Wind power... It's green... It's good... Or is it? Windfall exposes the dark side of wind energy development when the residents of a rural upstate New York town consider going green.Wind power... It's green... It's good... Or is it? Windfall exposes the dark side of wind energy development when the residents of a rural upstate New York town consider going green.Wind power... It's green... It's good... Or is it? Windfall exposes the dark side of wind energy development when the residents of a rural upstate New York town consider going green.
- Awards
- 1 win
John Barrasso
- Self - Senator, Wyoming
- (archive footage)
- (as Sen. John Barrasso)
Chuck Coggins
- Self
- (voice)
Tom Hewson
- Self - Energy Ventures Analysis
- (archive footage)
Andy Karsner
- Self - Department of Energy
- (archive footage)
Storyline
Featured review
Industrial landscapes are only "green" in a narrow context.
The low IMDb rating of this documentary was surely weighted by wind turbine advocates who value technology over aesthetics. This film has a clear bias but I'd call it a morally honest bias. Questioning wind turbines is similar to protesting dam-building (aka larger turbines) or mountaintop-removal coal mining. The CO2 aspect alone shouldn't blind people to the tragedy of lost natural scenery and invasive noise. They forget what makes life worth living.
This film does a good job of following Meredith New York's local planning decisions and the rancor that results when turbine-pushers come into town and pit neighbors against each other. It also plays as a mystery, since you don't know who will prevail until the end. The technical info was more thorough than expected from a catch-all documentary, but more would have been welcome, like a discussion of flashing red lights all night long.
Prior to seeing this, I'd watched a documentary about Tug Hill NY (on YouTube) and this also included a segment on that ravaged town. Good points are made about the number of turbines increasing beyond what was originally claimed. It costs too much to develop a new area without first saturating landscapes they've already invaded.
I am baffled by anyone who claims to be pro-nature and downplays the landscape intrusions of 400-foot spinning towers. One needn't be a global warming denier to see both the windfalls and pitfalls. A lot of dishonest environmentalism surrounds this topic. Turbine impacts are impossible to ignore unless you have pitch black sunglasses and earplugs. Were these people ever true environmentalists or just technology buffs?
The naivety of people who think large wind turbines won't really affect their quality of life has always seemed odd, but documentaries like this and various websites are exposing industry hype. We need as many documentaries as possible on this topic. It's clear that wind power companies are not very concerned about nature, which puts them in the same league as oil and gas drillers, regardless of the "green" badge.
The least they could do is make wind turbines green or brown to try to blend them in, but that would probably result in even more bird kills. I've seen these turbines up close in California and Washington and I've listened to the noise. It's exactly as depicted in this documentary and nobody should remain passive about it. One disappointment was the emphasis on turbines mainly affecting people (with noise and shadow flicker, that is). Surely turbines are affecting land-based animals in remote areas? Those animals have no means of complaining about health until they're autopsied and many probably die unnoticed. Turbines inject unnatural sounds and pressures into landscapes that never evolved in their presence. It can't be a benign effect.
According to a 2009 Stanford study, the future scale of wind turbines calls for nearly 4 million LARGE machines across the globe to just partly help replace oil. That should be depressing to anyone who respects what little acreage remains untrammeled by human activity. If even half those turbines end up being built, I doubt there'd be many places where you wouldn't be able to see them or their transmission lines. "Windfall" has some good graphics on that.
The end of economic & population growthism (to fuel an insane fiat money scheme) should take precedence over ill-advised forms of "green" energy. Wind on a small scale with much shorter towers seems fine, but not these glaring monsters. I hope that large turbines already in place are someday swapped out for something smaller and better on existing concrete pads, if not torn down altogether.
P.S. The 2012 film "Promised Land" was originally going to be about wind turbines before they changed the theme to fracking. Few energy technologies are benign, but solar seems the least disruptive.
This film does a good job of following Meredith New York's local planning decisions and the rancor that results when turbine-pushers come into town and pit neighbors against each other. It also plays as a mystery, since you don't know who will prevail until the end. The technical info was more thorough than expected from a catch-all documentary, but more would have been welcome, like a discussion of flashing red lights all night long.
Prior to seeing this, I'd watched a documentary about Tug Hill NY (on YouTube) and this also included a segment on that ravaged town. Good points are made about the number of turbines increasing beyond what was originally claimed. It costs too much to develop a new area without first saturating landscapes they've already invaded.
I am baffled by anyone who claims to be pro-nature and downplays the landscape intrusions of 400-foot spinning towers. One needn't be a global warming denier to see both the windfalls and pitfalls. A lot of dishonest environmentalism surrounds this topic. Turbine impacts are impossible to ignore unless you have pitch black sunglasses and earplugs. Were these people ever true environmentalists or just technology buffs?
The naivety of people who think large wind turbines won't really affect their quality of life has always seemed odd, but documentaries like this and various websites are exposing industry hype. We need as many documentaries as possible on this topic. It's clear that wind power companies are not very concerned about nature, which puts them in the same league as oil and gas drillers, regardless of the "green" badge.
The least they could do is make wind turbines green or brown to try to blend them in, but that would probably result in even more bird kills. I've seen these turbines up close in California and Washington and I've listened to the noise. It's exactly as depicted in this documentary and nobody should remain passive about it. One disappointment was the emphasis on turbines mainly affecting people (with noise and shadow flicker, that is). Surely turbines are affecting land-based animals in remote areas? Those animals have no means of complaining about health until they're autopsied and many probably die unnoticed. Turbines inject unnatural sounds and pressures into landscapes that never evolved in their presence. It can't be a benign effect.
According to a 2009 Stanford study, the future scale of wind turbines calls for nearly 4 million LARGE machines across the globe to just partly help replace oil. That should be depressing to anyone who respects what little acreage remains untrammeled by human activity. If even half those turbines end up being built, I doubt there'd be many places where you wouldn't be able to see them or their transmission lines. "Windfall" has some good graphics on that.
The end of economic & population growthism (to fuel an insane fiat money scheme) should take precedence over ill-advised forms of "green" energy. Wind on a small scale with much shorter towers seems fine, but not these glaring monsters. I hope that large turbines already in place are someday swapped out for something smaller and better on existing concrete pads, if not torn down altogether.
P.S. The 2012 film "Promised Land" was originally going to be about wind turbines before they changed the theme to fracking. Few energy technologies are benign, but solar seems the least disruptive.
helpful•1010
- AJ4F
- Jun 14, 2012
Details
Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $6,504
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $1,780
- Feb 5, 2012
- Gross worldwide
- $6,504
- Runtime1 hour 23 minutes
- Color
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