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.

  • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    11 days ago

    All of the petroleum used to lubricate a windmill over its entire lifetime is likely less than the petroleum used in a single day of a traditional petroleum based power generation system of the same capacity.

    The ONLY problem about oil is burning it. If we just used it for lubricants and plastics, we’d have enough till pretty much the end of the world.

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      10 days ago

      The ONLY problem about oil is burning it.

      The exploration for oil, extraction, transportation, pollution from spills, and refining are also problems, but I generally agree that burning it creating CO2 is the biggest problem we have today.

        • partial_accumen@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          10 days ago

          I disagree. The petrochemical industry is giant and only a part of that results in end product combustion. Lots of other things come out like lubricants as we talked about, solvents, industrial additives, plastics, etc.