Beauty or Bane: Advancing an Aesthetic Appreciation of Wind Turbine Farms

Abstract

I begin this paper by looking at declining wind turbine sales during the years 2007 to 2010. In an attempt to locate a reason for this decline, I evaluate two claims by wind farm opponents: 1) that wind farms reduce property value, and 2) that wind farms ruin the beauty of nature. The first claim I respond to by looking at three studies conducted on residential property sales located near wind farms. For the second claim, I engage in a comparison of Immanuel Kant’s and John Dewey’s aesthetics. I ultimately advance an aesthetic appreciation of wind farms that seeks to view beauty as an integration of both emotional and cognitive perceptions.

Keywords

• Jon Bonne
• Allen Carlson
• John Dewey
• environmental aesthetics
• Immanuel Kant
• renewable energy
• Yuriko Saito
• David Suzuki
• wind farms