Wind Blows; Mountains Lose; Mountains Win; It's a Mess

With alternative energy proposals, the environmental lines are certainly not clear-cut. I've already noted why I think this is the case (short answer: they foster consumption possibilities, not reductions in consumption). But now there is a precise example of the complexity of such issues in many states proposing what are called Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS).

How could one resolve these tensions, when we don't know which alternative is an improvement? The go-to answer there is generally, ask science. Get the evidence to demonstrate trade-offs. But we can't assume science will answer it -- the ornithologists, the biogeochemists, the marine biologists (for off-shore). Because it isn't a matter of science or not. It's whose science that's the issue.

Example:
Pro-wind is anti-coal.
So the anti-Mountaintop Removal folks are generally in favor of wind.
But what if pro-wind is anti-wilderness? Or anti-bird? This case is made by environmentalists who oppose wind turbine farms.

And, from this, is anti-coal necessarily pro-wind? That seems to be the crux, in a sense, since it assumes that we have two options -- either wind or coal.

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So what am I talking about?

I mention this all because those RPSs are an increasingly common technique to encourage alternative energy production. Virginia this year is considering an RPS that would require that "12% of the electric energy sold by each supplier to retail customers in the Commonwealth be generated from renewable generation energy sources" (you can track the bill here). Which all sounds wonderful.

But there are problems. Those problems undermine simplistic "fer it/agin' it" perspectives on the environment.

A recent op-ed piece in the Richmond Times-Dispatch offered an environmental argument against the RPS. The gist was this: says the author, the bill "symbolizes an inability to rationally address our energy problem and a willingness to sacrifice things of real value [i.e., wilderness, birds, aesthetics] without careful analysis of the tradeoff." This was set against another op-ed which favored the RPS. It notes, right from the title, that pro-RPS means pro-clean energy. Both points are accurate, as far as they go -- wind turbines do take up space, and we would need a lot of them; using wind instead of coal is cleaner and less poluuting. This just points up the reason the arguments don't/can't close down debate.

Here are two lines of reasoning:
For one thing -- and this one is set only against coal -- if you build Wind Turbines, that will help take pressure off coal requirements. If you take pressure off coal requirements, that will reduce Mountaintop Removal of coal. If you reduce Mountaintop Removal of coal, then there will be less air pollution, more watershed health, better biodiversity in the mountains, and a stronger environmental justice position. Those are all good things.

Such is one line of reasoning. And it has that vaunted scientific evidence to back it up.

Another line -- based on the wilderness argument, plus some-- suggests this:
If you build Wind Turbine farms, then you'll take away one of the last remaining wilderness areas of the east coast, namely forested ridge lines. You'll be using 4 acres per turbine, and you'll need perhaps thousands of them. That's not a trivial amount of acreage. You may also disrupt bird migration and bat flight patterns. And you might not even reduce carbon emissions overall (statewide), because you'll be working only on those emissions coming from electricity generation (but 35% of CO2 emissions), and thus allow for greater increases in consumption in other areas (transportation and buildings, e.g.) bolstered by the belief that we're doing better now.

This leads us where?

You can tell I'm hashing out a set of notes in this post, and not directing a straight line of argument. But part of the issue at hand is that there is no straight argument to be had. So for Scienceblogs, the bottom line follows from what every party in the conversation about alternative energy has in mind: the ideal of scientific asessment.

Yet, what happens (as it constantly the case by this point in history with such matters) when there is plenty of scientific evidence and the debate is instead about "which scientific evidence is better?"

That's where we need more work to be done. And that's why all those seemingly arcane discussions about and research on the "public understanding of science," philosophy of science, sociology of science, cultural studies, and more, have to do a better job of making their points and conducting their own research. Who will assess which scientific evidence is better? (And would someone point out that assessing that reduces the broader socio-cultural argument to a strictly technical one?, he writes, parenthetically, as if the entire post and the entire blog wasn't actually about this?)