Letter in Yale Daily News: Cut out the clear-cutting

Letter: Cut out the clear-cutting

 

Monday, April 4, 2011

 

Why is Yale engaged in clear-cutting forests for short term profits? In Washington County, Maine, out of sight of lower New England, the Wagner Corporation engages in aggressive clear-cutting of forest lands on the behalf of Yale. I have been a longtime admirer of Yale having grown up in New Haven where my father was on the faculty for 40 years. Why then is Yale asserting its premier leadership position to engage in and therefore promote environmental degradation such as clear-cutting. The practice leads to soil erosion, the displacement and loss of wildlife, fish, and bird species, increased carbon in the atmosphere contributing to global warming, a loss of biodiversity, an increased risk of insect infestation and poor forest regeneration. Does Yale do this simply because it can get away with it? Would they be engaged in such practices closer to home where their actions would be visible to their donors? I would encourage the News to investigate this. Yale is a great institution. It is unworthy of such behavior and does injustice to the members of its community who will be associated with it.
James Plunkett, Ph.D.
Ann Arbor, MI
March 29
The writer is a psychologist.
  

 

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Comment by Brad Blake on April 5, 2011 at 11:12pm

I posted this response on the Yale Daily News:

 

Thank you, Dr. Plunkett for your letter challenging these practices.  Yes, the Yale Daily News could do a great service to the University by not only investigating the clear cutting practices, but also the link between the endowment, the mysterious Bayroot, Wagner Management, wind developer Angus King, and the web of nefarious cronyism that lurks beneath it all.

 

Yale forestlands being managed and cut the way they are in Maine should be an embarrassment to the world class Yale Forestry School.  The newest endeavor, the support of environmentally destructive industrial wind sites, deserves even more scrutiny.  Can support of a useless, unpredictable, unreliable source of electricity in the form of 400 foot tall wind turbines be justified when mountains are blasted away, hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of these mountains are leveled, wildlife habitat is permanently destroyed, and the well-being of people living too close is threatened?  Yale, get your green-washed heads out of academia and investigate what your university is doing in beautiful Maine.  Come on up, we'll show you around and you will get a far different view about wind power.

 

Maine as Third World Country:

CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power

 

Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.

Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT

******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********

(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/

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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law

Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future

"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."

https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/

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