Here is Minnesota, us Midwestern 'hicks' are seeing many wind turbines being built on the western ridge of the state. This is also true in Iowa. They are generating more power than the local utility can get to populated areas. You can sign up for a percentage, all the way up to "100% wind," as a slightly more expensive option in your electricity bill. The state has just passed mandates to go to renewable energy in relatively high percentages. The local utility has even started their "own' wind farm(!) Farmers are getting rental monies on tiny bits of lands where the towers stand, which lessens rural poverty and helps small farmers.

The best twist is that soon to be laid-off UAW workers at the local Ford plant are trying to see if they can build the wind turbines there, instead of importing them from Europe. Oh, the irony....

Wind is coming, and secretly conservative Democrats and yuppie Democrats better get out of the way. I can't really believe the opposition in Cape Cod and Delaware. But the wind will eventually blow it away.

You know, where I work, continually pointing out the problems with an idea without coming up with a better solution is a sure-fired way to get surely fired.

We're waiting.

I've seen a number of people comment that there'll be subsidies for the wind farm, like that's unusual. Just about all power generation gets a subsidy of one sort or another. This is the same reason we don't get better train service in this country. People whinge about the subsidies to Amtrak and ignore the HUGE subsidies the airlines get and that cars get. Yes, windmills will likely need subsidies at first. In return we get cheaper power in the long run, cleaner air, less dependance on fossil fuels from all over the planet and have taken steps to reduce global warming. This is what government does, it creates the social environment in which we live.

Of course you want offshore wind power. You really, really do want it. Anyone who has ever been to the beach knows that the wind is ALWAYS blowing at the beach, and blowing strong. This is free energy just waiting for someone to exploit it, and you don't have to flood anybody's town (like hydro) to do it. It really is a no-brainer.

As for concerns about wildlife, seagulls are like pigeons; a bit more culling of them is actually welcome. And the next time someone tells you they're an eyesore, remind them how they probably look in a bathing suit. That ought to shut them up.

As I type this, there is a guy outside with a gas powered leaf blower. He is literally blowing dust and bits of dead leaves off the middle of the road and onto the sides. Given a day or so, the wind would either do that, or will redistribute it back into the road. In the process, the guy with the leafblower is making an enormous amount of noise pollution and spewing out toxic fumes.

Before we haphazardly wreck our land- and seascapes with wind turbines, maybe we should as a society eliminate other sources of pollution and unnecessary fuel use.

Do I expect that to happen? Not in a million years, but it's worth considering.

It isn't an either/or thing. We'll need both conservation and the turbines. And turbines don't wreck land or seascapes, I've seen them and they're less obtrusive than other power plants or billboards or even just buildings.

The key word in my post was "haphazdly." I support wind power, but not just anywhere. As an earlier writer pointed out, we could put turbines in Yellowstone Nat'l Park and the Grand Canyon if we wanted to, but of course we don't. Beautiful seascapes should likewise be protected. I also think that until we can protect birds from being torn apart by wind turbines, they are not a good idea.

There is another alternative: high altitude wind turbines. They float like kites at altitudes where the winds are much stronger than at the ground, and so give more bang for the buck than ground-based turbines, and with much less damage to wildlife and natural beauty.

There is not, never has been and never will be any such thing as "clean coal."

No way, no how, never, never, never.

And I say that as someone whose state could reap billions if there really were such a thing.

The "clean coal" lie is more than a century old. The coal industry first used it to smother complaints about air pollution from urban social activists and United Mine Workers union reps. Then they used it to try to maintain market share against oil and natural gas. Then they used it to fend off environmental regulations. Now they're using it to kill renewable energy projects.

Here in Kentucky, we've known for decades that there's one sure-fire way to tell if a coal-industry/coal-fired power plant exec is lying: his lips are moving.

I wonder what the Nantucket indians thought about their beautiful grassy-knolled ocean fronts being littered with drab grey clapboard houses by settlers determined to have a room with a view.

Having spent many a drunken morning watching the sunrise after an all-nighter at the Cape, and evenings watching the last rays of the sun setting through the spinning blades of a breathtaking windmill farm at the edge of Palm Springs,...

I'll take the farm, and all of mother nature's endless free non-polluting power that goes with it!

GO DELEWARE!..and don't forget CHICAGO.

DurianJoe,

So if they are fairly unobtrusive as the article made them seem or like all the ones I've seen on land, they'd be fine with you? Airborne ones are a great idea, but from everything I've read about them, they're not quite ready yet and they'd require an even greater initial investment.

Durian Joe writes, "If you want to save the environment and combat global warming, going vegetarian is one of the best ways to do so."

Sort of, but not exactly, Joe. You and I going vegetarian is a molecule in the bucket compared with building wind farms instead of coal-burning plants. If millions of us went vegetairan, then it would add up, but individual choices like that make little difference. You are, of course, dead right about the meat industry; methane is 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The solution? Ending some of the tax breaks the meat industry gets would help; if cattle ranchers and feedlots had to pay their true costs, meat would become more expensive and fewer people would eat it, leading at some point to reduced consumption. So maybe you should run for office, though I doubt you'll get very far with "More Expensive Meat!" as a campaign slogan.