SUMMARY:
Some German cities
are chopping down
hundreds of acres
of forests.
Pouring thousands
of tons of concrete.
Reinforced with
hundreds of tons
of steel.
Resting on
huge beds
of gravel.
All hauled into
the cut down forest
by hundreds
of truck loads.
Then they install
skyscraper tall,
bird-killing,
wind turbines,
that can be seen
from miles away.
DETAILS:
A "wind park" project
in the Münsterwald forest,
near the western Germany
city of Aachen, will consist of
seven 200-meter tall turbines
in what once was a natural,
forest of over 600 acres.
To get to the site, a “gigantic”
swatch of trees had to be cut
through the heart of the forest.
ZDF public television said:
“... alone here 1,000 trees
had to be cut down."
Rainer Hülsheger,
of the state association
for natural landscape
protection says:
“At least 12,000
square meters
of forest needed
to be cleared
in order to build
one wind turbine
alone.”
ZDF reports
that forest
belonged
to the city,
and so the
revenue
-generating
wind project
got approved.
For another wind project,
in Euskirchen, according
to the ZDF,
“The planned 24 wind turbines
in the co called Kammerwald
cut through an entire biotope system
from Rheinland towards Belgium.”
Why are the
huge wind turbines
being installed
in the forests?
According to Aachen city
official Elmar Wiezorek,
placing the turbines in fields
would have a greater
environmental hazard:
“The forest had the least problems.”
Does the
chopping down
of carbon dioxide
absorbing forests,
to fight harmless
climate change,
make any sense ?