Grassroots efforts fall all along the political spectrum. Sometimes people protest bilious coal factories. Others protest windmills.
There's a recent story about a group of "wind warriors" in Freeport, Maine who are against the growing wind industry centered in rural Maine. At the Mountaintop Industrial Wind Legislative Summit, 100 "wind warriors" descended to protest the growth of wind power generation.
This quixotic quest is spurred on by a litany of complaints about wind power. There are those who don't want the noise and bother of wind-related construction projects. Others are against the noise generated by wind turbines. And some "wind warriors" don't like the impact wind turbines make on the landscape and property values.
Exactly what the "wind warriors" are protesting, though, is a green energy initiative that has already created more than $1 billion in investment in Maine. More than a third of that has gone directly to workers and local employers.
The aims of the "wind warriors" are narrow, short sighted, and selfish. You could characterize their take on wind power as among the common reactions to any building and development projects: Not In My Backyard. One so-called warrior reacted to these claims by saying, "The mountains of Maine are not in anybody’s backyard. They are, in fact, the character of the state of Maine." But what better character could there be than preserving the environment by ramping up green energy, and creating jobs and income for the local economy?
