Citizens' Task Force on Wind Power - Maine

Energy Clarity: Health & safety standards Alex Epstein

Health & safety standards

The third aspect of establishing the right standards of health and safety is "economically desirable."

What are the economic consequences?

Part of looking at the full context involves asking whether a policy aimed at promoting human health and safety actually has negative economic consequences that do more harm than good to human health and safety.

Imagine if somebody had said in the 1800s, for example, that people shouldn't be allowed to use coal to run their stoves to cook their food and heat their homes because it creates a lot of smoke, which has a negative health impact, and instead mandated cleaner coal technologies that simply weren’t affordable at that point in time. Such a mandate would effectively ban the use of coal altogether.

While that would protect people from one threat to health, it would also eliminate the positive consequences to health that come from using coal—namely, keeping warm and having a steady supply of cooked food. And those positives were far, far more positive than the negatives were negative.

Of course, we want to improve over time—and we do, using technology and using the right policy.
For example, eventually we progressed to where we could economically gain the benefits that come from powering our homes with coal without the harms of filling our homes with coal smoke.

But that has to happen gradually. At any given time, it is wrong to restrict energy or anything else that's fundamentally vital for human beings to a degree where it does economic damage. If everything has to be perfect in order to be used, then this will prevent people from improving their lives.

Who decides?

And who should decide what these standards are? In general, it makes sense for the people directly affected—who need energy, who need to protect themselves from endangerment—to have control over those standards, whether that be at the state level or the local level.

It's very questionable to have all of these things decided on a national level when the people are affected by them locally in very different ways, for all sorts of economic and geographic reasons.

For example, a certain amount of car emissions may cause smog in Los Angeles due to its unique topography whereas in another area that threat doesn’t exist at all. It doesn’t make sense for both of them to have the same emission levels.

In general, decision-making should be local. But the key is no matter where those decisions are made, achieving freedom from endangerment requires that our decisions be reasonable and equitable, scientifically verifiable, and economically desirable.

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U.S. Sen Angus King

THE UNTOLD STORY OF RECORD HILL WIND

The Untold Story of Record Hill Wind, continued

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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