The split between conservationists and environmentalists is upon us. Across the country (and beyond it) our beloved national scenery is being threatened by the greens, of all people. More precisely, greens are attacking mountaintops. With windmills.

Greens, naturally, aren’t the only ones attacking mountaintops. The tentative emergence of wind energy in states such as North Carolina is in some ways a response to mountaintop removal, which essentially destroys hilltops in search of coal. This practice tends to cause pollution, erosion, and all kinds of things that don’t sound that bad unless you live by something that used to be a river.

By this yardstick, the proposals of environmentalists really don’t seem like an assault at all. Lining hill crests with windmills actually seems like common sense, if you want windmills to be where wind is. Ridges in rural Oregon are being leased out in 105-megawatt parcels. To put this in comprehensible terms, one megawatt of wind energy can supply 200 to 300 households with energy for a year. That is to say that windmills in Oregon won’t solve everything, but they certainly won’t hurt. North Carolina ridges average wind speeds of 25 miles per hour, where the overwhelming majority of the North American continent sees average speeds of well under 20 miles per hour. Even if the continent as a whole averaged 20 miles per hour the difference is still far from marginal – the energy in wind is proportional to the cube of wind speed. This means that an area with average wind speeds of 25 miles per hour offers, on average, about twice as much electricity as an area with wind speeds of 20 miles per hour. Windmills don’t quite take in all the extra available energy, but the difference is still very significant. In context of this it seems flat-out stupid to put windmills anywhere but the windiest conceivable areas.

Even this qualification is not simple, however. Areas on the continent with a large amount of wind also tend to have large numbers of birds riding that wind. According to one study, in California’s Altamont Pass, 2,000 to 5,000 birds annually get hit by the windmills occupying the pass. Proposals to build windmills along the Appalachian Ridge have been met with skepticism by naturalists, concerned about similar phenomena on a larger scale there, due to birds’ notorious tendency to migrate. Of course, what with climate change and all, a lot of people think renewable energy is sort of important. More important, for instance, than some dumb birds that don’t even look where they fly. But the issue is complicated by emerging prototypes for offshore windmills. Since in the ocean there isn’t wildlife to disturb (this is why we can use it as a dump for plastic) and because of science, the possibility of offshore windmills is moving rapidly toward realization.

There are several advantages to offshore windmills. The first is that, due to the relative ease of moving things on the sea versus on land, significantly bigger windmills can be used offshore, with rotor diameters of up to 110 meters (the length of the blades from top to bottom). The largest diameters seen on land these days are about 90 meters. Intuition tells us that bigger is better and science probably verifies. However, the second and probably more important thing is that average wind speeds of up to 30 miles per hour in parts of the North Atlantic are typical, which again means a roughly twofold increase in energy in the wind. And no dead birds.

Of course, real people don’t care about things like this, and it certainly hasn’t colored discussion of the issue. People care about money, and a warm reception of windmills in Steens County, Oregon is probably flavored by the $1.25 billion dollar investment that comes with it. The county’s jobless rate was 18 percent in December. Similarly in North Carolina concerns about windmills on mountaintops reflect the touristic appeal of the state’s Appalachian ridge lines. The State Senate is still mulling over a bill to ban construction of windmills along the ridges, concerned, in the words of state senator Martin Nesbitt, about “destroy[ing] our crown jewel.” While it is hard to believe that anyone goes to North Carolina for scenery, it’s even harder to believe people go there for any other reason, and so perhaps Nesbitt has a valid point.

As with all real issues, of course, there’s no simple solution. Birds are pretty and fun, and the truth is that wind energy does not yet have the capacity to, independently, move us sufficiently toward sustainable energy. North Carolina has so little going for it that to take away its scenic views is a bit like kicking a cancer patient, but the truth is that someone has to be kicked. Failing to move toward sustainable energy will have disastrous consequences. The problem is deciding whether it’s worthwhile to invest in baby steps like ruining scenery and killing birds when the truth is that we have yet to find a plausible mechanism of getting sustainable energy. Without this most crucial element, all other discussion seems at least a little bit futile.