Essentially, anyone with a farm will be entitled to install wind turbines, with virtually no setback, and this will pre-empt any local zoning. So beautiful vistas in places like Portsmouth and Jamestown will be up for grabs, and there will be no consideration of the effect on the historic beauty of the area or impact on people’s real estate use or resale values.

Renewable energy may be a popular catch phrase along Colorado's urban Front Range, but it has turned into fighting words across much of rural Colorado. Not because rural communities are against it, to the extent it makes economic sense, but because they're about to be force-fed an overdose by state Senate President John Morse, D-Colorado Springs.

The ongoing expansion of wind power is an intrusion into the countryside, with a extent and effect comparable with the 1900s expansion of hydro power in the rivers in north Sweden. Wind turbines have a significant visual impact on landscape and the anxiety that they create must be taken seriously. There has been no serious research into how they affect people. It can almost be considered a violation of human rights when local opinions are met with indifference by government authorities.

This is a letter written by Paula Stahl of St. George, West Virginia, about her experiences living in the neighborhood of the 66 MW Mountaineer Wind Energy Center. Formerly known as the Backbone Mountain Wind Farm, the 4,400-acre site has 44 turbines, 1.5 MW each, stretched along miles of ridgeline in Tucker and Preston counties. Ms. Stahl submitted the letter to the Berkshire Eagle and North Adams Transcript, neither of which has printed it.

While society said "enough" when it comes to smoking, especially as it pertains to public spaces and second-hand smoke, the wind industry unapologetically continues to force its harmful product on Wisconsin families - not just intruding on public spaces, but primarily invading people's homes with devastating effects.

Now it transpires that the original planning application could not have proceeded, but for a Government cover-up relating to turbine noise. The Sunday Times revealed that in 2006 the Hayes-McKenzie partnership (HMP) produced a report for government that recommended a very large reduction in permissible noise levels from 43 to 38 decibels.

I walked on my normal walk in the woods one day and looked up to the top of the mountain. Just several months before it had been a picturesque view of wilderness beauty ... the kind that attracts tourists and creates much of the state's income. Now, it was lined with these tall mechanical monsters, towering over the trees of an old forest. I am not talking about the quaint and charming windmills of Holland here, we are talking about metal and flashing lights and a size that miniaturizes the grand forest beneath it.

When the turbines started up near her home, in Shelburne, Ont., Helen Fraser suffered severe health effects. ...The latest ad from Sky-Power [a developer of renewable energy projects], states: "In over 25 years and with more than 68,000 turbines installed around the world, no member of the public has ever been harmed by wind turbines." ...So who is telling the truth?

So Price intends to build this project no matter how the town votes -- no surprise. Why shouldn't he be confident? After all, his uncle, Selectman Ron Price, is running the show. Wake up, folks, and see what's happening to our town. Don't believe their promise that three turbines is the end of it. CES would not buy up more land and run 10 miles of heavy duty transmission lines for just three turbines. Freedom has sold out for the faint hope of some tax dollars -- and it's just a hope. Franklin County has a tax agreement with the developer - - so did Mars Hill. Not Freedom!

Residents raised those exact concerns months ago before the turbine was built, but their worries were dismissed by a stack of reports and experts who said those problems, if they existed at all, would be so insignificant, that no one would notice. And what's troubling about all the experts and turbine proponents being so far off the mark on these issues is the fact that most were equally dismissive about concerns the neighbors have raised about safety.

As tourists arrive to appreciate this landscape for the first time, it is here that many also have their first encounter with modern, large-scale wind power production. Upon seeing that these facilities are not, as they are portrayed in numerous cartoon images on electrical bills, mere sets of three or four towers nestled into rolling glens, travelers' first impressions are often negative. Such encounters do not just hurt tourism in Texas but also renewable energy causes in tourists' own parts of the world.

In short, ridgeline wind is extremely destructive relative to the energy it provides, it is not cost effective and likely will never be, it does not have good overall resource potential in this region, and there are much better alternatives that do have a good cost and resource outlook.

NIMBYism is the default invective hurled these days when anyone raises valid questions about what's being sold, but name-calling and threatened boycotts are cheap shots when the stakes are so high. After all, just how GREEN is this technology really? Who amongst us is sufficiently schooled on the true efficiency and safety of giant wind turbines? I've seen them stretched across dry, treeless land abutting freeways and thought, "now there's a good use of unpopulated, barren landscape," but frankly, I don't know much about them.

The presence of these overwhelming techno-energy giants brings to mind a science fiction novel by H. G. Wells. ...It's hard to see anything else. When I look towards the water, I don't see the natural beauty of Kingston's harbour anymore. I don't see Garden Island, Simcoe Island or even Wolfe Island, as my vision is drawn to these massive propellers waiting in rest or whirling away, depending on the breeze. If the daytime view isn't bad enough, the blinking red warning lights on the towers at night light up the sky like a runway at Pearson International Airport.

That natural treasure, which we voted to protect one generation ago, is once again in jeopardy. Once again the citizens of Maine need to let their voices be heard, and once again step forward and say "no" to a proposal to place a massive industrial wind complex on the very doorstep, and just a few short miles from the southeast corner of the Bigelow Preserve.

Recently I hiked up to the top of Lowell Ridge to see where 21, 400-foot wind towers will be placed. As I crested the mountain I came face to face with an energy policy that is at war with itself. The environmental destruction taking place there pits those seeking to reverse climate change against those who wish to preserve Vermont's pristine natural resources.

Falmouth selectmen, according to a recent article in the Cape Cod Times, continue to "sympathize" with the desperate plight of wind turbine abutters ...But the board of selectmen is sticking to its so-called "statement of principles," a shockingly callous and misguided policy statement that proclaims that the board intends to earn enough revenue from the wind turbine to pay the electric bills of the wastewater treatment plant and the debt service on the machines.

And now we don’t have to go to Disneyland. Because, child, Disneyland is the whole state covered with wind towers.

Death, destruction and insomnia are marketed as "renewable electricity" to urban consumers. The federal production tax credit drives it all, with additional subsidies on national forest, where no property taxes are levied. ...We'd have to replace nearly every tree with a turbine to offset even a small amount of coal's impact, devastating the forest in the process. Without a national policy on energy conservation and efficiency, we're whistling in the wind anyway.

But a conference held in Denver earlier this month gave a sobering preview of major land decisions ahead for this nation. Experts at CLE International's convention on Historic Preservation and Tribal Consultation: Energy & Transmission Projects predicted that energy projects will be bigger and come faster than any of us foresee, with great impacts on ethnographic and rural historic districts.