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Wind Energy Fans Try To Drum Up Support For Bill

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (WJZ) -- Backers of wind energy are turning to global warming to heat up support for a bill currently before the state legislature.

Alex DeMetrick reports that effort prompted an unusual demonstration.

It wasn't the warmest weather to go wading in the bay and large cutouts of the ferris wheel in Ocean City, the State House in Annapolis and the Domino's Sugar plant in Baltimore are hardly beach toys.  But members of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network did it "to represent the threat of global warming and sea level rise," said Mike Tidwell.

Supporters of building wind farms off Maryland's coast are hoping global warming and rising sea levels will convince legislators to back technology that does not produce the greenhouse gases fossil fuels do.

"Maryland is one of the most vulnerable states to global warming because we have 3,000 miles of tidal shorelines, so we're just as vulnerable as Florida and Louisiana," Tidwell said.

Maryland's greenhouse gas emissions are a tiny fraction of the global output, but supporters don't see wind power as a small step for Maryland.

"Maryland wind farms by themselves will not stop global warming, but if we don't start building wind farms, why should anyone else?  We have the most to lose," Tidwell said.

Wind farms off the Maryland coast have the support of Governor Martin O'Malley, as well as a rare alliance between environmentalists and steel workers, who see the huge turbines as a job creator.

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