Different leftist organizations in Norway seem to have different stances.
Tjen Folket referred to opposition to wind turbines as a “just campaign”, but it’s not clear to me in context whether this is referring to opposition to wind turbines in general or just opposition to specific wind farms. The Communist Party of Norway seems to support floating wind turbines but does not mention wind turbines on land. The Young Communists, its youth wing, does not appear to have anything about wind power on its website. The Red Party is opposed to wind turbines in general, on land and on sea; however the Red Youth, the Red Party’s youth wing, supports the construction of wind turbines provided that this is done in a “responsible” way. Revolusjon.no and marxisme.no seem to oppose the construction of wind farms in general, focusing on Norway’s relationship to the EU in general and Germany in particular, saying that these wind turbines are essentially being built to generate profits for capitalists to the detriment of locals in these areas. They have a number of articles that I would like to eventually read in full.
So there seems to be a range of opinions within the Norwegian left, but the general trend seems to be against the construction of wind turbines.
Wind turbines are a topic of growing prominence in Norway as plans for more and more wind farms are unveiled across the country. I was recently introduced to this blog post that presents a number of arguments against the construction of wind power in general, providing sources for everything and even some responses to common counterarguments. However I am of course skeptical to this blog post, because sourced or not, it is a lot of claims to reflect on and research, and the single brief remark about “population growth” (apparently quoting the UN) seems a bit sussy. I would also like to look more into the organization Motvind and criticism against it, and get through everything on the Wikipedia article “Environmental impact of wind power”.
Still, interim, I figured I should hold a “fact-finding meeting” to see if anyone here has any thoughts on when the construction of wind turbines should be supported or opposed, especially if you have experiences with wind turbines being built or opposed in your local area. When is opposition to wind turbines “NIMBYism in environmentalist clothing”, and when is there more to it? What do you all think?
The blog post is a little misleading. It’s all about tradeoffs. Hydropower is also extremely impactful to the natural environment. It changes the ecology of a river, disrupting nutrient/sediment flows and harming fish such as salmon. Literally any source of power generation is disruptive to the local environment, including offshore wind. I’m not an ecologist, but studies would need to be performed to determine how destructive new energy infrastructure would be to a given ecosystem.
Because Norway is an energy exporter, how much surplus energy is worth generating at the cost of the natural environment is a political question. However, if Europe ever stops demanding natural gas, having surplus electricity is a good way for Norway to stay wealthy in the long-term.
Norway is very beautiful and it’s worth protecting as much of it as possible, but I don’t live there and would need to know more to have an informed opinion
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, that a lot of the things the blog post mentioned could also be applied to other forms of power generation. In fact what I’m worrying about is if the wind farm conflict in my local area might be a repeat of the dam conflict here half a century ago, so this is why I don’t want to automatically get swept up in the anti-wind “hype” just to show that I’m “on the side of the people.”
I think it might be worthwhile to consider, though, what it actually would mean for Norway to “stay wealthy” in practice: Who actually gets the wealth from the generation and the export of energy, and where does that wealth actually get invested? I think that if “Norway can stay wealthy” off of wind energy exports, but most of that wealth goes to capitalists, and then the small towns where these wind farms are actually built are just sort of left comparatively neglected — then I think it’s understandable why people in these towns would be resentful of these wind farms.
That’s a valid criticism of wind. What do Norway’s leftist orgs believe about gas and oil exports? I assume it also mostly benefit capitalists