Tilting at Windmills
Aug 22nd, 2008 | By benwyskida | Category: Uncategorized
If I get the chance I have a much longer piece I want to write about this, but I've become really fascinated by Mayor Bloombergs stubborn determination to make really bold gestures around sustainability. This week
he proposed this plan that would put windmills on major city skyscrapers, on some bridges, landmarks, and possibly in the East River.
It took about a day for
the naysayers to come out against it. It's complicated! It will only generate a tiny slice of the city's needs! Windmills are ugly! Even the realization that t
he New York City seal includes a windmill (albeit a funny little Dutch one) couldn't quiet the windmill naysaying. By and large the plan has been panned as sustainability showboating: a very public but largely impotent project that would create only minimal electricity.
What I don't understand -- and haven't seen discussed -- is what's so wrong with that? Mayor Bloomberg is a smart man and if there is one thing he knows it's marketing and branding. Obviously a few windmills won't wean the city off the grid. But what would it say to the world if the largest city in America was home to some very high-profile, very public alternative energy? Frankly I don't believe for a minute that Bloomberg thinks windmills on the East River will be enough to gird the city from a summer blackout. But I imagine he has larger global ambitions, and he knows what it would say to the world if the torch in the Statue of Liberty was powered by the wind or the sun or the currents, and not Con-Ed. What a symbol, especially if private investment is paying for it.
I feel bad for Bloomberg sometimes; congestion pricing should have happened; so should Moynihan Station and so should this windmill plan but it's likely that none will. If he had run 8 years ago as a sustainability preaching, transit-loving Democrat would we have trusted him more, and maybe more of these initiatives would have passed?
Update: Pinko loyalist Carl
has some great thoughts on this too.
File Under: Drunk Politicians, Dutch people, end of days, Greeny Green Green and The Green Green Greens, Jewish guilt, Mayor Bloomberg, solar power, wind power
If I get the chance I have a much longer piece I want to write about this, but I've become really fascinated by Mayor Bloombergs stubborn determination to make really bold gestures around sustainability. This week he proposed this plan that would put windmills on major city skyscrapers, on some bridges, landmarks, and possibly in the East River.
It took about a day for the naysayers to come out against it. It's complicated! It will only generate a tiny slice of the city's needs! Windmills are ugly! Even the realization that the New York City seal includes a windmill (albeit a funny little Dutch one) couldn't quiet the windmill naysaying. By and large the plan has been panned as sustainability showboating: a very public but largely impotent project that would create only minimal electricity.
What I don't understand -- and haven't seen discussed -- is what's so wrong with that? Mayor Bloomberg is a smart man and if there is one thing he knows it's marketing and branding. Obviously a few windmills won't wean the city off the grid. But what would it say to the world if the largest city in America was home to some very high-profile, very public alternative energy? Frankly I don't believe for a minute that Bloomberg thinks windmills on the East River will be enough to gird the city from a summer blackout. But I imagine he has larger global ambitions, and he knows what it would say to the world if the torch in the Statue of Liberty was powered by the wind or the sun or the currents, and not Con-Ed. What a symbol, especially if private investment is paying for it.
I feel bad for Bloomberg sometimes; congestion pricing should have happened; so should Moynihan Station and so should this windmill plan but it's likely that none will. If he had run 8 years ago as a sustainability preaching, transit-loving Democrat would we have trusted him more, and maybe more of these initiatives would have passed?
Update: Pinko loyalist Carl has some great thoughts on this too.
Is he being vetted? Isn’t Manhattan a battleground state or something?
[...] 3: My pals at Pinko Magazine share their thoughts on the [...]
If Bloomberg had run 8 years ago as any kind of Democrat, let alone a sustainability preaching, transit-loving one, he would never have become mayor. He didn’t stand a chance against the city Democratic machine in the primaries, and he knew it.
[...] love them, Bloomberg loves them. The Dutch love them. It’s time we got serious about investing in wind bower. Also, America [...]
[...] public links >> windmills Tilting at Windmills Saved by fremont1tech on Mon 29-9-2008 How to Navigate by the Sun Saved by smpfilms on Mon [...]
[...] congestion pricing. I appreciated your stance on guns, on gay marriage and on immigration. I wanted some windmills. Also 311 is awesome. Two years ago we asked for trees on our street and got some within days – [...]
[...] His environmental initiatives, from empowering his planning director to make the city more bike/pedestrian friendly to his efforts to pass congestion pricing, and to dramatically expand renewable power. This is a piece I wrote praising his wind-power proposals just last year. [...]
[...] His environmental initiatives, from empowering his planning director to make the city more bike/pedestrian friendly to his efforts to pass congestion pricing, and to dramatically expand renewable power. This is a piece I wrote praising his wind-power proposals just last year. [...]
[...] His environmental initiatives, from empowering his planning director to make the city more bike/pedestrian friendly to his efforts to pass congestion pricing, and to dramatically expand renewable power. This is a piece I wrote praising his wind-power proposals just last year. [...]
Wind power is a good source of electricity but it also takes up lots of space just like solar power plants.:,.
actually it is not that hard to setup wind farms, the only problem is that it requires lots of capital investment.:’,
wind farms are great but they also take up a large land area-~;