There is great consensus that wind is a viable, patriotic option to importing mideastern oil.  Ten years ago the pundits said wind wouldn't be viable, 5 years ago the coorporate money thought only a few places would be profitable.  Now, with high energy prices every wind turbine is making money and careful site selection has enabled very large wind farms to produce electricity almost round the clock with little impact on the environment.  The big wind farms are sited in corn fields and they farm right around them.  This fosters multi use and multiple income streams for land owners.  This is not an intermittant energy source like a little fan on your roof.  These turbines are out in the open up high where the wind always blows.  Pretty much as many alternative energy people visualized 30 years ago.

Now rich people and the government are getting concerned about the view, radar coverage and bird deaths?  Give me a break.  These turbines are in lots of small town in Iowa and the ground is not littered with dead birds all around them.  The towers are shorter than many smokestack and definately shorter than 100 story buildings.  Ugliness is in the eye of the beholder and even minimum cooperation between groups will solve the radar interferance issues.  

This is a fight over who has power.  A small number of rich, influential people or the general communitay at large.  In the town I live in there is a raging debate about Smart Growth vs conventional growth.  The conventional Growth crowd label Smart Growth as 'No growth' because Smart Growth disagrees with unrestricted mall and housing development.  At the same time the Conventional Growth people are very anti alternative energy installation and approaches.  They strongly dislike any ordinance or code that raises the bar on energy efficiency, in ground heat pumps, passive solar design, energy efficient appliances in new homes, etc.  These are all considered to restrictive "Government can't tell me where or what to build, it's a free country" is often cited.  

Now this same mindset is preventing one of the greenest energy sources from being developed creating jobs and improving local economies.  We live in strange times indeed.