How breezy is my valley in the coming age of wind

The newest energy-saving device on the November ballot may be another example of the next phase of statewide initiatives. I see a trend toward the "better life" initiatives to the people, compared with the less-taxes initiatives of the past few years.

Consider that while Tim Eyman's latest $30-car-tab initiative is fighting to meet the requirements for signatures, a $700,000 campaign has brought to voters the chance to impose wind power on utilities throughout the state. I-937, if passed in November, would require local private and public utilities such as Seattle City Light and the Snohomish PUD to reach 15 percent of their total power with sources that are alternatives to burning oil, gas or coal. Water power, in abundance in Washington, does not count under the initiative, so unless someone comes up with an overnight breakthrough to tap the heat in the ground or the motion of the waves, the result will be more windmills generating electricity around the state.

Even its advocates — including the American Lung Association and Washington congressmen such as Jay Inslee, D-Bainbridge Island, and Adam Smith, D-Tacoma — admit I-937 is essentially a wind-power initiative.

Opponents, which include business groups and heavy, corporate consumers of electricity, such as Weyerhaeuser, say getting to 15-percent wind power in 15 years is too far a stretch, and higher electricity rates will apply to everyone.

Why advocates want the return to the power of wind turning a blade is part environmental commitment and part attraction of the wind-farm industry to substantial federal subsidies. This is both the age of sail and the age of sale.

Look a little deeper and dots connected to initiatives as lifestyle changes, rather than fiscal countermeasures to the government, emerge.

Two other recent green initiatives come to mind immediately. The Hanford initiative, which easily got a majority of voter approval, decreed that no more nuclear waste would come to south-central Washington until Hanford was cleaned up. The measure is a trapdoor to complications with the federal government, but it sure felt good to vote for a mandate to clean up the nuclear site.

The statewide indoor-smoking ban, one of the most rigorous in the country, also passed as an initiative, supported by the American Lung Association — which coincidentally also supports the mandate toward wind power. Lung Association members expressed alarm over sitting in Interstate 5 traffic and breathing in particulates. Their answer is more wind-power generation to reduce burning fossil fuels. As a class, smokers were outnumbered and, without pity, considered a health risk. So the logical link then extends to gas or coal that puts particulates in the air.

I'm less interested in the technical problems of actually getting to 15-percent wind power by 2020 than I am in the phenomenon of the life-altering referendum. The three initiatives on nuclear waste, smoking in public and now wind power are social messages rather than pocketbook protections. When asked what the potential fiscal impact of the wind-power initiative would be, advocates couldn't seem to come up with an answer.

That's because it's not about the money. For most voters, the social initiatives are perceived as free votes. It cost the voter nothing to vote for Hanford cleanup, no smoking — or more windmills on the hillsides. That's the power of these breezy initiatives; they are conscience cleaners without a tax in sight.

James F. Vesely's column appears Sunday on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is: jvesely@seattletimes.com