Canada’s Debate

The debate over the environment (Global Warming, smog, preservation and conservation, etc.) is a large and complicated one, with a new banner issue almost yearly. Trying to condense the “struggle” that is modern environmentalism into easy-to-digest information is tricky… Then again, this story does it perfectly. In fact, it summarizes the state of environmentalism so succinctly that I just had to share it.

Tired of paying as much as $340 per month for gas and electricity at the Cape Cod home here where he has lived for 18 months, Michael Mercurio erected a 35-foot windmill in his backyard last fall that helped reduce his bill to about $114 — a year…

Some of his neighbors say it is also annoying. They say it is too big. They say it is too noisy. And some residents in this middle-class borough on Long Beach Island have gone to court to try to make him take it down, while the township has stilled it since winter.

It is a collision between the ideals of alternative energy and the suburban reality of New Jersey’s notorious not-in-my-backyard culture, casting Mr. Mercurio in the role of a latter-day environmental knight errant and his neighbor and principal adversary as the ecological equivalent of Cruella De Vil.

Normally I find the pap of a journalistic flourish irritating, but this closing is perfect…

“People always say, ‘Not in my backyard, not in my backyard,’ ” he said. “I want to flip it around. It should start in my backyard.”