Windmills: Grand Spires or Eyesores?

These windmills are a few miles south of Thomas along Route 219. The line of windmills dots the ridges running north from this location. I had seen them before from a distance--lined up along the horizon. On a clear day when the sky is blue, they stand out like sentries on the horizon, but on hazy or cloudy days when the sky is white or gray, the windmills fade into their background.

Some have suggested that they are unsightly or eyesores. Some environmentalists have suggested that they will have a negative impact on the local environment, although their claim isn't yet substantiated. In my mind I havan't dismissed the possibility of some unconceived-of environmental impact akin to the salmon population declines that have been caused by dams in the Pacific Northwest.

What I do know is that I right now I am writing on an electric computer in my air-conditioned house. Industries need to try clean alternatives to fossil fuels that blacken and scar our landscapes. If we reveal that the windmills have harmful impacts, we need to be prepared to fall-back and try something else. As for their asthetic impact, they look better than the strip mines that dot the West Virginia landscape.

To me, these windmills are monuments to innovation in pursut of clean sources of power. Even John Muir was an inventor as well as a naturalist. Perhaps someday new old-growth forests will grow up around the windmills and create a grand forest of man-made and nature-made sustainable spires, converting wind to power and CO2 to Oxygen.