The eye of the beholder, that’s where they say the beauty lies. Maybe this is why the conundrum of wind energy being wrangled within our Island newspapers and e-mail threads has no apparent clear answer.

There is a small group of people on the Island adamantly opposed to generating electricity from wind power in any form. There are people in favor of Cape Wind as well as people against it. There are also now a large number of Islanders who have joined Vineyard Power ostensibly to be part of an Island cooperative that would, in the end, provide clean, inexpensive electricity from its own offshore wind turbines to its members.

More people tend to be in favor of wind power if they have something to gain from it. This is where the missing link hides. We don’t see the effects of our current electricity use. It comes to us on a cable and we use it at our whim. We don’t see the mountain that was literally removed to provide the coal that was then hauled to other Massachusetts coastal communities that feed our underwater electrical cable. We all suffer the ramifications of the coal, oil and gas industries whether we notice or not. The hidden costs of fossil fuels are immense. Coal-fired power plants are the single largest source of greenhouse gases in the U.S. according to a recent National Research Council report. Climate-related monetary damages cost taxpayers as much as 10 cents per kilowatt hour and non-climate related damages from these pollutants cost an addition 3.2 cents according to the report. Most Islanders don’t think about the four 23-kilovolt underwater cables that are our umbilical cord to the mainland. Most Islanders don’t see the temporary generators housed in semitrailers and pulled up next to our electrical substations to provide auxiliary power during the summer. The benefits of electricity generated from the wind can’t be seen but they are real. We all have something to gain from wind energy, even a neighbor’s small turbine.

We are at a crossroads with our energy needs. We refuse to use less energy and hesitate to generate more, yet our increasing population and insatiable demand requires that we do just that. Wind energy will in fact keep us from increasing our carbon output which is expected to rise here on the Vineyard from 329,000 tons to 457,000 tons, according to the Island Plan, if we continue our current dirty energy practices. Imagine our Island electric grid like a large colander into which we pour water. We pour electricity in from the top and it comes streaming out little holes in the bottom. Each one of these little holes represents a residence or business. When we plug one of these holes with a residential wind generator we slow down the need for more from the top. If we add our own offshore wind generation we are filling the colander with our own water. Both scenarios help prevent the need for additional generation and additional cables to the mainland.

Facts are what we need. Like the fact that the U.S. Department of Energy’s 20 Per Cent Wind Energy by 2030 Technical Report found CO2 emissions would be reduced by over 825 million tons in the year 2030 alone, an amount equal to 25 per cent of all electric sector carbon dioxide emissions in that year — the equivalent of taking 140 million cars off the road. What we don’t need at this crucial crossroads is to spread fear of renewable energy by flooding the opinion columns with hearsay from dubious sources.

When Islanders stretch for reasons to condemn wind energy by looking for the bad, we fail to see the good. When we talk about sound and health effects from turbines that are either offshore so far as to be inaudible or too small to be detrimental, we miss out on opportunities to see the positive side of wind energy. When we complain about hearing a wind turbine or seeing a new profile on the horizon because we are so focused on hearing only that sound or seeing only that profile, we fail to hear the distant sounds of the ocean and we ignore the sound of our children’s cries for a brighter future. But when we see the beauty of a turbine spinning quietly in the distance or humming along in our neighbors yard, we know that it is providing clean energy for all of us and we can see a brighter tomorrow and all can feel pride in doing our part make it possible. Therein lies the beauty.

Gary Harcourt is a cabinetmaker and small wind energy expert who lives in Oak Bluffs.