Vermont must move in a measured, thoughtful way as it considers the potential and pitfalls of wind power.

Their (Labour Party) renewable energy strategy begins and ends with onshore wind farms, despite the opposition from local communities.

"...Merits of the zoning case aside, there are some important facts about Wind Energy that simply cannot be ignored. Wind has long been promoted as a viable, clean alternative to fossil fuels and people have been conditioned to unconditionally embrace it. In fact, the moral justification for wind as the answer to greenhouse emissions has pitted conservationist against conservationist. And this fight has shamelessly been fueled by the misinformation on wind that the wind developers and their advocates promote."

Scientists compare the environmental importance of the tallgrass prairie to that of the rainforest. Its roots act as a carbon sink, cleansing the air of pollution. Its plants and limestone soils purify rainwater. Per acre, it provides more environmental benefits than any other ecosystem in North America.

With increasing resistance to wind turbine industrialization in Europe and other U.S. states, it makes no public policy sense to allow the Flint Hills to be ripped up while people throughout the world voice concern about the negative impact of industrial wind turbines on the general health and welfare of inhabitants.

There is less than 4% of native tallgrass prairie left in North America, and two-thirds of it is right here. Once you have experienced the spaciousness and exceptional beauty of open native grasslands, you know there is nothing in the world quite like it. These native grasslands are truly a national as well as a Kansas treasure.

Letter to the Editor

Money will not purchase balm for our eyes or salve for the spirit: a place of beauty provides these. The Flint Hills provides.

In Vermont, wind power will not dependably replace any of the conventional power generating systems currently employed. It will, however, convert the only remaining quasi-pristine natural areas in Vermont into stony mesas with high-tech whirligigs as monuments to our collective gullibility.

Conclusion. Wind power is expensive, doesn’t deliver the environmental benefits it promises and imposes substantial environmental costs. Accordingly, it does not merit continued government promotion or funding.

A NIMBY, of course, is the ultimate pejorative as it suggests we’re hypocrites, i.e. individuals who are for a ‘good thing’ in principle (in this instance wind power as a source of clean and renewable energy) but not if it comes to our neighborhood.

He had been charmed by the spirit of our grassland, and kept coming back.

The tone and substance of your 3/27 editorial ‘Wind must be part of energy mix’ suggests you, as is true of many Vermonters, have been simply co-opted by wind power advocates with little or no homework done on what impact industrial wind power would have on Vermont’s environment, economy and quality of life.

While Vermonters are reasonably familiar with the benefits of industrial wind turbines, we have not done our homework on the impact of their construction on our environment, economy and quality-of-life.

We should not let wind power's "green" image trick us into abandoning the principle that some places and some species should be saved for their own sakes. We should reject the argument that everything must be "useful," that every place and every aspect of life should be commercialized.

Although my research started with the visual and spatial aspects of WECSs, and continues to be focused on WECSs effects on “landscape character” i.e. impacts on the spatial environment, with implications for cultural values and social systems of our region. I am equally concerned about the predictable negative effects of WECSs on the natural systems of the Flint Hills. I am concerned about serious cumulative effects and the degradation of:

the visual character of our environment;

the social fabric of communities that are facing the prospect of WECS-C;

the health of biological, ecological components of our regional ecosystem; and the long term viability of our local, increasingly “nature-based” economy.

The threat to Vermont posed by industrial wind power is real. Our cause is just. We will prevail. After all, it is simply common sense.

Turbines: It would take thousands of these clean-energy, landscape-marring machines to generate only a slice of the region's power needs.

At first gust, wind power sounds like an environmentalist's dream. An endless supply of clean, renewable energy that will help reduce pollution and lower dependence on greenhouse- gas belching power plants and radioactive-waste generating nuclear facilities.