Green energy

In Southern California, San Diego Gas & Electric -- attempting to meet the state's "green" power mandates -- proposed a 150-mile transmission line to expand the availability of solar power.

But local Sierra Club officials have tried to block the plan at every turn.

In Maine, a utility conglomerate proposed a 30-turbine wind power project near Sugarloaf ski resort.

The local chapter of the Audubon Society hopes to kill the effort.

A similar project in Pennsylvania is also imperiled by the greens.

These and other stories were featured in a Thursday Wall Street Journal article, "Green Projects Generate Split Among Activists," outlining that even many renewable energy projects face the wrath of radical environmentalists.

There is a "disturbing disconnect on this issue" among many greens, said Thomas Kuhn, president of the Edison Electrical Institute.

No kidding.

It's similar to congressional Democrats, who rail about energy and gasoline costs while they block the construction of new power plants or any effort to tap our own domestic petroleum reserves.

The San Diego solar project is in peril because opponents don't like the fact that the transmission lines would run through a state park near the Mexican border. The Maine and Pennsylvania wind power efforts could endanger birds, activists argue.

These may be valid concerns. But when environmentalists try to scuttle the types of projects for which they've been clamoring for years, it raises an obvious question: Is the real endgame to undermine any energy development, at all?