Dear Editor,

Student efforts encouraging DU to purchase wind energy are well intentioned but unfortunately misguided, as mounting data reveals that today’s commercial wind development creates more negative impacts than positive ones. As Cornell University recently concluded after their investigation, “To go forward (with wind development) in such an uncertain environment doesn’t make sense.”

Like DU, Cornell students were pushing for a greener image, but learned in the process how ‘ungreen’ commercial wind power can be. To be sure, giant wind turbines are symbolic, but up close these machines are intimidating, industrial, and dominant structures that destroy natural habitats and local living environments where ever they go, and will most assuredly not relieve global warming in any measurable way, which would be the only valid reason for tolerating their offensive intrusion on the landscape and in our lives.

A good example of how ineffective commercial wind really is can be found in Texas. You might think, as many others do, that those endless metallic forests must be helping quite a bit to power that state. But you’d be surprised to learn that not even 1% of Texas’s electricity comes from the wind, in spite of a thousand giant machines.

Another fact you may not be aware of: by supporting wind development you’re also boosting the fossil fuel industry. The majority of wind projects are owned or backed by some of the biggest oil guys in the business, mainly because our government makes it very easy for ‘green’ power to shelter a lot of ‘black’ money come tax time.

To DU students I would say, look before you leap, and do your homework. If it’s the environment you’re truly concerned about, don’t forget about that community somewhere that might end up living in the midst of mind-boggling machines just so that you can feel good about yourselves.

Sue Sliwinski