Over the last few years, Maine Audubon intervened against several wind programs planned for the western mountains. They argued, not without merit, that high turbines on the ridgelines kill birds, especially raptors, which ride the thermals above the mountains. Also at risk at high elevations are several species of songbird and certain bat species.

Sea level rise, however, will also result in bird deaths, as habitat is lost at the seashores. A different population of birds, to be sure, but animals that fall under Maine Audubon’s advocacy.

Audubon worked with the state in 2008 to consider wind, but since then has continued to intervene against many projects in western Maine.

Now Maine Audubon has felt the winds shift. Audubon staff issued an analysis this month that purports to show the best places where wind can coexist peacefully with wildlife in the western mountains.

By Audubon’s analysis, there aren’t too many places in Maine where wind is incompatible with wildlife.

Maine Audubon’s communications manager Michelle Smith said that, given the question of sea level rise, especially within the century, Audubon is creating guidelines for “rightly sited” wind.

“We have found that with today’s wind technology, effective turbines can be sited at lower elevations,” she said.

Audubon is not yet taking a position on offshore wind, saying there is not enough information to make an informed decision on it.

Not surprisingly, there are some who disagree with Maine Audubon’s more accepting views on mountain wind.

Chris O’Neil of the Friends of Maine’s Mountains said his organization has a problem with Audubon’s analysis because it “isn’t exhaustive,” and that it makes assumptions about wind that aren’t borne out in reality.

Maine Audubon is concerned with wildlife. But its concern with wild living things may also change the greenon green argument for industrial wind.

Both land- and ocean-based wind are intermittant and unreliable. Sometimes it blows, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s most often a nighttime resource, with no good means to store the energy yet. In addition to wildlife kills, siting an industrial wind farm cuts away swaths of forest for electricity grids, creating habitat voids beneath the high-voltage lines. There’s no denying the disturbing visual impact of a wind farm in the wild.

Fossil fuel use is causing sea levels to rise, dooming coastal towns and cities, changing the productive ecology of Gulf of Maine fisheries and endangering summer tourism.

Maine has to come up with incentives to get people to use power at night. Incentives for plug-in hybrids and lower night rates would encourage people to power cars, wash clothes, run dishwashers and perhaps do other household chores at off-peak hours.

Maine has other green opportunities, too, primarily solar (we get more sunlight than Germany, which will get 80 percent of its power from renewable sources by midcentury), tidal energy and hydropower.

Though it may be difficult or inconvenient for the power generation industry to accommodate wind and other green power generation, it’s essential they do, so consumers can use the power Maine produces.

The coast of Maine needs a reduction in greenhouse gas to turn the tide on sea rise. Inland Maine needs its wilds to remain simultaneously intact and commercially viable.

Maine Audubon’s flickering views on wind power reflect this familiar tension in the state’s political winds. The rural north and smug south will never learn to get along where the words “economy” and “environment” are concerned, so it will be interesting to see where Audubon’s nuanced approach on wind power sells best.

***Corrected to reflect that Audubon’s staff wrote this month’s analysis of wind energy.