September 2009

Unfortunately we live in a world where some of the necessities of life are disparaged and sometimes even criminalised. Carbon is perhaps the life-giving "villain" highest in the public eye right now, but the free market, without which most of us would be living in squalor and misery, or even be dead, cannot be far behind.

In a nutshell, the free market is one of the necessities for wealth and happiness, but in the popular perception two things go very badly wrong:

1. The free market is confused with laissez-faire economics, deregulation, untrammelled capitalism, and so on;
2. Admirable ideas about equality, cooperation, friendship, generosity, concern for the weak and powerless, and so on, make the idea of trading—buying and selling, spending one's time making sordid money instead of selflessly giving—seem incompatible with 'being a nice person'.

The former problem means that free markets can be, and perhaps always have been, implemented badly so that a range of corruptions can be indulged in, often perfectly legally but without a shred of morals. The latter problem means that many or most who concern themselves with these issues, and who have the best and finest intentions, turn against the free market and trading in their entirety, and therefore never take part in any discussion to fix the problems with how free markets are actually implemented.

A short while ago I read this shocking and disturbing article about bird deaths from wind farms on climaterealists.com. I immediately asked myself: "Is that really true?" I wanted to know the right answer to this question, whether or not I liked it. If we want to create a peace legacy for future generations, to safeguard the planet for both humans and our non-human friends, we need to know the truth.

The issue is this: the story above claims that millions of birds are killed by wind farms. But a "green" friend I mentioned this to told me that this is absurd: she had studied wind farms in depth, she had personally visited them, and they were the safest, most wildlife-friendly places imaginable; the blades rotate so sedately nothing could possibly be killed by them; and there wasn't a dead or injured bird to be found anywhere around about. She went so far as to wonder if the writers of the above article weren't simply lying through their teeth.

The paradox I was struggling with was this: my green friend is without doubt one of the most truthful people I know. I did not doubt her account for a second. Equally, it seemed impossible that anyone could write such a credible-sounding article as the one linked above. Two truthful sources in direct contradiction - I needed facts that no one could dispute, because if lies are involved (and who won't at least wonder about the possibility?), it isn't good enough to merely discover the truth; I also needed it in a form that would allow anyone to prove it for themselves.So here's what I did.