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Comment by ghettoCoder | Hacker News Reader

So what if they did? The people forced to live with the windmills never wanted, gained nothing from them, and were completely sidelined, vilified, and cast as hicks, rednecks, or climate deniers for having the audacity to question the plan. They fought back using the ballot box and now are being rewarded with what they desired. To be heard.

We absolutely need to decarbonize our economy but there's a right way to do it where everyone is heard and involved. Ramming things through by fiat over the objection of the hosts never ends well, even if you believe you know best. This is how you get more Trump, Ford, Scheer, Brexit, etc...

Blows my mind that people never learn this.

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I'm not interested in getting into a political flame war over some windmills, but I think it's a bit of a gross oversimplification to say that the people gained nothing from them.

There were extensive public consultations. You can view the outcome from that here:

https://whitepineswindfarm.webs.com/20120901%20WPWF%20(1-41-...

Some of the "sidelined" concerns were pseudo-scientific complaints about health effects but those were still addressed with sincerity.

Nothing was "rammed" through, and suggesting such a project was is pretty dishonest.

This was done to finally shut of the coal plants (a good thing in my mind) but the GTA consumes a lot of electricity and it had to come from somewhere. So in a classic case of externalizing their problem they voted to make it someone else's problem. The sitting government took away local planning and oversight, created setback guidelines based strictly on what the industry wanted and practically all of the "consultations" were held in the gta far away from the people actually affected by them.

Host communities didn't gain anything other than many folks having dried-up or polluted wells from the footings driven into the ground, seeing roads destroyed by heavy truck traffic with no compensations to the municipality, and none of the promised green jobs materialized. They lost scenic views (some like windmills, some don't), property values, a general sense of knowing that they, and their opinions matter. Losing that last one is the most dangerous to a functioning society.

I'm still puzzled that you assume I have chosen a side in this. There' no war here since you are clearly unable to see both sides of the issue and further discussion is pointless.

Your chosen language was pretty inflammatory.

I linked the document providing the large numbers of public consultations and their results. You made a lot of pretty inflammatory assertions as well, but I've never heard of these things from anywhere else.

Keeping in mind my home county is full of windmills on all sides. Not once have I heard of wells drying up or being polluted even from their harsher critics. And in this county nobody was "forced" to house a windmill. Farmers who opted to house one are well compensated to boot.

There are environmental studies done and accountability with regular updates to a number of institutions including Environment Canada expressly to prevent such problems. You can see how I am hesitant to believe hearsay in opposition to the results of studies by these kinds of organizations.

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