Different leftist organizations in Norway seem to have different stances.
Tjen Folket referred to opposition to wind turbines as a "just campaign", but it's not clear to me in context whether this is referring to opposition to wind turbines in general or just opposition to specific wind farms. The Communist Party of Norway seems to support floating wind turbines but does not mention wind turbines on land. The Young Communists, its youth wing, does not appear to have anything about wind power on its website. The Red Party is opposed to wind turbines in general, on land and on sea; however the Red Youth, the Red Party's youth wing, supports the construction of wind turbines provided that this is done in a "responsible" way. Revolusjon.no and marxisme.no seem to oppose the construction of wind farms in general, focusing on Norway's relationship to the EU in general and Germany in particular, saying that these wind turbines are essentially being built to generate profits for capitalists to the detriment of locals in these areas. They have a number of articles that I would like to eventually read in full.
So there seems to be a range of opinions within the Norwegian left, but the general trend seems to be against the construction of wind turbines.
Wind turbines are a topic of growing prominence in Norway as plans for more and more wind farms are unveiled across the country. I was recently introduced to this blog post that presents a number of arguments against the construction of wind power in general, providing sources for everything and even some responses to common counterarguments. However I am of course skeptical to this blog post, because sourced or not, it is a lot of claims to reflect on and research, and the single brief remark about "population growth" (apparently quoting the UN) seems a bit sussy. I would also like to look more into the organization Motvind and criticism against it, and get through everything on the Wikipedia article "Environmental impact of wind power".
Still, interim, I figured I should hold a "fact-finding meeting" to see if anyone here has any thoughts on when the construction of wind turbines should be supported or opposed, especially if you have experiences with wind turbines being built or opposed in your local area. When is opposition to wind turbines "NIMBYism in environmentalist clothing", and when is there more to it? What do you all think?
The blog post is a little misleading. It's all about tradeoffs. Hydropower is also extremely impactful to the natural environment. It changes the ecology of a river, disrupting nutrient/sediment flows and harming fish such as salmon. Literally any source of power generation is disruptive to the local environment, including offshore wind. I'm not an ecologist, but studies would need to be performed to determine how destructive new energy infrastructure would be to a given ecosystem.
Because Norway is an energy exporter, how much surplus energy is worth generating at the cost of the natural environment is a political question. However, if Europe ever stops demanding natural gas, having surplus electricity is a good way for Norway to stay wealthy in the long-term.
Norway is very beautiful and it's worth protecting as much of it as possible, but I don't live there and would need to know more to have an informed opinion
Yeah, that's what I was thinking, that a lot of the things the blog post mentioned could also be applied to other forms of power generation. In fact what I'm worrying about is if the wind farm conflict in my local area might be a repeat of the dam conflict here half a century ago, so this is why I don't want to automatically get swept up in the anti-wind "hype" just to show that I'm "on the side of the people."
I think it might be worthwhile to consider, though, what it actually would mean for Norway to "stay wealthy" in practice: Who actually gets the wealth from the generation and the export of energy, and where does that wealth actually get invested? I think that if "Norway can stay wealthy" off of wind energy exports, but most of that wealth goes to capitalists, and then the small towns where these wind farms are actually built are just sort of left comparatively neglected — then I think it's understandable why people in these towns would be resentful of these wind farms.
That's a valid criticism of wind. What do Norway's leftist orgs believe about gas and oil exports? I assume it also mostly benefit capitalists
If a land is so beautiful that we can't put turbines there, then it's too beautiful for any human structures and should be a nature preserve! Otherwise? Build as many as possible.
There's no way offshore wind has worse impacts than all the offshore drilling and pumping rigs in the North Sea.
If you're replacing an oil rig with wind turbines I don't see how anyone could have a reasonable objection to that.
Greenfield offshore wind farms are a bit different, but I still think wind has perhaps the lowest environmental impact of any form of power generation we have right now.
The more interesting conversation, is, like you said, about how the profits are handled. Norway is obviously used to putting money from its oil industry into the wealth fund, and I'd hope they'd be trying to accomplish the same with green energy, but I know profit margins are much lower with wind, so it may be presented as a choice of no money or no wind power.
This is a classic example imo of an artificial debate about the good/bad of a new technology, when the debate should be around how it's used and why things get bad in capitalism.
Wind farms create one of the cleanest and cheapest energy sources available to mankind [edit: is "mankind" a misogynist term?] as of now. Displacing fossil fuels by renewables (within the limits of the grid) is objectively good for the lives of people (pollution from fossil fuels not only contributes to climate change but also kills people directly by lung disease and cancer). Whether wind turbines are placed in the "correct" places or not, or whether the profit goes to the people, are questions about the market and the policy, not about the technology.
Currently, wind turbines are being used as a justification by the government to invalidate the native land rights of the Sami peoples.
In Fosen, the construction of wind turbines ruined the winter pastures for the local reindeer herders, and while they are being permitted new areas to send their flocks to, it still stands that government backed organizations built on Sami land without proper consultation. This entire ordeal is eerily similar to Alta-saken from the 60's and 80's, where the government built a hydro dam on the Alta river, ruining its ecosystem. Even after extensive protests and disruptive action, the dam itself was built (Although scaled down from the original plans.) The only benefit the Sami people extracted out of it was recognition as a minority with a reexamination of the governments policies towards national minority groups.
All this to say, while I personally believe wind turbines are cool and good to meet Norway and Europe's energy demands, they have now been used to push the Sami off their own land, which leaves a very, very sour taste in my mouth, and I dearly hope future governments do not use green energy as an excuse to strip our national minorities of the few rights they clawed themselves to the past 100 years.
It took me a long time to ask about wind turbines more generally, because up until recently the only wind turbines I'd really hear about in my circles or in the news was precisely that Fosen case, where the obvious side to be on is the side of the Indigenous group. So it didn't seem like a topic with much to discuss about it, Fosen is cut-and-dry — but what about the non-Sámi areas, right?
The non-Sámi areas should be fine, imo. Wind turbines fit Norway fairly well, and the electricity can be used to electrify the transportation network (Read: cars and bus, cause our railways suck) and cut our reliance on oil. We don't even need oil to stay prosperous, first off because we are shamefully massive beneficiaries of imperialism and neo-colonialism, but also because Norway has plenty of resources outside of oil. See this cool Fredda video, if you haven't already. I get the idea that wind turbines are "Ugly", so maybe keep them off of areas like national parks and cabin destinations, but ultimately extracting emission "free" (manufacturing and construction creates emissions ofc) energy from the land should take priority.
De er da privatisert, kjører bare på diesel, er for smale, knuger til seg uhorvelige mengder med penger fra passasjerer (Vann koster <30kr per flaske og jeg fikk bare 0.5L "gratis" fordig jeg hadde sovekupee for hele Bodø-Trondheim strekningen.) og det har tatt ørt og snørti år for at de har engang tenkt på å utbygge banen videre nordover. (Jeg bor nordfor Bodø) Så ja, jeg mener at de suger.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
The only meaningful environmental impact of wind and solar are:
- Material and transportation cost to build
- Land required
- Disposal at end of life
For solar, which I'm an expert on, 1 and 3 are no big deal. You do need a lot of land for large scale solar production, but there are many areas to place it that will have minimal environmental impact: deserts, grasslands, floating (expensive), etc.
For wind, it's reverse. Much more effort to build, maintain, and decommission, but much denser energy generation per acre.
Either way, both are extremely good and should be built more basically everywhere.
My understanding is that wind turbines also kill a shit ton of birds but that recent groundbreaking efforts like "painting a stripe" help a lot. I mostly point this out because of how little forethought it shows is being put in.
They really don't kill many compared to lile cars, cats, coal power plants or whatever.
It's extremely overblown, obviously minimising deaths is good but if you're against wind farms because bird deaths you should be massively against cats allowed outside and fossil fuels.
Shit, collisions with windows probably kill more.
Shit, collisions with windows probably kill more.
Many, many more
This is basically made up bullshit to get environmentalists to oppose windmills
