Why is there no cavalry?
Seriously. Where's the cavalry when you need them?
Ya know...me and a group of very hard working, very dedicated, very passionate people have been busting our butts day after day after day, in FOUR COUNTIES to maintain support for a 1150 MW wind farm proposal in West Michigan. Many of us are unemployed, or underemployed. Many of use have cars that we dare not drive outside the city limits because they're just as likely as not to die, so we all pile into a rusty compact.
Meanwhile, the people trying to kill this thing are awash in money from the lakeside home owners with million dollar homes.
They have a lobbyist in Lansing. They have a PR firm in Lansing. They have professionally printed up yard signs. And they have the funds to oust pro-wind farm commissioners in favor of anti-wind farm commissioners.
They've got some random people from Lansing, who were appointed by the Governor for jobs completely unrelated to wind power sending letters to the county commissioners with completely insane, misleading information against wind power.
Us....
....we just have us.
We very literally just have us. One of our members recently blew $800 of her own money to print up a large sign to put along a roadside. This woman is awesome...her and her husband make a living making horseshoes. They're wonderfully scrappy.
The sign is our pride and joy. And it's the only pro wind farm one in Oceana County among hundreds of professionally printed Anti Wind Farm ones stuck into the ground on vacant houses with For Sale signs in the yard.
And you know what?
We've been kicking some serious ass despite the massive funding gap.
The overflow crowd that jammed the Muskegon Community College’s Collegiate Hall Tuesday night to hear about the state’s work in regulating offshore wind farms was supportive of the idea.
But it wasn’t a slam dunk.
Wireless audience voting equipment showed 62 percent of those participating in the Michigan Great Lakes Wind Council’s Muskegon meeting Tuesday favored the concept of offshore wind farms, with 32 percent opposing.
-- Article
And yet......the votes of the commissioners is still in question. In fact...many of them, bombarded by misleading information and surrounded by signs on vacant land, are likely to vote against it.
And I'm starting to wonder....
...where's the cavalry?
Where's Greenpeace? Where's RePower America? Where's the American Wind Energy Association? Where's the Sierra Club?
Where is ANYBODY?
I have been making calls...sending e-mails. What have I heard back?
Silence.
We've been in the news throughout West Michigan, I would have thought RePower American Michigan would have contacted me for logistical support, advice, encouragement...I left a friggin message on their machine and sent emails.
NOTHING.
Today I called Greenpeace...was asked to submit an email...
And here they worked so hard for Nantucket Sound. Who knows...maybe they'll still get back to me.
But who exactly is in this fight? Down in the dirt. Prepared to lend something, ANYTHING in the way of support for, gosh, what must be hundreds of disparate groups around America doing the same stuff my group is doing? Eighty bux for a media packet from AWEA, hell, that's nearly 1/4 of our group's entire budget...
...seriously...
1150 Megawatts of clean, green energy that could revitalize an entire portion of the country and not ONE call...not one email from any of the heavies? Nantucket Sound is 450 MW. Whole lotta press there.
I realize there's lots to do. Lots of places and people are busy...but here I'm looking at our Facebook page about the shit we're doing on the ground, who's called their commissioners, who's driven 120 miles round trip to go into the lion's den to attend a commissioner's meeting, who's ponied up hundreds of dollars of their own money, who's spend the entire day...the entire day...talking to anybody who would listen, some hostile, about why it's important to do this thing...
And they're all doing it for FREE. Hell...some are skipping work to do it.
And then I look at some of these larger places and they're talking up their Earth Day remix vid, the number of interns they've hired, and random statements on how we can lead on green.
Awesome. Great. Nice.
Now get us some frickin' help down here. We're taking some heavy fire. Dude...it's, like, 9% of Michigan's entire energy consumption, 1150 MW...enough clean energy to power 300,000 homes.
Hey big green kahunas! Little help down here! call centers...press release...signs...brochures...hell, a friggin' pat on the head. Anything would be helpful.