It is rare to see you in such a quagmire my friend.

Clean and renewable energy. With some estimates seeing a significant depletion of oil reserves in the next fifty years, I suspect we have many more of these quandries ahead.

I too am unsure of which is the lesser of two evils

Are we willing to "put up" with wind turbines, or would we rather move to New Orleans or the Gulf Coast? These are the choices that I see coming before us or our children and grandchildren. Oil is not limitless, but wind is. There are communication towers all over, why not wind farms which are much more environmentally sound than more oil wells?

It is indeed a tough call...most of us don't give it a second thought that the light will come on when we turn the switch but as a society there is a outcry by somebody no matter what choice is made to try and expand our ways of getting/developing new energy resources. You know the speech ….I like having energy at my disposal but with the caveat...but don’t ever consider impacting the natural resources that are near and dear to me and this stand is just plan unrealistic. As lovers of the outdoors we need to face reality if we want to have the future use of energy and I make some difficult decisions to support those new energy options which have the least impact to those Maine natural resources we all value. It that or the lights will dim eventually………….

How about the novel approach of conservation. What if we; turned out every other street light.Tax credits for energy efficent appliances and lighting fixtures. One less Wallmart sprawl-mall with it's 300 parking lot streetlights. Motion sensors on all homeowner exterior lights. Turn off the lights on the aformentioned cell towers. These are only a few ideas and if any one of these were implimented it would eliminate the need of the windmills. Unfortunatly, as Americans it seems, exploit now worry about the consequences later is the way to go. Something to think about....

What if we did turn off all those lights Brian speaks of: then we could revert to unsafe parking lots, front and back yards and have planes fly into towers.

Ruth I turned off the streetlight next to the house I live in 4 years ago when I moved in. I don't use an ouside light unless I have company and don't use it then if the moon is full. I feel pretty safe. Most of the towers around here are 200 feet or less, why would anyone need to fly that low.

It's the viewshed from ~ 50 miles of the AT in an valued stretch of Western Maine that concerns those of us who treasure the Trail. And the fact that Maine isn't currently in a electricity deficit. I don't live in this area, so it's not a case of NIMBY, I'm just torn over whether this location's view is worth despoiling when other areas might be less obtrusive.