Wind Turbines Planned for Tsau Khaeb National Park in Africa

Given adequate wind, would Americans accept huge bird-dicers on Half Dome, Hurricane Ridge, the Great Smoky Mountains, or the Grand Canyon rim?

In this latest bleak development, Big Wind will produce Big Hydrogen (plus ammonia) in remote Namibia and pretend it’s somehow sustainable. Invading a protected park is wrong on too many levels to lament at once. Energy visionaries, including Elon Musk, have explained that hydrogen is mostly a showy middleman for fossil fuels, especially when machines extracting it are fossil fuel based. It’s the same ruse as desalination “solving” water shortages by shifting energy from one place to another. Nothing is free when large industrial projects generate it.

This sort of project was inevitable, given the frivolous use of words like clean & green, and the growth agenda of the world’s biggest visual polluters. General ocean wind development is already morally shaky. When even national parks aren’t worthy of protecting from this machine army, what ecological values remain? Any other form of industrial blight on preserved lands would push today’s eco-posers to the boiling point. Think of ANWR oil drilling and other footprints they selectively complain about.

Remote places like the Tsaus mountains and local shores make easy targets for wind energy sprawl. These escarpments bear similarities to Oregon’s wind-targeted Steens Mountain.

The location under attack is Namibia’s Tsau Khaeb (Sperrgebiet) National Park, and though it’s a place few will visit, its mere existence was a bonus for nature. This won’t be too different from putting wind turbines on the rim of the Grand Canyon, which soulless American Green$ would approve of. You’ll hear the usual talk of “careful siting,” and the excuse that diamond mines (e.g. Kolmanskop) have marred the Sperrgebiet, but the aesthetics of giant wind turbines create a much bigger contrast with desert lands. Park scenery will clearly be lost to widely visible, spinning towers, topped with red lights. It’s about scale and what sticks out the most. Lack of tree canopies to mask distant views will make it even more obvious.

With this park’s coastal boundary, the look of the Philippines Bangui Bay wind project comes to mind. Blatant beach placement is an affront to everything conservationist once stood for. People can’t seem to fathom how many of these damned eyesores would actually be needed to (not) do much about global warming. They eagerly want to be on board with something “anti” fossil fuels, though it’s built entirely with that energy. Even if it wasn’t, it’s simply too invasive. Eco sellouts, raise your hands if you support exponentially more wind power growth. What did you ever stand for in terms of a scenery ethic? And don’t try to hide the birds, bats & insects killed by these blades!

California’s Manzana project and Bangui Bay, Philippines, reflect potential wind power development inside Tsau Khaeb National Park. 5 gigawatts is a target they mention.

The cold truth is that few natural places are sacred anymore. It only took the prospect of Man losing modern comforts to expose today’s tech-obsessed environmentalism. The big concern isn’t the planet aka nature, rather surviving AGW without too much pain. But you can’t grow your way out of something you willfully grew into.

Read more details on the oft-denied grimness of industrial wind energy: Windschmerz: The Wind Energy Landscape Holocaust and Industrial Wind Turbines and the Rationalized Desecration of Nature

This page may be updated and reworded at random with new information. If you cite it, please post the link instead of a pasted snapshot.

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2 thoughts on “Wind Turbines Planned for Tsau Khaeb National Park in Africa

  1. shoxie

    “The cold truth is that few natural places are sacred anymore. It only took the prospect of Man losing modern comforts to expose today’s tech-obsessed environmentalism. The big concern isn’t the planet aka nature, rather surviving AGW without too much pain. But you can’t grow your way out of something you willfully grew into.” [edited w/update]

    Too awful. I dread to think what lies ahead when we are confronted with REAL problems, such as skyrocketing energy prices and food shortages. One of my favorite doomers “Hambone Littletail” from Humptydumptytribe on Youtube often echoes Bill Gaede’s position, paraphrasing it thus: “The sixth mass extinction will conclude with us EATING EVERY ONE of our fellow earthlings. And when we’ve eaten every one of our fellow earthlings, who do you think is next on the menu?” It’s a horrifying thought. Destroy even a fraction of the ecological web of life and the whole thing comes crashing down.

    We are hurtling towards that grim vision which Dr Gaius bade a young ape recite from an old script in the movie “Planet of the Apes (1968)”:
    “Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil’s pawn. Alone among God’s primates, he kills for sport, or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother’s land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him. Drive him back into his jungle liar, for he is the harbinger of death.”

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