"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."

Must we destroy the environment in order to save it? In the province of Ontario, the answer seems to be "yes." This month, the Liberal provincial government of Dalton McGuinty will finish drafting its proposed Green Energy Act. The Act's early drafts call for a big increase in renewable energy production in Ontario. Sounds nice! How do we get there? The plan contains two big elements: (1) a huge cash giveaway and (2) a brusque slap-down of local democracy.

The only certain thing about the battle shaping up on the edge of Algonquin Park is that the green side will win. The question, however, is which green side will be the victor? In a conflict suited to the times, the Ontario government is running into resistance from self-professed environmentalists over its plan to expand the use of wind turbines, which are the darling of other self-professed environmentalists.

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.

Certainly, local farmers are entitled to earn a reasonable living. On the other hand, the rest of us are entitled to a quality of life and enjoyment of property. The underlying issue is that a small group of people formed met in secret to unilaterally decide that what is best for their own financial gain is best for the community. Her entreaty to "talk to the neighbours" is even more risible. The fact that this has been planned for two years and that the public is only now learning the detail and extent of this proposal is a case in point. To quote an old saying: "the fix is in".

Marin Clean Energy, the community electric power aggregation scheme, is gaining steam. The effort to fundamentally change Marin's energy supply is of such importance that voters deserve to make the final decision. The issue should be placed on the November 2009 ballot.

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 eagerness with which regional council this week endorsed the call for a full-panel federal environmental assessment of the Lake Uist wind and hydro proposal is indicative of the success that critics of the project are having in getting their concerns across. It was as though council was anxious to make up somehow for having granted Cape Breton Explorations Ltd. its land use bylaw amendment last year, the first critical regulatory step needed to put the energy plan in motion.

President-elect Obama has said that he would promote "wind farms" as one way to create more jobs. This idea is consistent with popular wisdom about wind energy and, therefore, sounded good while Mr. Obama was in the Senate and during his presidential campaign. The problem for Mr. Obama now is that this popular wisdom is wrong.

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.

The problem with the green revolution argument is that it doesn't trouble itself about efficiency. It is most often lauded for supplying new jobs, but billions of dollars in tax subsidies would create plenty of new jobs in almost any sector. The point is that many less-capital-intensive sectors would create many more jobs for a given investment of taxpayers' money. Similarly, green initiatives will open new markets only if other nations subsidize inefficient technologies bought abroad. Thus, the real game becomes which nations get to suck up other nations' tax-financed subsidies. Apart from the resulting global inefficiency, this also creates a whole new raft of industry players that will keep pushing inefficient legislation simply because it fills their coffers.

Exactly what that 170 megawatts figure refers to is unclear. No businessman in his right mind would invest one billion dollars to get 170 megawatts of power a year. Cape Wind's web page says the 130 turbines "will produce up to 420 megawatts" of power. But that would require that all 130 turbines produce their maximum capacity at the very same moment. It's possible, but so is Kevin Yukilis batting 1.000 throughout a season. Wind turbines are lucky to produce 25 percent of their rated capacity over a year's time.

Exactly why Dennis Trochim believes Manitoba would be especially proactive in building wind farms, regardless of whether the financially troubled firm Babcock and Brown is involved is hard to fathom. If this province depended largely on imported power, the proposal would make some sense; but since it gets about 98 per cent of its electricity from hydro, what's the reason for any urgency?

Minister Smitherman's recent letter in Barry's Bay This Week (Wind power has important role, Oct. 29, 2008) revealed a disturbing lack of understanding of the true nature of this rush to wind-farm construction. He seems to think that it is about producing environmentally friendly power. But a sober look at the process shows that it is not. Any ordinary business would proceed slowly. In a marginal area such as ours, they would build one turbine, see how it worked out and gradually expand the operation. So why are these firms so eager to construct so many turbines so fast in untested areas?

Solar and wind now are the darlings of "new green economy" advocates for producing solar panels and wind turbines are supposed to replace lost manufacturing jobs from industries such as steel and automobiles. Never mind that solar energy has been shown to have only limited applicability and that the best wind farm in the world only operates 30% of the time. American taxpayers would be better served by being told the truth by politicians, rather than the economic nonsense that surrounds the hype regarding the green economy.

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.