"You can have Christmas the whole year round -- and twice on the Fourth of July -- provided you say the magic word." What word? Change? Hope? Bailout? Oh, please -- those are so 2008. Infrastructure? That's a perennial favorite, and it's going to be even more popular in 2009. But the magic word you really need is this: Green. ...Taxpayers and consumers have been through this before, with mad rushes of spending being justified by the altruistic mantra, "But it's for the children." This time, though, "It's for the Earth."

This has been known to fry wind turbines. With snow, ice and frigid weather, winter creates complications for renewable energy, as I wrote last week. But for Ralph Brokaw, a Wyoming rancher with both cows and wind turbines on his land, the worst hazard is not the ice that his blades can throw off in the winter. Rather, it is lightning strikes on the towers.

There isn't much doubt that Congress and incoming President Barack Obama will try to impose some kind of limits on carbon emissions. The Republicans, girding in opposition, are denouncing global warming as a fraud, and claiming that either a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system will impose an unacceptable burden on the economy. ...Wind generation is the prime example of what can go wrong when the government decides to pick winners. The idea that it can replace significant quantities of coal or natural gas in electrical generation is a fantasy.

Democratic congressional leaders say the new president, working with increased Democratic majorities in Congress, has an opportunity to finally get something done on climate change and alternative energy after eight years of stalemate between liberal lawmakers and the Bush administration. But their euphoria is tempered by the knowledge that the sad state of the U.S. economy and the still powerful Republican minority in the Senate could slow their momentum. Republicans and the business community argue that any major new environmental regulations will drive up energy costs and put more people out of work.

One of Barack Obama's most fanciful promises is to develop "green" sources of energy as a meaningful alternative to traditional supplies. The very idea of renewable energy is fine, but it is fanciful to think in the foreseeable future wind or solar or methane gas or any of the others will represent a significant portion of the energy mix. The reason is the superiority of existing sources in cost and efficiency coupled with increasingly "clean" production and use techniques.

The domestic auto industry isn't the only uncompetitive industry that seems to require life-sustaining transfusions of government cash to stay in business. Alternative energy sources have relied on such subsidies, called "investments," for years. Yet in President-elect Obama's announcement of his energy team, we were told "the foundations of our energy independence" lie in "the power of wind and solar." ...After decades of tax credits and subsidies, wind provides only about 1% of our electricity. By comparison, coal provides 49%, natural gas 22%, nuclear power 19% and hydroelectric 7%.

Clean energy stocks crashed by two thirds. The chart of the WilderHill New Energy Global Innovation index resembles the Nasdaq Technology index in 2000. ...International Energy Agency analyst Ralph Sims, who attended Poznan, said everything depended on US President-elect Barack Obama rebuilding momentum. He would deliver comfort, but an effective response to climate change would need him to push the political, business and fiscal agenda in favour of a green new deal. This is a tall order when his priority is to rebuild the US economy.

Let's look at Bird Island off the coast of Marion in the center of Buzzards Bay, and what towns around the bay have plans for commercial wind turbines. ...In several years, Bird Island, the largest nesting area of roseate terns in North America, will be surrounded by commercial wind turbines.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service just completed a 97-page "biological opinion" that the 130-wind turbine project off Cape Cod will not harm the Roseate Terns. ...In several years Bird Island, the largest nesting area of Rosate Terns in North America in Buzzards Bay, will be surrounded by commercial wind turbines.

It is time for Ontario to work with citizens and environmental specialists to establish guidelines for the careful development of wind energy (Who Could Object To Wind Power? - Nov. 25). There are some places where wind turbines simply don't belong. ...Build wind developments in the wrong places and the environment will be collateral damage.

Wind power can't survive without massive subsidies, courtesy of you and me. "If these hidden subsidies were taken away, there would not be a single wind turbine built in Britain," says David Bellamy, a well-known environmentalist who has been tramping the Scottish countryside to oppose a massive wind project there. ...When will we stop pouring billions into wind? I have no idea. Politicians really love their turbines. Meantime, that soft whooshing sound you hear is your friendly green government, vacuuming money out of your pockets.

Wind has been the cornerstone of almost all environmentalist and social engineering proclamations for more than three decades and has accelerated to a crescendo the last few years in both the United States and the European Union. But Europe, getting a head start, has had to cope with the reality borne by experience and it is a pretty ugly picture. Independent reports have consistently revealed an industry plagued by high construction and maintenance costs, highly volatile reliability and a voracious appetite for taxpayer subsidies.

We have just seen the collapse of the financial Goliath that was built by fast-buck bankers and encouraged by altruistic but shortsighted government policies that required banks to make more loans to those least able to repay them, and encouraged passing on these loans as quality investments. We are now building a second Goliath in the form of irrational investment in wind and solar-voltaic energy.

Once a booming industry thanks to sky-high oil prices, the feel-good trend, carbon reduction and subsidies, the financial crisis has pushed investors to give up on green energies, and like the dot-com bubble of 2000, some analysts say it's about to burst. ..."I think economic reality will kill the green industry," said Mr. Buckee, who now lives in Britain and lectures on climate change. Solar energy isn't alone in its woes. Wind, biomass, biofuel and other "clean-tech" companies are getting pasted too as the financial crisis sends investors fleeing from technology names, dries up credit and freezes the IPO market.

Wind farms of sprouting up all over the country like 65-story mushrooms. The North American Reliability Council estimates we will have 175,000 megawatts of new capacity by 2017 (that's the equivalent of 175 major coal or nuclear plants). Unfortunately, it admits, "only approximately 23,000 MW…is projected to be available on peak." That means these windmills will be idle most of the time. Coal plants operate at 65 percent capacity, nuclear rims at 90 percent. But at best windmills produce only 30 percent of their "nameplate capacity" and they are almost useless on torpid summer days. California has found its windmills running at only 3 percent capacity on hot summer days. Never mind, we are forging ahead anyway.

I had always favored building wind farms. The burden of coal mining-and particularly mountaintop removal coal mining-is so great that anything would be better. If wind farms diminish that then they are worth it. ...Now there is a new twist to the argument, something that makes thinking about wind power even more difficult. In the article that begins on page 14 of this issue, Ms. Collins argues that building more wind farms will not reduce the use of coal. She argues that because wind farms only make electricity when the wind blows, they are inefficient and unreliable. ...If it true that wind farms do not diminish the use of coal, then we do have some rethinking to do. If they do not replace any coal, then what is the point? Why should a single bat die, a single hiker be inconvenienced, a single tree be cut if wind power is not going to reduce the use of coal or some other source of electricity?

One of the most bizarre aspects of the debate over "wind farms" in West Virginia and surrounding states is the unquestioning acceptance by many environmentalists of wind energy as a credible and environmentally friendly energy source. I have read many articles and letters written by dedicated environmentalists touting the benefits and discounting or completely ignoring the adverse consequences of wind energy. The prevailing belief of these individuals is that we must embrace wind energy as at least a partial solution to the increased burning of fossil fuels and global warming. ...So, I ask all environmentalists who "believe in wind" to please do some research and become informed of the realities of industrial wind energy in the eastern highlands. Be skeptical of the claims of those who have financial incentives to promote this scam.

This afternoon, the Shasta County Board of Supervisors will have a hearing concerning the Hatchet Ridge Wind project. The board's decision will have a significant impact on birds living in and migrating through the West. The Board of Supervisors has not been given the knowledge to make a proper decision on the project. ...The wind power industry learned a lesson from the astounding number of bird kills at Altamont Pass. Instead of pursuing better wind turbine designs that would limit bird kills, it chose a path of cover-up and lies. Today many wind turbine sites have limited access and workers will lose their jobs if they disclose the truth.

All speculative bubbles have a kernel of truth behind them to justify their existence. This time around it was China and India. These emerging Asian giants were gobbling up all the commodities the world could produce to fuel their rapid industrialization. It wasn't that the story was untrue; it was old. Growing global demand probably was the reason for the gradual rise in oil prices from $20 a barrel to $40 earlier in the decade, and even to $60 by mid-2005. It was the moon shot to $147 that took on a life, and a litany, of its own.