• Excerpt from A Problem with Wind Power by Eric Rosenbloom The destructive impact that such construction would have, for example, on a wild mountain top, is obvious. Erosion, disruption of water flow, and destruction of wild habitat and plant life would continue with the presence of access roads, power lines, transformers, and the tower sites themselves.

For better wind efficiency, each tower requires trees to be cleared. Vegetation would be kept down with herbicides, further poisoning the soil and water. Each tower should be at least 5-7 times the rotor diameter from neighboring towers and trees for optimal performance. For a tower with 35-meter rotors, that is 1,200-1,600 feet, a quarter to a third of mile.

A site on a forested ridge would require clearing 45-90 acres per tower to operate optimally (although only 4-5 acres of clearance per tower, the towers spaced every 500 feet or so, is typical). The proposed 45-square-mile facility on the Scottish island of Lewis represents 50 acres for each megawatt of rated capacity, or 200 acres for each megawatt of likely output. Other facilities use 30-60 acres per rated megawatt.

GE boasts that the span of their rotor blades is larger than the wingspan of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet. The typical 1.5-MW assembly is two stories higher than the Statue of Liberty, including its base and pedestal. The editor of Windpower Monthly wrote in September 1998, "Too often the public has felt duped into envisioning fairy tale 'parks' in the countryside.

The reality has been an abrupt awakening. Wind power stations are no parks." They are industrial and commercial installations. They do not belong in wilderness areas. As the U.K. Countryside Agency has said, it makes no sense to tackle one environmental problem by instead creating another.

In Vermont, billboards are banned from the highways, and development -- especially at sites above 2,500 feet -- is subject to strong environmental laws, yet many who call themselves environmentalists absurdly support the installation of wind farms on our mountain ridge lines as a desirable trade-off, ignoring wind's dismal record as described in part I.

Even if one thinks that jumbo-jet-sized wind towers dominating every ridge line in sight like a giant barbed-wire fence is a beautiful thing, many people are drawn to wild places to avoid such reminders of human industrial might. Many communities depend on such tourists, who will now seek some other -- as yet unspoiled -- retreat.

(Read his complete work here.)