This 2008 AP story could have been from 2006, when the Maple Ridge wind project went online and brothers John and Gordon Yancey first made news with their family's disagreements over it.

The surrounding farmers and communities lined up and signed up for the $6,600 annual payments (per turbine). The Yanceys' father, Ed, went along with the project, leasing rights to install some of the 195 turbines right on the family's NY farm.

His boys (in their forties) still complain to any reporter who will listen. Gordon Yancey hates the sight and he hates the noise, he told the AP reporter in an interview at Yancey's backwoods inn, a local redneck resort for snowmobilers and ATV riders. The weekend of the interview, the inn was hosting a watercross extravaganza in which snowmobiles roar across a pond, with only their speed to keep them from sinking.

In the midst of engine noise, smoke, and carbon emissions, Yancey reflects bitterly on how the rest of his family -- and his whole community -- have embraced the evil turbines:

"Dad taught us such respect for the land. For my father to be part of this ..."

The United States has no shortage of folks who will speak out against renewable energy -- if they're not busy skimming the surface of a mountain lake at full speed on a snowmobile -- for as long as they live. Some will miss the irony of opposing clean energy in the name of respect for the land. The sooner the Yancey Boys of this world have taken their places in the peat bog, the sooner America can get on with the work at hand: becoming a sustainable-energy country.

"Wind power brings prosperity, anger" -- Associated Press story. (If CNN.com restricts access, Google the headline. Yancey has accomplished a PR feat, considering the wind farm he opposes has been up and running for 2 years. He even got on NPR "All Things Considered.")