Film Festival Film #2: Windfall

I must confess that I was a bit sceptical of this film at first, but I found that I really enjoyed it and really got into it. Partially, the absolutely beautiful cinematography played a role. The film is full of beautiful, time-lapsed shorts of rolling hills and fields. Treelines and sky on display to the tune of small town banjo playing.

Meredith is a town in upper New York State, near Albany. And it has excellent conditions for putting in windmills. Who doesn't like wind power? Great for the environment, and all. Except, as the film progresses, it becomes clear that there's a segment of the town who are really opposed to new windmills.

At first, I thought that this was going to be some NIMBY objection. Sure, we like the idea of wind mills in general, but must the ugly things be sitting on our skylines? But, slowly, the film started to win me over.

One of the first "winning over" moments happened when they started talking about the way wind companies were approaching people. They would approach a farmer, offer to lease a section of the farmer's land for a few thousand dollars, and then they'd look to put up a windmill. But the icky parts: the companies all wanted the individual farmers to sign confidentiality agreements so that they couldn't discuss the terms of lease with anyone except their personal lawyers. The last thing these wind companies want is to have the town start talking to each other about this whole process.

The early objections that the townsfolk start about did little to dispel my NIMBY judgment. First: the windmills are tall. And they're really tall. The types of windmills that they show in the film are around 400 feet tall. That's about the size of a forty-story building. During the Q&A, the director mentioned that 600 ft windmills are being used in some places, now. Some (but possibly not many) have fallen down. Or caught fire (y'know what the fire department does with a 400 foot tall burning windmill? Let it burn!) A lot of talk by the town council was around the topic of ensuring that there were laws regarding ensuring that if one of the towers falls, that it falls within the property line. If you say that the windmill has to be 600 ft (one and a half times the size of the tower) away from your neighbours property, that's just a good idea, no? This was the proposal put forward by the town council's planning committee. Strangely, the town council rejected its planning committee's advice.

Then there are other things. The towers make a bit of noise. Actually, they make a lot of low-frequency noise. There were a number of interviews with people who report sleep problems and a constant feeling of rumbling. They liken it to constantly being near someone playing loud bass in their car; you just feel the constant vibration. They also occasionally throw ice. And they seem to kill bats in alarming numbers.

But one of the most interesting points had to do with the flicker. It your house is in the shadow of one of these windmills, you're getting a constant flicker of shadow as the blade of the windmill blocks the light striking your house. There's a segment of this part of the film on the movie's web site. The film interviews people in other towns who live with this flicker and their annoyance it pretty tangible.

But the part that was most bothersome was that it's pretty clearly spelled out that the companies who put these windmills in place don't give a shit about green energy ("it's not green energy," one guy says, "it's GREED energy"). They make a shitload of money out of getting the windmills deployed.

The companies have zero interest in smaller wind towers. The return on investment is higher the taller the tower is.

One woman tells that it costs about $3 million dollars to put up one of these towers. Of that $3 million, a third comes from Federal subsidies, a third from state subsidies, and a third from private investors. And then the companies come to the municipalities looking for tax breaks and other concessions. It's all about chasing corporate welfare. A company writes off the depreciation of the towers over a short period, like five years. And then they sell the assets to some other company who also writes off the depreciation of the towers. It's quite the financial shell game.

And a town like Meredith is ideal for these companies, because they have no real zoning laws, and certainly no budget to hire experts to evaluate the towers' effect on their community. They use the phrase "industrial wind power": this is a big industry with wealthy lawyers and they will suck as much cash out of the process as they can.

The film has a little bit bit of treatment of the extent to which wind power's ability to reduce non-renewable energy dependence is overinflated, but not as much treatment as I would have preferred. The film also talks to multiple people involved in the process: the head of the town council who sees the anti-windmill activists as a small but vocal minority, the key activists, themselves, people in neighbouring communities. (One town banned windmills; other towns have hundreds of them). Everyone expressed sadness that the issue really divided their town and affected the neighbourliness of the place.

Quite a fascinating film.

• Wind Watch
• http://www.aweo.org/
• Industrial Wind Action Group

Film Festival Film #3: How to Start Your Own Country

This was a funny movie. My big regret is that it skips any hard questions. Questions like "at what point should Quebec be considered a country?" or "Should the United Nations have delegates from First Nations countries?" The examples that it visit tended to be somewhat eccentric little nations hither and yon. We got to meet President Baugh of the Republic of Molossia -- one of the more modest micronations. One must, of course, visit Sealand -- the tiny nation in the middle of the Northern Sea. Sealand is interesting in that they've pushed on some legal barriers and have won some basic cases.

Seborga was much more interesting. In continuous existence since the 900s, and with a population of over 300 people. They feel that they've been in existence far longer than the "official" nation-state that surrounds it: Italy.

I hadn't known about The Principality of Hutt River Province, the second-largest nation on the continent of Australia, but now I am.

The film visits some interesting projects. One artist/University professor has an almost art project (?) to instantiate a New Free State of Caroline. The guy who invented the Segway has his own nation on North Dumpling Island.

There are interesting interviews with academics and people at the United Nations. And some interesting factoids came up. Apparently the Czech Republic does not recognize the nation of Liechtenstein. Kosovo was a tricky example. Canada recognizes Kosovo as a nation. But why? And why don't we recognize Taiwan as a nation? (That answer is a bit more obvious). Someone in the film said that 100 different countries recognize Palestine as a nation.

I often think about the recognition of Haiti as a nation. Very few countries recognized Haiti as a nation in 1804. The US, the other major republic in the hemisphere, didn't recognize Haiti as a country until the 1860s. That was a decision that was clearly motivated by a lot of racism. But is there a litmus test for when such recognition is "legit" or not? Apparently not much of a litmus test. But there are some rough guidelines. You have to have a territory. You have to have a permanent population. There's no clear process for being recognized.

I think I would have been happier if the film broached some even tougher questions than it did. But it was a fun and enjoyable film for what it was.

One last point: this came up during the Q&A. Forming your own nation seems like it's a guy thing. There are very few women who secede from the nation, it seems.