I live on the East Coast of Australia, which is a beautiful place with some of the best beaches in the world. We have a very healthy surfer culture all up and down the coast and generally we’re a pretty laid back peoples who are environmentally conscious even if we aren’t all that diligent. Recently there has been some plans put forward to build some massive Offshore Wind Farms just off our coastline and there is some growing resistance and activism from the locals here who are concerned about the environmental, visual and economic impacts that it will have on our beautiful coast.
I understand the argument that people tend to make on both sides of the Climate Change debate and personally I am not interested in weighing in on all that partisan bullshit. I am concerned about the environment and the sustainability of humanity long term, but I don’t buy into a lot of the alarmist rhetoric of the climate activists. What I am struggling with is this apparrent silliness of potentially ruining the environment so that we can save it.
This recent push for Offshore Wind Farms is a global one and I see snippets of stories here and there about Offshore Wind Farm developments overseas which do, or don’t work. I’ve read about the sheer amount of materials needed to build these enormous things. There are questions over the cost effectiveness of maintaining them and the destructive impact they can have on birds and marine life. Like anything politicized and emotional these days it’s hard to know what the truth of it all really is.
As a bit of a cynic who knows the corruption of governments fairly well I tend to think that these locally proposed big dollar projects are really more about someone(s) making money off the taxpayer. We’ve had a long history of great White Elephant projects in this country that cost huge amounts, make small fortunes for a few insiders and turn out to be total failures. The problem with this particular scheme is that the cost is not just money. If there are negative environmental impacts to it then it’s something that needs to be resisted and over here the local resistance is growing. The image I’ve used for this post is from a poster from a local surfer group promoting a “Paddle Out” protest later this month where they hope to break a World Record.
So I am interested to ask my friends on HIVE from around the world. Do you have Offshore Wind Farms in your area? Do they work as intended and are they cost effective to maintain? Do they have a negative impact on your bird and marine life? Do you have any anecdotal stories or advice for us here in Australia?