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| Does whether you consider this view to be ugly depend on how much money you make? |
Charlestown's moratorium and subsequent ban on any and all wind-to-energy devices used anywhere within town limits would lead one to believe that the town's residents are overwhelmingly opposed to windpower. But one doesn't need to scratch very deep below the surface to learn that this is far from true. According to a November 2009 survey conducted by the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA), which is known for having its finger on the pulse of the town, a substantial majority of Charlestowners favor wind energy, and a good number of them favor it even if the proposed wind turbines were to have some negative impacts on them personally.
So just who are the wind NIMBYs,* and why are they having such a disproportionate effect on the affairs of the town?
Unfortunately, CCA's strict anonymity policy and failure to ask survey respondents for even the most rudimentary demographic data make it impossible to know. Still, one can reasonably conclude from some of the comments on the survey that the interests of the wind NIMBYs may not intersect with those of the average town resident. For example, concerns about wind turbines' potential impact on aviation at the Richmond and Westerly airports would seem more likely to be expressed by people in higher income brackets, who would be more likely to have access to private aviation than the average resident.
Perhaps the most vitriolic objections to wind turbines are based on aesthetics. Wind turbines are ugly, opponents say, and siting them in residential areas lowers property values. Anonymous commenters on the local news and information blog Progressive Charlestown have even gone so far as to state that if the proposed Whalerock turbines were built, property owners along Prosser Trail and Kings Factory Road would simply abandon their homes and the town would lose all tax revenue from them.
Of course, the same argument could be made about cell towers: that they're ugly and have a negative effect on home values because people don't want to have to view them from their windows. And yet several cell towers have gone up in town virtually unopposed, without any such catastrophic effects on the market value of residential properties. Perhaps this is because people fully expect that they will continue to be able to plug appliances into their walls and operate them even if no wind turbines are built, whereas without cell towers, one can't get cellular phone service.
Then again, the town is facing a statewide affordable housing mandate and needs to add 283 units of affordable housing. Opponents of new construction have suggested that abandoned properties should instead be rehabbed as affordable housing. Currently, there are nowhere near 283 such properties in town, but were Prosser Trail and Kings Factory Road to be vacated, the town could potentially seize those properties under eminent domain to create affordable housing. This will be the subject of a future lecture.
Ironically, this very perception of loss of home value caused by proximity to wind turbines can become a self-fulfilling prophecy: Broadcasting such negative perceptions on the assumption that these perceptions are universally shared can create fear in the minds of those who hold neutral or even positive views of turbines that their property will be worth less due to the negative perceptions of others.
But the fact that it's a cliché makes it no less true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and some people do find wind turbines attractive. According to Scottish philosopher David Hume, "Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty."
Perceptions of beauty are also culturally based and change with time and circumstances. For instance, prior to the advent of industrialized agriculture, which made cheap food more readily available, obesity signified wealth, and plump or "Rubenesque" women were considered attractive. In the intervening years, the pendulum has swung back and forth, from the flapper of the Roaring (19)20s to Marilyn Monroe to Twiggy to the more athletic build that is currently considered ideal.
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| Why is this image considered more attractive than the one at the top of the page? (image by Martijn Janssen) |
In a column on Cape Wind's proposed wind farm in Nantucket Sound published in the Providence Journal in 2007, Robert Whitcomb hinted that perceptions of beauty can also be class-based:
[I]t takes a long time for many people, for society as a whole, to change their conceptions of beauty, and especially of pastoral or coastal beauty [emphasis mine]. Many have very specific ideas of what they want in a view—of what is "beautiful" or [at] least "pretty"—ideas that may come from photographic or other visual statements of beauty, or from literature. Some might call this sentimentality, but it has a powerful pull, especially in an industrialized world where urban and suburban citizens seek Wordsworthian vistas [emphasis mine] as relief from reminders of mankind's corruption and arrogance.But even if one assumes that the Wordsworthian ideal is the highest cultural aesthetic and should be validated above all, to the point of restricting the property rights of ordinary citizens seeking to generate their own electricity, why should it be that the Wordsworthian ideal only encompasses the windmill and not its modern counterpart, the wind turbine? Windmills are ubiquitous cultural icons, and their shape is incorporated into numerous everyday household objects such as salt shakers and candle holders. What is it about the wind turbine that inspires such fear and loathing?
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New conceptions of beauty—including, presumably, environmental cleanliness—will need to take hold if big wind farms are to appear in places where affluent, influential people have gone in search of sentimental and traditional ideas about beauty.
* "One who objects to the establishment in one's neighborhood of projects, such as incinerators, prisons, or homeless shelters, that are believed to be dangerous, unsightly, or otherwise undesirable." (American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language)
Author: Linda Felaco