Wind Power and Corporate Greed

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- In a tiny upstate New York hamlet called Meredith, amid the abandoned barns and fallow pastures of one of the poorest counties of the Northeast, a civil war was recently fought over one of the catchphrases of the ecology movement -- wind power.

Now, when I use that phrase, I'll bet most people react as I used to, with a kind of warm, cozy feeling, as befits a clean, renewable source of energy that can get this nation off our dependence on Middle Eastern oil. It's enough to make one break out the sandals and granola. Remember all the breathless praise that greeted T. Boone Pickens when he embraced alternative energy resources, including a (subsequently abandoned) plan for an immense Texas wind farm? But behind the bucolic image of clean energy and forward-thinking moguls is a crass reality that exemplifies one of the themes of our age -- capitalism run amok, abetted by misguided government policies.

In reality, wind power is an immense and often dreadful business, with adverse affects on local residents and economies that can be just as adverse as the horrors that hydrofrackinghas brought to the Marcellus Shale regions of the rural Northeast.

And it's a story that investors need to watch carefully, because solar power and other alternative energy stocks have alternately fascinated and disappointed investors, just the way hydrofracking and natural gas stocks like Chesapeake Energy(CHK) have benefitted and sometimes burned investors.

There's a human story behind the often-grim numbers. That story is told in fascinating, eye-opening detail in a documentary that is currently having a limited run in Manhattan. It's called Windfall, and it's the story of what happened when wind power came to that little town I just mentioned, Meredith. It's a really excellent film that has gotten some rave reviews, and I was surprised that my wife and I were the only people in the audience at a recent late-night showing. This is a documentary that needs to be seen.

It's a story that's compelling on a number of levels, but to me it's a classical tragedy, the story of a struggling community desperately seeking economic salvation, and in the process being ruthlessly exploited by faceless (they are never shown) corporate interests.