We keep getting told that wind power will help reduce carbon emissions and help combat global warming. Europe is littered with wind plants yet there are no reports of a single fossil fuel powered plant being closed as a result of wind power. Europe shows no evidence of any significant reduction in carbon emissions due to wind power. Denmark, a country with one of the largest numbers of wind turbines, is one of the worst offenders in terms of carbon output per capita. This failure to deliver carbon savings makes the negative impacts all more important to consider. The impacts from the Backbone Mountain facility have already destroyed numerous bats. That is but a single installation. ...West Virginia suffers enough with the coal mining industry destroying its mountains and endangering coal miners. That it should be subjected to further abuse from what amounts to nothing less than modern day "emperor's new clothing" is a terrible irony.

Once again, the wind energy industry wants to avoid reasonable regulations to protect wildlife. (RTD 1/19/08) On their behalf, Senator Wagner, ( R Va Beach), has submitted a bill which would exclude wind factories with less than 50 megawatt capacity from any state regulations. For six years, I have watched this fledgling Virginia industry at every avenue, seek to avoid the issue of wildlife protection. ...We taxpayers have a right to demand that these developers be responsible, and especially that our subsidies to the wind industry not be used to the detriment of our wildlife.

Despite our region's decades-old dependence on hydropower as a reliable, reasonably clean and inexpensive power source, Washingtonians have embraced the concept of extracting energy from wind. In 2006, 52 percent of voters approved Initiative 937, requiring large utilities to increase renewable energy sources to 15 percent of their power production by 2020. Still, wind energy in the Northwest has raised valid concerns. For example, last month a golden eagle was killed at a wind tower southeast of Goldendale; it was believed to be the state's first casualty of an eagle killed by a wind turbine.

If Miss Vermont could speak, she would probably cry out for help. It is our duty as responsible caretakers not to let these wind vultures rape our hills.

On Friday (November 24) I attended a meeting at Knowstone Village Hall organised by the Two Moors Campaign Group. The hall was filled with about 200 people. This, on a night of strong winds and very heavy rain, showed massive opposition to the proposed construction of nine 103 metre high wind turbines at Batsworthy Cross.

Many of us here in Wales, UK, have read the article on "Wind Turbines" in your paper on 14-6-07. It has been posted about by e mail. We in Wales UK are planning a national ANTI Wind Turbine demonstration on July 8th. This horrendous industry will never ever halt global climate change it will only enrich its developers via the obscene level of subsidies being paid in Europe. Are there such massive subsidies your side of the Atlantic?

If they are going to "talk the talk," it is time to "walk the walk." The foreign windmill promoters that are covering Montana like a swarm of locusts will be more than happy to sign you up for a giant industrial wind plant (subsidized by taxpayers) that you expect the rest of us to live with.

environmental pressure groups adamantly oppose fossil fuel, nuclear and hydroelectric power plants. Renewable energy – from wind turbines, or little solar panels on huts – is the future for Third World countries, they insist.

Their prescription is totally inadequate for any modern society, India’s Barun Mitra points out. It would also mean sacrificing hundreds of thousands of acres of scenic and wildlife lands to gargantuan windmills that slice and dice birds and bats by the thousands.

While the Audubon Society supports wind power, the group understandingly is lobbying state and local governments to require regional environmental impact studies before permitting proposed wind energy projects. In addition, Audubon wants each state to do a statewide survey to identify potential wind farm sites and overlay those sites with migratory bird pathways and bird and bat habitats.

Two letters referred to a visit by councillors to see Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth (Gazette, December 7 and 14). Is it not also an inconvenient truth that the Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs) have never been fully explained to the public, who pay for them?

The Dartmoor Preservation Association applauds the two planning inspectors who have endorsed local democracy and upheld West Devon Council’s planning committee’s refusal of turbines at Yelland and now Lamerton.The deciding factor for both was the harm to the special landscapes surrounding Dartmoor National Park and the distant views to and from the high moor. Critical too for Lamerton was the quiet, still, distinctive local landscape which is the very special setting of Brent Tor Church and the scheduled barrows below it.

Further to your article, Battle of the blades (November 24), no matter how many turbines are built, not one fossil-fuelled power station will close. The Scottish people have been sold a lie; wind energy just doesn't do what we are being told it will do. Owing to the very fickle nature of wind and the fact that it will only produce electricity when winds blow between roughly 5-50mph, we still need our base-load power stations to click in, when required. Wind turbines will only work up to about 30% of the time, yet our base-load stations will still have to run continuously, but at an inefficient level, to support wind power.

As wind farms show, we must be more sceptical about quack remedies peddled in the name of environmentalism. An independent study declared at the weekend that most wind farms in England are a waste of space. Government targets for turbines assume that they will operate at 30% of capacity. Most work well below that, because their sites are insufficiently windy..... The study is unsurprising to those of us who have believed all along that turbine mania reflects an unholy alliance between ambitious manufacturers, greedy landowners and credulous ministers - happy to lavish extravagant subsidies on doubtful technology which burnishes their green credentials without costing anybody save the taxpayer, who exists to be stuffed.

As a writer, I am deeply indebted to the Northeast Kingdom, from which I’ve drawn inspiration for almost 50 years: its woods, fields, ponds, hills, its people, its other creatures. Like most of my neighbors, I favor conservation and renewable energy. The fear of climate change has been with me for many years, ever since I felt the early, subtle signs of it. But I do not support the proposed UPC industrial wind facility.

Some of us used to think wind development might create useful electricity. But we took time the last three years to learn about how industrial wind really works. We studied Catamount’s “educational material,” we studied the impact of industrial wind development in others countries, and we studied the independent analysis of scientists and economists who show that the benefits of industrial wind are an illusion.

Editor's Note: This letter has been submitted to The Rutland Herald.

People have different takes on the wind tower controversy. Some will tell you it's all about global warming; others see it as a property rights issue. We tend to see it as a set of questions about the nature and future of small communities like our own. For instance, can they survive in the age of global corporations? Can they develop their own resources and plan their own destinies, or do they have value only when they can be developed by someone else and as part of someone else's agenda? And do they deserve to survive? Are they republics in miniature or merely the pocket-sized fiefdoms of a few good old boys? Do they hold together through ties of common interest and mutual affection, or must they inevitably be pried apart by any outsider who knows how to locate the fault lines of old resentments? If the pessimistic answers to the questions above are the true ones, then perhaps small towns ought to go the way of the dodo bird. In that case, UPC may truly be an instrument of progress. We happen not to think so, which is why we're betting on Sutton, and voting to keep the lawyer.

If Scotland really wants to be the best small country in an increasingly competitive world, we have to present ourselves professionally and use every asset we have to grab what is going. Alternatively, we can sit back and watch developments like the Trump project go to England, France or Spain. Then will we be happy?

Toynbee considers the Renewable Energy Foundation "an anti-wind outfit". We are not. We have consistently argued for offshore wind, among other technologies, to be made more attractive, and for a secure role for the renewables sector. Renewables have much to offer in tackling our energy crisis, but undiscerning enthusiasm, and an unwillingness to recognise the problems arising from a defective subsidy system, won't help anyone.

Citizens opposing the plan to install 360 miles of turbines across Maine are made to look like selfish people whose only concern is their view. But now the huge cost of this plan is coming to light. Now the health issues are being exposed as our neighbors suffer from long-term exposure to low frequency noise. Now DEP sound standards are being proven as inadequate for turbines' unique noise.

For every wind farm that is built, a more reliable energy source has to exist to back up the farm's maximum potential output. It's a vicious circle we ought not to be participating in.