http://theglutengal.com/tag/gfcf-chocolate-bars There’s a town board meeting tonight at 7 p.m., and one of the items of business will be our petition to get a stay on the decision to build a 177′ wind turbine here in town. I’ve heard complaints from some of my environmentalist friends – we need renewable energy sources – but I still think it’s a terrible idea to put the energy industry inside our state parks. Catskill State Park and Adirondack State Park are “forever wild,” and they have to be defended that way. I understand, mountaintops are great places for wind energy – but they have a value far beyond that. Thoreau from his essay “Walking“:
http://x-tige.com/designers/george-gina-lucy-fw14-2/attachment/ggl-save-the-date_usa/ I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil… What I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World. Every tree sends its fibers forth in search of the Wild. The cities import it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind. Our ancestors were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild source. It was because the children of the Empire were not suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the northern forests who were.
I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows. We require an infusion of hemlock, spruce or arbor vitae in our tea. There is a difference between eating and drinking for strength and from mere gluttony. The Hottentots eagerly devour the marrow of the koodoo and other antelopes raw, as a matter of course. Some of our northern Indians eat raw the marrow of the Arctic reindeer, as well as various other parts, including the summits of the antlers, as long as they are soft. And herein, perchance, they have stolen a march on the cooks of Paris. They get what usually goes to feed the fire. This is probably better than stall-fed beef and slaughterhouse pork to make a man of. Give me a wildness whose glance no civilization can endure—as if we lived on the marrow of koodoos devoured raw.
But my perspective will always be the minority position – though it was absolutely, positively the reason for the creation of these parks in the first place. What people can understand better is that this is the first proposed 17-storey structure in the town; but if approved others will be proposed, and each time it will be harder and harder to say no. This changes the entire area, and the wildness people look for here, they will soon need to look elsewhere to find. I quote the letter from the President of the Appalachian Mountain Club in the November/December 2013 issue of AMC Outdoors Magazine, to show that this is a phenomenon occurring all over the nation:
We hear a lot about the need for new sources of energy, whether from traditional or alternative sources. The fact is, conservation is the greenest energy there is: the cleanest energy is that which is not used.
Our nation’s insatiable appetite for energy affects more than our health and national security. Increasingly, it is threatening our public lands….
Even renewable energy sources like wind can have negative environmental consequences. Inappropriately sited wind power projects, and the maintenance roads and other infrastructure that comes with them, threaten mountain ecosystems and compromise the wilderness experience. AMC is working with several states on implementing siting guidelines that lead to smart choices about where these projects are placed.
In local terms: keep these kind of projects outside the second-largest park and wild and scenic area in New York State, the Catskills.
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