It is important, Gov. Sam Brownback said, to promote tourism in the Flint Hills, therefore I have more than doubled the area in central Kansas which is off-limits for wind farms.
It’s the “therefore” in that sentence which raises an unanswered question. Do those great gleaming towers with their graceful arms turning in the wind discourage tourists? Really? How do we know?
Quite a few of the folks who equate human activity with bad consequences condemn windfarms as automatically as their knee jerks when tapped with a rubber hammer. But are there solid facts to back up this knee-jerk sentiment?
California has quite a few wind farms along its highways. They stand out in this traveler’s memory. Not because they are ugly or beautiful, but because they are interesting features on a horizon. California attracts oodles of tourists.
There are hundreds of turbines along I-70 on the way to Colorado. They offer an excellent opportunity to sample tourist opinion. Do those carfuls going to and from the Rockies have a reaction to them? Positive or negative? Do they say to their fellow travelers, “boy, aren’t those awful!” or “cool!” Or, amongst the more hip, “Kansas is on the ball!”
It would be nice to know if the “environmentalists” did scientific homework or are relying only on kneejerkology.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
