The answer's blowing in the wind, but not all of us want to hear it

Roy MacGregor
The Globe And Mail
Mon Jun 8 2009

Quick now! What do Canadians have in common with Kermit the Frog?

And with Van Morrison? Frank Sinatra? Tony Bennett?

Simple: We all have our versions of It's Not Easy Being Green.

We have all seen them: those huge tractor trailers with warning trucks front and back flashing their emergency lights as the tractor trailers carry massive white steel tubes so long and high and wide that they take up far more than their share of the road. So massive are these loads that the convoys sometimes have to stick to the secondary roads in order to stay away from low overpasses.

Most of us now know that, when assembled, they are wind turbines. You sometimes see rows of them standing, like some Star Wars warning, when you stare down from a plane passing over the Great Lakes or when driving about the Gaspé, or near Shelburne in the farm country of Ontario, or south of Calgary near Lethbridge. There is even one, odd as it looks, virtually in downtown Toronto.

To see them fully assembled and running is a jaw-dropping experience the first time. To see them every day, however, is causing some people's teeth to grind.

Michael Lansbury is just one of many cottagers in the Upper Ottawa Valley attempting to block a wind farm that could mean as many as 60 of the giant windmills going up in the heart of what could be described as a Group-of-Seven postcard.

Mr. Lansbury at first didn't like the idea of going down to the dock with a morning coffee and having to stare at a horizon that would look more like a bad science-fiction set than dawn slipping over the high hills of the Canadian Shield.

That is undeniably a Not-In-My-Back-Yard response and Mr. Lansbury concedes the point easily, saying he is "motivated by selfishness to the extent that I don't want the countryside ruined."

But he also considers himself an environmentalist, living simply on the lake, believing in solar panels and even personal windmills - but not these behemoths.

And yet, Mr. Lansbury and a whole lot of other Canadians are going to have to get used to them. According to a detailed feature in this month's Canadian Geographic (canadiangeographic.ca) the wind of this vast country is being harnessed these days at remarkable speed.

Over the past five years, says the magazine, "some provincial policy-makers have begun to realize that wind could do for Canada's 21st century what hydro did for its 20th: marshal an immense resource in this rugged, windswept country. "

While the growth has been impressive here, Canada is still light years behind the Danes, Germans and Spaniards and may soon by outstripped by the Americans following a push by President Barack Obama for significant investment in wind and solar power.

Ontario is currently pushing hardest, having promised to put an end to its coal-fired generating plants by 2014. Premier Dalton McGuinty and provincial Energy Minister George Smitherman have both said that personal selfishness will not be tolerated.

"Don't say, 'I don't want it around here,' " McGuinty said four months ago in London, Ont. "NIMBYism will no longer prevail."

But just try and stop it from trying. Already Torontonians have organized to fight a plan to erect the giant turbines off the scenic Scarborough Bluffs. Residents of bucolic Wolfe Island are fighting back, as are cottagers along Georgian Bay. And Michael Lansbury's group along Highway 60 is daily more negative about this cleanest imaginable of energy sources. There is even a website (windconcernsontario.org) where the various groups share anti-turbine information.

The opponents have connected with Nina Pierpont, a New York physician who has raised concerns about the health effects caused by low-frequency noise. Her own website (windturbinesyndrome.com) is filled with medical detail and even contains a few of the accusations thrown back at her, including one town meeting where she was accused of claiming "wind turbines cause mad cow disease."

Dr. Pierpont writes about "Wind Turbine Syndrome," while in Japan they talk about "Wind Turbine Disease" and in Europe there is a consortium of 300 groups (epaw.org) that is calling for an international moratorium on the giant windmills.

To no surprise, there are arguments from both directions, Dr. Pierpont and others claiming scientific proof of illness, others stepping forward to claim they live near them with no ill effects at all.

As Canadian Geographic notes, this very strange story has those who are trying to bring clean energy -what can be more natural than the wind? - battling those who believe the windmills can cause headaches, sleep depravation, tinnitus and even heart palpitations and will destroy bird habitat and even flight paths.

"It appears to pit one environmental good against another," says the magazine.

Kermit the Frog must have seen all this coming.

"When green is all there is to be," he sang - or croaked.

"It could make you wonder why ... " And that, says Michael Lansbury, is all he is himself singing: Why? Why now? And why in such a hurry?

"Surely," he asks, "these wind turbines do not have to be next door to everyone before we have some accurate information in this country."

rmacgregor@globeandmail.com