File This Under "You Can't Win"

So, you go out and decide to make a difference. You buy into a wind farm to supply the cleanest power source on the planet - wind. (Well, okay, solar is cleaner. But it is not as efficient.) You supply power to a society that would otherwise be burning fossil fuels. What is your reward? You are sued for killing birds, of course!

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 Center for Biological Diversity says it won't drop the suit it filed against wind farm operators in November because their plan to reduce bird deaths doesn't go far enough...A California Energy Commission study estimated wind turbines in the Altamont kill 881 to 1,300 birds of prey a year, including as many as 116 federally protected golden eagles.