The double standard on wind farms and the environment

Wind farms are incredibly costly to produce energy. Since they don't operate all the time, back up generating sources are required -- meaning that you have to spend building two generating facilities to produce energy. But there are costs that wind farms impose on the environment that they are also not required to bear, costs that would cause any other operation to be shutdown. From the WSJ:

Last June, the Los Angeles Times reported that about 70 golden eagles are being killed per year by the wind turbines at Altamont Pass, about 20 miles east of Oakland, Calif. A 2008 study funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency estimated that about 2,400 raptors, including burrowing owls, American kestrels, and red-tailed hawks—as well as about 7,500 other birds, nearly all of which are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act—are being killed every year by the turbines at Altamont.

A pernicious double standard is at work here. And it riles Eric Glitzenstein, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer who wrote the petition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He told me, "It's absolutely clear that there's been a mandate from the top" echelons of the federal government not to prosecute the wind industry for violating wildlife laws. . . .

the deadly Pine Tree facility, which the Fish and Wildlife Service believes is killing 1,595 birds, or about 12 birds per megawatt of installed capacity, per year. . . . The Pennsylvania Game Commission estimates that wind turbines killed more than 10,000 bats in the state in 2010. . . .