery" and don't spend a single braincell thinking about "ok if we don't use wind turbines, what else could produce the energy we need?" Because it's either renewable energy from wind, water and sun, or non-renewable energy like destroying the earth for coal, gas, and oil, or atomic energy that will make the entire area deadly for generations if there's an accident or if it's attacked, even if nothing goes wrong still produces deadly waste that leaks into the ground for centuries.
So I'd think someone who actually likes nature would vastly prefer the renewable energy sources. Even if that means they look bad in the scenery. Getting energy is non-negotiable. The question is HOW we get it. Nature doesn't care if it looks good. It cares that it's only minimally affected by wind turbines and other renewable energies. Felling a few trees and building one road to build a wind turbine is the best option.
I had a classmate who was what I call a performative hippie. Vegan and always on about how we had to save the animals, dreads (she was white) and long skirts and the whole stereotypical hippie look. But she was against wind turbines because they look ugly. I asked her what other source of energy she thought looked better and she didn't have an answer.
Today I saw a video by a creator I actually really liked (milanroessle), who was just as ignorant, and that's what motivated me to make this post. She makes videos about her horse that often runs free alongside her, through German forest.
She posted a video of a big chunk of the forest she frequents being cut down, and that she didn't know why. The most liked comment (by @moeppel.75 on IG) was also liked by her, and it said "it's probably being cut down for wind turbines that are bad for humans, animals, and the environment". So while she didn't say it personally, her giving it a like makes her believes clear. Anyone who truly loves nature would not "like" a comment like that. So after these 2 unfortunate and very disappointing realizations, I blocked her.
1. She doesn't appear to know that the vast majority of forest in Germany is not natural, it's planted by humans to be cut down for production. It's not actually nature, but commercial timber. I don't know if that's the reason why this particular batch was cut down, but this is literally what German forest is made for. Everything except small bits like the tiny national park are for the timber industry, not for nature.
2. She agrees with an idiot (the woman had something like "always learning" in her bio, hilarious) who falls for right wing propaganda and spreads misinformation. I will genuinely never understand how people google something and then go digging through all the credible information only to discard all of it but fully buy into the whacky misinformation they found on Facebook.
One of my friend's mom is like that too, she loves nature and wants to save all animals, and after hearing about bees dying she got very concerned about it. But instead of believing all the actual real science with real sources, she chose to believe a guy on tiktok who said wind turbines kill bees. I asked her how they could kill bees, she said with the blades. I told her I didn't think bees are flying anywhere as high as that, and even if they did, they're probably small enough to not get injured by them at all. She didn't answer.
So just to make it clear: wind turbines, hydropower and solar energy are the most environmentally friendly, animal-friendly, and human-friendly energy sources available. I don't understand why people hate them with such vengeance.
What exactly is so terrible about wind turbines?
1. If something breaks, the entire area isn't immediately contaminated with radiation for generations to come. There's no radioactive waste being continously produced that eats through barrels and pollutes the ground.
2. They pose no danger to humans, people do not live in the immediate vicinity. The people that complain about the noise are the same people that complain about hearing and feeling 5G towers only to discover that those towers weren't even turned on.
3. They cause no harm to the environment, aside from the construction of a single access road used to deliver the turbine components. Otherwise, the surrounding area can remain entirely forested. A single wind turbine certainly does not require an area as big as the one in the video to be felled, that's an absolutely nonsensical suggestion.
4. Nor do they harm animals. They are significantly friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling. Research proves that birds are highly capable of flying around or over turbines, and if they weren't good at avoiding collisions, they'd all have gone extinct by now from all the houses, bridges, and tall trees they would crash against. Yet that's the #1 argument by idiots, but why on earth would birds die by the thousands from wind turbines but be fine with buildings, trees or mountains the same height? They have eyes ffs.
There is simply no credible evidence to suggest that wind turbines are harmful to humans, animals, or the environment. I don't understand why those people want to hate wind turbines so desperately that they make up misinformation about them. There's as much misinformation about them as there is about the moon landing being fake and the earth being flat.
