Dilemma for the Hippies

Hippies getting bored waiting for "the right virus to come along," were confronted with a brain-teaser today.

The good news: A windmill farm has dreams of expanding. The bad news: The windmills are aiding natural selection.

Wind farm operators in the Altamont Pass are offering to shut down half of their electricity-producing windmills during the winter to reduce bird deaths and to replace them all with more modern machines within 13 years.

But the proposal, which Alameda County officials will consider Thursday, comes with strings attached. The offer is good only if an environmental group drops its lawsuit over the deaths of thousands of birds.

The predictable by-line for the article is, "Environmental groups: Proposed winter shutdowns aren't enough."

The lesson for the rest of us: Nothing done to appease environmentalists will ever be "enough."

Enough said.

-- CAV