In the wind

THIS PLACE IS CLOSE TO THE CENTER OF THE BIG EMPTY IN WYOMING.  THE RIDGE TO THE SOUTH IS KNOWN TO A HANDFUL OF LOCALS AS PINE HILL.  THE mountain range just out of this picture to the west is too small to be a part of any national forest. It’s held and mostly neglected by the Bureau of Land Management. The local population of residents consists primarily of sage grouse, pronghorns, a handful of black-footed ferrets, and a herd of elk that drifts back and forth from the high country to the prairie as the season and the whims of its members dictate. As I went out last week to pursue a few of those elk, I found half a dozen of these flimsy antennae scattered across the area. They’re called “met” towers— “met” short for meteorological— and they’re the first step in installing yet another series of 400-foot-tall wind generators.

At a recent public meeting on the new “development,” a man who cowboyed on a local ranch as a youth and has hunted here all his life asked the representative of the energy corporation why he would build in such a place.

“It’s some of the very last of the very best,” he said. “What you want to do would destroy it.”

The rep listened perfunctorily and replied, “Tough.”

I believe in alternative energy. My wife and I are reaching into our life savings to install solar panels on our roof this fall. But wind and solar energy development at an industrial scale causes many of the same problems that industry in other forms has caused across the continent. It seems the goal of the big wind energy firms is the same as any other big company’s— maximize return on investment, nothing else. And for those of us who think that some places are too precious to scar, even in the name of clean energy, their message is clear:

Tough.