3 ms·

Was that a very long time ago? Cos I was a Greenpeace member in the 1990s and they were pro-renewables at that time.

jacquesm 8y ago
Yes, it was a long time ago, but it totally turned me off from them (and the Green party, and a couple of other well meaning but mostly clueless groups). The problem was that they were going on and on about what things looked like and exaggerating the risks rather than to look carefully at what alternatives we had. NL is kind of special in that way I guess, people here really care a lot about keeping things traditional. It brings in the tourists and of course it is lovely to see the country through a lens like that. And those pesky windmills and solar panels were going to change all that. So we saw a lot of resistance. In the end they went so far as to determine that any sea based windmill parks had to be an x number of miles off-shore (in much deeper water, increasing construction costs considerably) rather than nearby. Anyway, it's all moot, they came around and since then it has been good to see them fix things (the Green party also came to their senses at some point, but there are still hold-outs that would love to see all the windmills go away because they are eye sores - or at least, in the eyes of some, I think they are beautiful). It is interesting to what extent history has been edited, good luck finding much about horizon pollution, bird strike studies or the effect of all those dark solar panels on our traditionally red brick roofs today. What is also interesting is that we have a huge windmill tradition here, simply because without windmills a lot of the land here would have never been developed (if it even existed) in the first place. So this is the last place in the world where I would expect any kind of headwind (pun intended) for renewable energy. I guess in a hundred years when we have cheap fusion there will be a political party or lobby group trying hard to keep those windmills that are so beautiful.

Yes, it was a long time ago, but it totally turned me off from them (and the Green party, and a couple of other well meaning but mostly clueless groups). The problem was that they were going on and on about what things looked like and exaggerating the risks rather than to look carefully at what alternatives we had. NL is kind of special in that way I guess, people here really care a lot about keeping things traditional. It brings in the tourists and of course it is lovely to see the country through a lens like that. And those pesky windmills and solar panels were going to change all that. So we saw a lot of resistance. In the end they went so far as to determine that any sea based windmill parks had to be an x number of miles off-shore (in much deeper water, increasing construction costs considerably) rather than nearby. Anyway, it's all moot, they came around and since then it has been good to see them fix things (the Green party also came to their senses at some point, but there are still hold-outs that would love to see all the windmills go away because they are eye sores - or at least, in the eyes of some, I think they are beautiful). It is interesting to what extent history has been edited, good luck finding much about horizon pollution, bird strike studies or the effect of all those dark solar panels on our traditionally red brick roofs today. What is also interesting is that we have a huge windmill tradition here, simply because without windmills a lot of the land here would have never been developed (if it even existed) in the first place. So this is the last place in the world where I would expect any kind of headwind (pun intended) for renewable energy. I guess in a hundred years when we have cheap fusion there will be a political party or lobby group trying hard to keep those windmills that are so beautiful.