When you think of the care that France lavishes on its landscape, it's surprising that so little has been done to control the proliferation of ugly wind farms.

Rather belatedly, a small revolt is now brewing against what the opponents see as a state-subsidised racket in the name of sustainable development.

Over the past couple of years there has been a rush to install the great white turbines that go in French by the pretty name of éoliennes -- from the Greek god of wind. Every time I drive south via the plain between Paris and Orleans there seem to be a dozen new windmills at the roadside, some towering over hamlets and others just disrupting the vista. The windmill blight is even more stiking when you fly low over the countryside in a small plane. From above, it looks sometimes as if a rash of white spikes has erupted across the fields and hill-sides of France. When they are near airfields, as they are at Dreux, for example, you have to avoid bumping into them as you circle to land.

With its unwavering devotion to the atomic energy that provides three quarters of its electricity, France came late to wind. It ranks in about 10th place in Europe, far behind the leaders, Germany and Spain. But wind power figures big in President Sarkozy's scheme for greening France. His government's grand "Grenelle" environment plan, calls for 10 percent of electricity to come from wind by 2020. That means up to 10,000 more turbines, say the experts.

France's traditional attraction to new technology has blinded people to the drawbacks of les éoliennes. A BVA poll recently found that 79 percent of pepole favour wind farms in their region and 62 percent say that they would accept a giant turbine in their back yard -- or at least within a radius of a kilometre of their homes.

The opposition is coming from villages in the northern Picardy region and from the east and the west, where wind farms have been growing fastest. A dozen local mayors led a demonstration of about 800 people in Paris last month. They carried banners with slogans such "Wind farm lobby are murderers" and "No to the swindle of industrial wind farms."

The figurehead of the resistance is Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who was President of France in the 1970s. The aristocratic, 82-year-old "VGE" is hardly a symbol of modernity. But he has roots in the very rural Auvergne and his views are touching a nerve. "France's landscapes have inspired a good number of painters and poets. It's important to protect this heritage," he says in today's Parisien. "These pylons are not only polluting the landscape. They are interfering with bird migration and disturbing the lives of those who live near them."

Giscard makes the following arguments: As an electricity exporter with plenty of carbon-free nuclear power, France does not need to clutter the landscape with clunky hardware. The green lobby is being fooled by windfarm companies who are pocketing subsidies from the taxpayer. Impoverished villages are being tempted by the leasing income to sign up for wind farms. The machines are inefficient, consume a lot of raw materials and energy to produce and sit idle for 80 percent of the time.

The anti wind farm case has also just been put by Sylvie Brunel, a geographer, in a book called "Who benefits from sustainable development?" In the name of the doctrine, some of France's most beautiful landscape "have been transformed into fields of gigantic mechanical monsters," she says.

In turn, the anti-éolienne people are being pilloried by some of the green movement as reactionary, selfish and stooges of the nuclear power lobby. A militant association called "Sortir du nucléaire" (Get out of nuclear) said opposition to wind power was a fiction invented to help the nuclear industry.

It will take more than a few demonstrations to stem the march of the éoliennes. Like many people, I admired the back-to-the-future look of the first wind farms when I saw them in California in the 1980s. In some places they have a certain charm. They may not look too bad in the semi-urban countryside that prevails in the low countries and other parts of northern Europe. But it's sad to see them becoming a menace to the spacious countryside of France. Lets hope that they can put more off shore or develop other renewable sources such as tide and wave power.