Enviro-phoneys against windmills

There are two of environmental policies in the United States today: one for the very rich and one for the yahoos. Once you understand this, a lot of things fall into place. You know how developers and mining magnates get away with turning your local landscape into a hideous mess, while they live in perfect, super-zoned enclaves.

In most places, wind turbines are seen as good things for the environment. They provide renewable, clean energy. But put windmills on the watery blue horizon of a trophy house, and they get painted as environmental demons.

This story began in 2001, when Cape Wind Associates proposed a wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts, in Nantucket Sound. Many locals thought the project virtuous. Its 130 wind turbines would provide Cape Cod, Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard on average 74 percent of their electricity. The region is home to two of the nation's worst-polluting electric plants...

...The jet set had other ideas. It established a group with a green name -- the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound -- and lots of green behind it. The alliance asserts that wind turbines kill off large numbers of birds and fish, though data don't back those assertions. What the birds and fish really need, biologists say, is less fossil-fuel pollution (such as mercury) in their air and water. The Seafarers International Union, representing hundreds of local commercial fishermen, endorses the wind farm.

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