Irene Gilbert is a 76-year-old retired state employee on a mission, fighting energy projects like large wind farms in Oregon’s rural communities. Renewable energy advocates and lawmakers treat activists like her as gadflies who should be stopped.

What those lawmakers didn’t plan for was that 50 years later, an Oregon citizen activist would use that same bureaucracy to hinder some of the very energy projects that today’s liberals want: wind farms and the new high-voltage lines needed to support them.

They didn’t plan for Irene Gilbert.

The 76-year-old retired state employee, former gun store owner and avid elk hunter from La Grande, Oregon, is on a mission to keep turbines and transmission towers from blighting the rural landscape. She has filed more challenges to energy projects — 15 in all, including lawsuits — than anyone in the state, according to Oregon’s Department of Energy.

“I kind of have a reputation,” Gilbert said.

  • SomeoneSomewhere@lemmy.nzEnglish
    3·
    5 days ago

    I was expecting you to talk about embodied energy in the steel, concrete, copper, composites, silicon, glass, and the diesel trucks, cranes, and helicopters used for installation and maintenance. Most of those could be greenified once there’s enough renewables around.

    Nope. You care about lubricant. They use stuff all, don’t even burn it, and it’s not a particularly impossible thing to replace - I’m sure you could synthesize replacements from corn alcohol though you’d still probably need lithium, molybdenum, or whatever other fancy additives are in use.

    They used to use whale fat as lubricant.

    Congratulations; dumbest take I’ve seen all year.

    • Nightlight@lemmy.caEnglish
      2·
      4 days ago

      Thank you so much for telling me off about this. There are so many ways we can change this for the better and I’ve been very short sighted.