NC OFFICIALDOM WON'T PASS WIND

We live in one of the windiest places on God's green earth. The potential for producing cheap electricity from that wind source, without polluting any air or water and without using up non-sustainable sources of energy, is virtually limitless.

Yet people fear wind energy. You'd think wind turbines were asphalt plants, from the way antis packed a hearing before the NC Utilities Commission in Ashe County recently.

Now the staff of the Commission has come out with a very negative staff report against a turbine "farm" near Creston, and the AG Roy Cooper is threatening to get involved. Cooper's hostility to wind energy goes back years. The Utilities Commission's befuddled fear of wind power seems mere minutes old (and awfully convenient for Duke Power). Together, AG and Utilities Commission appear poised to strangle this baby in its cradle.

That's just so 20th century of them.