WINDFALL: The Movie

A must-see documentary from the U.S. The situation is slightly different in Ontario, where the McGuinty government has shown little regard for rural rights and has aided Big Wind to walk all over the province without really addressing the complexities of the issue first.

Yet the stunning lack of democracy on this side of the lake is perhaps not all that different from the frontier-like free-for-all happening in upper New York state, because in the end there is only one winner in this seedy little shell game that touts itself as "green" and that's Big Wind - the wind corporations, now the billionaire heirs to Big Oil.

Funny how it's always the little guy who gets hoodwinked and stomped on. Make no mistake, neither you nor the planet is going to benefit from this latest big bucks, big business bamboozle. Certainly not the birds, the bats and the butterflies.

We must ensure a moratorium on ALL new wind facilities before any more are erected and we must demand that ALL wind farms undergo independent environmental assessments by scientists, biologists, ornithologists and ecologists.

We cannot lose our precious million-year-old migration routes to the latest wave of corporate greed just because it come wrapped in green packaging.

Learn and read about the true cost of wind, and why we need to look at alternatives to the alternative.

We can do better than this. And we must if we want to call ourselves environmentalists.

On a final note, I took a trip to the Port Burwell wind farm a few months ago, where some 60-odd turbines tilt at the skies from their jagged stride across the lush southwestern Ontario landscape. That is to say, the ones that were actually working were "tilting." A few stood motionless, a small red light indicating they were not functioning.

I watched two tiny specks come into view. Birds. Blackbirds, I believe. I did not have my binoculars, so I am surmising. I watched the two birds for several minutes. They were flying ominously close to a turbine, ominously close to the giant multi-ton paddles. I sucked in my breath. I was hoping against hope...

and then there was only one speck left.

One. The other bird was gone. Vanished. Annihilated.

I did not have my binoculars. But one second there were two birds, lazily and leisurely drifting across a late summer sky...

and then there was one.

I have been bloody angry ever since.