For some carbon millionaires, lining their pockets legally through taxpayer subsidies and hand outs is not enough.  They choose to cheat even though they’re playing a game that’s already rigged.

The Financial Times reports that:

Oreste Vigorito, head of the IVPC energy company and president of Italy’s National Association of Wind Energy, was arrested on Tuesday in Naples. Vito Nicastri, a Sicilian business associate, was arrested in Alcamo, Sicily.

Two other men were arrested in Sicily and the Naples area, while 11 others were charged but not arrested.

Oreste Vigorito: Arrested Nov. 11

FT reports that these saviors of our planet were building wind farms that were “built with public subsidies but had never functioned.”

Vigorito had ties to Brian Caffyn, founder of the controversial “Cape Wind” project planned for Massachusetts’ Nantucket Sound, which has been criticized as a poor investment for taxpayers for the energy it will produce.  Vigorito was not an investor in Cape Wind.

According to the Boston Herald:

“What we found was quite remarkable,” David Tuerck, the institute’s executive director, said at the time. “Cape Wind stands to receive subsidies worth $731 million, or 77 percent of the cost of installing the project and 48 percent of the revenues it would generate. The policy question that this amount of subsidy raises is whether the project’s benefit is worth the huge public subsidies that the developer gets.”

The Herald reports that Mr. Caffyn’s 2007 divorce records reveal that “he amassed an $82 million fortune building wind farms around the world.”

Wind power remains an interesting and potentially useful technology.  However, if taxpayers are forced to pay for it they must receive a viable return on their investment.  Conservationists should not be forced to endure wind farms spoiling undeveloped places of natural beauty.  We should not allow wind farms to ruin the habitats of birds and other wildlife in ways we would never permit to established efficient methods of power generation.

It’s time politicians require the “green” business people who will reap fortunes from wind power to bear the financial costs and risks.   It’s time government zoning and environmental regulators ban wind turbines where they threaten wildlife and spoil human enjoyment of natural beauty.

Wind yes, but only when economically viable and only with respect for the quality of life both human and wild.

This article was amended slightly in response to a request from the Cape Wind Project.

Catch the Premier – Sunday, October 18!  Live Stream at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/not-evil-just-wrong 8PM EDT.

Ireland’s Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer produced a powerful challenge to Al Gore and the IPCC with their documentary Not Evil Just Wrong the True Cost of Global Warming Hysteria.

According to The Irish Times they ” explore nine “flaws” in Gore’s film, established by the High Court in Britain during a civil case. Their major contentions include criticism of the famous inverted hockey stick graph which purported to show constant emissions for many centuries and big increases in CO2 emissions since 1900. That model completely neglected medieval warming (proven) and the little ice age from the 16th century to 1850 (also proven) they argue”

As the Irish Times noted, Britain’s High Court ruled that schools must warn of bias prior to screening the former American Vice President’s An Inconvenient Truth, giving Not Evil a court approved foundation upon which to make its case.

CFACT has hosted numerous international screenings of the film.  You can buy the DVD direct from the film’s makers.