Doug Rooks is correct about at least one thing (May 9). There is a growing backlash to industrial-scale wind turbines on Maine’s mountains. People who care about Maine’s present and future are refusing to roll over for the short-term interests of the wind industry and its largely unfounded claims.

That Mainers are standing up for the well-being of their families, their homes and their state should come as no surprise. In its final report in 2008, the Governor’s Task Force on Wind Power predicted that Mainers’ tolerance for wind power development would be limited. They knew that the residents of Maine would discover the high price their state will pay in the form of a degraded quality of place. The return on this sacrifice will be paltry and fleeting.

Rooks stated that deep water wind turbines are still theoretical. Wind turbines’ ability to significantly reduce carbon emissions or our dependence on foreign oil is also theoretical. Some European countries have been at the wind turbine game for decades and are not only still heavily reliant on imported fossil fuels, but are seeing their dependencies grow.

The clean-energy advantages touted by the wind industry are largely paper calculations with no supporting real-world examples.

Let’s call Maine’s adventure in wind what it is: a subsidy grab — Maine’s answer to the Midwest’s ethanol industry. We can’t grow a lot of corn, but we’ve got a lot of mountains we can tear up to grow another dubious green-energy solution.

Alan Michka, Lexington

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