At a World War II Internment Camp, History Blows Away Wind Energy

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By Anna Griffin, The New York Times. 

Excerpt: For decades, the fierce desert wind has been the only thing moving with any speed at the former Minidoka, Idaho, internment camp, other than an occasional car passing the site where more than 13,000 Japanese Americans were held behind barbed wire from 1942 through 1945. ...winds were supposed to propel turbines — some twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty — at Lava Ridge, a wind energy project that would have stretched across tens of thousands of acres of federal land. Instead, an unlikely coalition of internees’ descendants, ranchers, tribal leaders, environmentalists, Republican elected officials and conservative renewable energy opponents slowed the project long enough for President Trump to win election in 2024 — then kill it. The death of Lava Ridge last August points to the complexity of meeting America’s growing hunger for energy in the artificial intelligence era, amid the conflicting demands of climate scientists and land conservationists, shifting rules on public-land development and the president’s personal foibles.... 

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