Climate Craziness of the Week: Denmark evicting citizens to clear cut forests for wind turbines

I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t read this message of a Danish group opposed to the plan. Greens clear-cutting trees in a national park and evicting people, whoda thunk?. Seems like a case of “we had to destroy the village to save it“. Here’s the description of the park from the Danish National Parks website:

The west of Thy has been designated as the first Danish national park. The National Park, Thy stretches for an up to 12-kilometer-wide belt along the Jutland west coast from Agger Tange in the south to Hanstholm in the north. It is an enormous and unspoiled natural area totaling 244 km2 – almost the size of the Danish island of Langeland. In the National Park you can go between outstretched, wind-swept wilds and aromatic pine trees. You can also throw yourself into the sparkling waves of the North Sea or bike through cool dune plantations.

I’ve reposted the message from the opposition group below.

Dear environmentally aware citizen of the world!                                   www.nationalttestcenter.dk

Copenhagen, December 2009

The Danish government plans to clear forests and destroy unique nature for the benefit of industry.

The Danish environment minister Troels Lund Poulsen decided, on behalf of the government, on 30th September 2009, that the clearing of 15 km2 of forest in the north west of Denmark will take place. A test centre for the development of offshore windmills is planned to take up 30 km2 of land in the Thy region, near Østerild. This deforestation will create an increase of 400,000 tonnes of CO2 emission, the equivalent of the CO2 emission of 100,000 people per year.

The government will force the local population out of their homes. The reasoning behind this is said to be for the benefit of the Danish windmill industry, which will in turn create more Danish jobs. The regulations to finalise the evictions goes against Denmark’s constitution and is therefore clearly illegal.

In current plans, the area is categorised as a recreational area, where the set up of windmills is prohibited.

The region is one of Denmark’s most beautiful areas. With its rugged landscapes and grand views, as well as many rare species of animals, birds and plants, the area is representative of authentic Danish nature. There are very few areas of Denmark left, where one can experience darkness at night and complete silence.

The windmills, which are 250 meters tall, are planned to be along a 6 km linear south/north stretch. This will prevent birds in the international Ramsar-area, Vejlerne, which is situated to the east of the test centre, from flying west to the EU-habitat area Vullum Sø and to Thy National Park just south of Hanstholm.

The Danish government has not consulted properly about the plans. The Danish citizens had little time to put forward comments of the project. The hearing has only been 11 days long, with 9 of those being a national holiday.

The environment minister has decided that a report on this projects impact on nature and the wildlife will be completed by early December 2009. The consequence of this is that it is impossible to produce a well documented scientific report, to act as the foundation for a political decision.

The local population has formed an association, “Landforeningen for Bedre Miljø” (The Association for an Improved Environment) with the aim to inform about the environmental consequences for both the society and nature, if plans for the national test centre are followed through. So far, “Landsforeningen for Bedre Miljø“ has tried, in vain, to persuade the Danish government to produce a more thorough investigation of the project’s impacts on the surroundings.

The association is discontented with the planning process so far, because they have neglected ordinary, well-known, democratic principles, which Denmark otherwise uses every opportunity to talk about across the world.

If you, as an environmentally aware citizen of the world, thinks that questions ought to be asked concerning this unjust conduct towards our future generations inheritance of the nature, please spread the word about this planned national test centre.

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Chris Horner of Pajamas Media has a summary of the issue:

President Obama was caught flatfooted by the embarrassing truth about Spain’s “green economy” after he instructed us — on eight separate occasions — to “think about what’s happening in countries like Spain” as a model for a U.S. future. Spain, of course, is suffering an economic meltdown from enormous public debt incurred through programs like a mandated “green economy.”

But Obama also just implored Spain to drastically scale back or risk becoming Greece. A flip he immediately flopped, by pushing hard to enact the Kerry-Lieberman “path to insolvency” bill based on … Spain. (Cue Benny Hill theme.)

So, embarrassed — or perhaps shameless — Obama changed his pitch: “Think about what’s happening in countries like Denmark.”

Of course, the experience of Denmark — a country with a population half that of Manhattan’s, not exactly a useful energy model for our rather different economy and society — is no great shakes, either.

But it gets better.

In my new book — Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America — I describe the absurdity of the “free ice cream” theories of the “green economy” our statist friends now embrace as their latest raison d’etre for a controlled society. My mother-in-law — visiting from Denmark — is reading my book with a particular interest in its exposé of what her heavily taxed labor pays for in that country.

The book also prompted her to relay an amazing new anecdote to the case study referred to by the Danes as “the fairy tale of the windmills.”

In the northern region of Jutland called Thy, Denmark is forcing people off of their land (“Kelo” is apparently Danish for “Kelo”) and — wait for it — preparing to clear-cut fifteen square kilometers of forest, and eventually thirty, in order to put up more of the bird- and job-killing monstrosities.

These giant windmills are not even intended to fill an energy gap for the Danish economy. No, they are to be onshore experimental versions of massive new off-shore turbines — with the facility to be rented out to wind mavens like Siemens.

The argument they are forwarding for doing this is not just the typically risible claim that this is necessary for the environment. After all, “[the] deforestation will create an increase of 400,000 tons of CO2 emissions, the equivalent of the CO2 emissions of 100,000 people per year.”

They are also forwarding the argument that this must occur in order to create Danish jobs.

Of course, “creating jobs,” to the extent such mandates can do this (as they are typically net job killers), appears much more necessary after the state first made it difficult for the private sector to do such things. Denmark enforced what methods, and what quantity of those methods, are acceptable for producing electricity. It always turns out that the acceptable ways are inefficient, intermittent, and expensive. Which sort of explains the need for mandates.

read the rest here: