Hot Air

(Winston-Salem Journal) - The trend of not-in-my-backyard has often defined debates about windmills in Northwest North Carolina and the rest of the country. So it's not surprising that the latest convert to the windmill cause, Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens, has been hit by that trend.

He's constructing a $10-billion wind farm in the Texas panhandle and persuading neighboring ranchers to put turbines in their fields, Newsweek reports, but he says, "There are no turbines on my ranch, because I think they're ugly."

All of which makes his advocacy of wind power sound like a bunch of hot air.